Artificial intelligence (AI) as the beginning of a paradigm shift, a transformation of the book, and a cultural revolution is already here.

It is the myth that has unsettled writers. The emergence of the self-fulfilling prophecy of artificial intelligence as author has set off alarm bells in the book world, crossing the boundaries previously reserved for science fiction with the hybridization, cross-pollination, and/or transversality of the book’s infinite evolution, which seeks the fusion of the analog and digital worlds. The reason for the alarm is that it is not only about artistic and aesthetic matters, but also ethical and philosophical ones. It is a moment of uncertainty that goes to the heart of everything, forcing a reconsideration of the very meaning of art, its function, authorship, and the role of human beings in creation.

It is a decisive element in the fifth industrial revolution, the posthuman era, which seeks for human beings to control the situation in the digital universe and create an environment of harmony. Human beings at the center, with AI as their tool, as an assistant to people. To achieve this, they must understand the technology and its possibilities.

Has the Gutenberg era which, for almost six centuries has expanded knowledge, development, and culture, begun its decline? Does artificial intelligence mark the end of the written word and usher in the era of the oral, as the German philosopher Wolfram Eilenberger told WMagazín? The truth is that the book, a bastion of knowledge transmission and creation, is once again demonstrating, like the spoken word, that it is a living organism as it undergoes its fifth, diversified mutation, driven by the digital world and AI. At the same time, it sends the message that what matters is its spirit, not its form. Language, the spoken word, reading, writing, communication, and learning are all undergoing a transformation. “The question is whether AI will replace everything. We are at the beginning of an absolute cultural revolution. But literature, fortunately, is less fragile than other arts, in general”, Hélène Cixous, French writer and intellectual and winner of the 2025 Formentor Prize for Literature, told WMagazín.

First steps of AI in the world of books

Several large companies are accelerating their research into AI technology with different models. One of the fastest evolving is ChatGPT, from OpenAI, a chatbot prototype created in 2022 specializing in language and dialogue learning, a form of generative AI.

This new stage in the metamorphosis of the book, in its dual fusion of analog and digital, began in the last decade with the surge in exploration of storytelling methods and formats to adapt to new and future sensibilities.

The first steps of artificial intelligence are clear and have elicited diverse opinions (apocalyptic and integrated) regarding the coexistence of works created by humans and those arising from technology:

• AI will increase its presence in the publishing industry in management processes and throughout the book supply chain, where almost everything is positive, from proofreading and advising on literary structures to voices for audiobooks, and even the famous big data.

• AI has already begun to act as an author of literary creation, through imitation. They can copy a style or story, but always based on pre-existing content, not from scratch.

• The role of artificial intelligence as an original author seems distant, given its lack of the complexity of the human brain. How many interfaces does the program need?

• AI will accelerate and expand the exploration of cross-disciplinary approaches already used to take the book to another level with resources such as audiobooks, video games, music, podcasts, and film, for now. “The goal is to incorporate more senses and provide the reader with a reading experience beyond the traditional one, with extra elements within the same work that engage the senses. Paper will continue to exist, but most of the innovations are related to the possibilities offered by the digital world and AI. Furthermore, the book will offer users the option of reading it in different formats”. “If you buy a print edition for a few euros more, you can get the digital version, the audiobook, the video game, and other options”, WMagazín explained in 2020 in the article The Future of the Publishing Industry in Ten Key Points: From Transmedia Books to Big Data as an Editor.

• And there are more applications and services that AI offers and will offer. “The book will continue its metamorphosis as a multifaceted work in infinite construction. Starting from the written word or images offered by the reading experience, the book will incorporate all kinds of surrounding experiences”, WMagazín explained in the aforementioned article.

