Salman Rushdie believes that AI could conquer screenwriting and certain literary genres

Generative artificial intelligence could conquer the writing of screenplays and literary genres “like thrillers and science fiction,” believes novelist Salman Rushdie in an interview with the French literary magazine, NRF, published Thursday.

“The trouble is that these creatures learn very quickly,” he confides. I think it's more worrying for genre literature, like thrillers or science fiction, where what matters is not the originality of voice or language. “The same goes for screenwriters,” continues the writer. Given that Hollywood is constantly creating new versions of the same film, artificial intelligence could be used to draft scripts.”

But for the author of The Satanic Verses, writers like him have no interest in being helped by AI, nor any reason to worry about possible imitations. He noticed this, with a text written by ChatGPT, respecting the “200 words in the Salman Rushdie style” guideline. “The result was a bunch of nonsense,” he explains. No reader who had read a single page of mine could have thought that I was the author. Rather reassuring.”

Also read: Vincent Montagne: “A book written by artificial intelligence will not win a Goncourt Prize”

According to Salman Rushdie, “the system simply assimilates enormous quantities of text and produces a new version. No originality can be found there. It seems he is also completely devoid of a sense of humor. These are big gaps.”

Editions Gallimard, which publishes the magazine, published Le Couteau on April 18, an account of the assassination attempt to which Salman Rushdie was the victim in August 2022 in Chautauqua, in the northeast of the United States, during a literary conference. The writer was attacked by an American of Lebanese origin suspected of being a sympathizer of Shiite Iran. Seriously injured, he has since lost the sight in one eye. Salman Rushdie since 1989 under the threat of death from a fatwa issued by Iran after the publication of his book The Satanic Verses.