‘I Like My Big Rat Wife’: Meet the People Using Chatbots to Write Custom Fiction
Readers are increasingly using AI chatbots to generate personalized fiction for themselves, bypassing traditional publishing entirely. The trend is growing quietly while the book industry's AI debate stays focused almost entirely on professional authors.
Why this matters: The publishing world's AI anxiety is aimed at the wrong target. Readers are not waiting for publishers or authors to decide what is acceptable. They are already writing their own stories, on demand, tailored to exactly what they want. That is a real shift in who controls creative content. It also means AI companies are sitting at the center of people's most personal imaginative lives, collecting data on what those people want to read, feel, and explore in private.
Who should care: General readers · AI governance · Policy
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