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>Olga Tokarczuk has responded to the controversy over her reputed use of AI. https://lithub.com/olga-tokarczuk-has-responded-to-the-controversy-over-her-repute
by bookofjoe 6mo ago
>Olga Tokarczuk has responded to the controversy over her reputed use of AI.
https://lithub.com/olga-tokarczuk-has-responded-to-the-controversy-over-her-reputed-use-of-ai/ https://lithub.com/olga-tokarczuk-has-responded-to-the-contr...
Update: On Tuesday afternoon, Tokarczuk sent a statement to Lit Hub via her publisher, Riverhead, denying she used AI in her writing for anything other than research. Read it here:
>After Nobel Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk’s recent remarks implying she had used AI to write her recent novel made the rounds on social media, the novelist shared a statement with Lit Hub via her publisher, addressing the controversy:
Like any other conversation, remarks made before a live audience at a public event can be incorrectly understood.
I did not write my forthcoming book – to be published in fall 2026 in Polish – either using AI or with anyone else. For several decades I have written alone.
I state briefly and firmly:
1. I make use of artificial intelligence on the same principles as most people in the world – I treat it as a tool that allows faster documenting and checking of facts. Whenever I use this tool I additionally verify the information. Just as I have done for several decades by reading books and by exploring libraries and archives.
2. None of my texts, including the novel that will appear in Polish this fall, has been written with the help of artificial intelligence – except for using it as a tool for faster preliminary research.
3. I am sometimes inspired by dreams, but before this sentence too is cornered and torn to pieces by the experts, I hasten to report that they are my own dreams.
Olga Tokarczuk, May 19, 2026, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
- erwald 6mo agoSeems pretty reasonable!
- simianwords 6mo agoWhat? So this whole thing is blown out of proportion? If she didn’t use LLMs to write the literal sentences then what’s the issue?
- john_strinlai 6mo ago>If she didn’t use LLMs to write the literal sentences then what’s the issue? the issue is that some people have an insatiable need to cause controversy, or rail against (or for) anything AI/AI-adjacent, to speak in half truths and generate "engagement", etc.
- ethanplant 6mo agoThere’s a subset of the anti-AI crowd that treats any involvement of AI anywhere in the chain as tainting the work.
- nephihaha 6mo agoI can see some benefits to AI in some areas, but at the current stage it still requires human oversight, and is given to producing false returns.
- realmofthemad 6mo agoThis just seems like a pretty normal way to use AI
- joe_the_user 6mo agoIf you read her original statement, she gives the impression of using AI for something like "world building", which might be spun into "just for research" but seems like a more integral part of the process than her later statement implies.