To explore these first seconds of dawn in the territory of artificial intelligence, WMagazín invited writers such as 2021 Nobel Laureate in Literature Abdulrazak Gurnah, 2019 Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo, French author Jean-Baptiste del Amo, and Colombian writer and literature professor Carolina Sanín; to editors like the Spanish Pilar Álvarez of Alianza publishing house; and the Mexican and Sociologist of culture Consuelo Sáizar de la Fuente; English historian of emotions Richard Firth-Godbehere; specialists in emerging technologies Javier Celaya and researcher in narratives about Artificial Intelligence Pablo Sanguinetti; a music expert who already knows what technological colonization is: the director of the Department of Classical Music at the University of Liverpool, Michel Spitzer; Spanish writer, journalist, and expert in cutting-edge information and technology, Marta Peirano; the intellectuals Hélène Cixous and Wolfram Eilenberger already mentioned; and, finally, artificial intelligence itself.

Some dismantle myths and legends surrounding the topic, some express their fears, several formulate unsettling questions, others propose alliances, and all show anticipation in the face of the unknown.

Or is artificial intelligence yet another gift from Prometheus to aid human beings in their creation of the arts?

Humanity’s path is strewn with technological aids and collaborations that were initially demonized, leaving a trail of questions, but artists and the world embraced them. The camera obscura was a game-changer for painters… Auto-Tune was a game-changer in music… The printing press, the typewriter, the computer… Human beings are always looking to go one step further in their quest to play God.

What does creating consist of and the new role of humankind

What is artificial intelligence’s own response to all this debate?

“Artificial intelligence, in general, is not capable of having the same sensitivity or creativity as a human being. While artificial intelligence can analyze large amounts of data and generate patterns and predictions, it does not have the same capacity to process and understand information at an emotional and subjective level as human beings do. However”, he adds, and further details are included later in this report.

Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah dismantles the first myth surrounding artificial intelligence: “It’s an interesting topic, but I really don’t think artificial intelligence writes on its own. It’s possible that they create programs with information passed to the system, but without much creative leeway”.

He then acknowledges one virtue: “It’s a good tool for writers because it can shed light on a topic you’re researching. Although I prefer to immerse myself personally in my work”.

Regarding its role in the industry itself, the Nobel laureate in Literature points to a door that is already open in the book market: “Obviously, an AI program will be cheaper than hiring a writer, but one of the characteristics of art is the surprise and imagination that human beings create. Artificial intelligence may reach its peak in this area; I hope not at the level of human capacity”.

Reflecting on Abdulrazak Gurnah’s reminder not to underestimate humanity and art itself, Pablo Sanguinetti, a researcher in narratives about Artificial Intelligence, says: “What worries me is the way we tell ourselves about the advances in artificial intelligence. I see that we tend to exaggerate its power and underestimate the immense complexity of art. If we take for granted that a machine is capable of creating or generating art, if we think it can replace painters or writers, if we perceive that the enormous spiritual feat of creating no longer makes sense, we are telling the wrong story with harmful effects for our species at a crucial moment in its history”.

Amid the flurry of questions that have spread like wildfire about whether machines will surpass humans in writing books, the expert in artificial intelligence narratives raises other questions that encompass and transcend them: “The advancement of machine learning systems in the artistic field opens the doors to two fascinating domains. One is theoretical: we must rethink questions we have pondered for millennia, such as what creation consists of, how to define the figure of the author, or what the purpose of art is. And, surely, the mere existence of these new systems will offer a different perspective on this intellectual endeavor”.

The second area this technology opens up, Sanguinetti adds, is creative: “These tools (I emphasize the word: ‘tools’) offer new expressive possibilities to artists. For some time now, there have been very interesting creative practices that apply artificial intelligence to obtain different aesthetic results or to reflect on the technology itself”. Pablo Sanguinetti will publish the essay Technohumanism: Essays on Artificial Intelligence (La Huerta Grande) this spring. A work that bridges technology and the humanities, with a special focus on the exponential advancement of artificial intelligence and the philosophical problems it raises.

Along these lines of setting aside fears and deciphering the horizon are other experts: “Recent AI developments, such as ChatGPT, are revolutionary. If Octavio Paz wrote that ‘to converse is human,’ we cannot help but be amazed by a technological creation that is capable of very persuasively imitating the practice of conversation”, states Consuelo Sáizar de la Fuente, a sociologist of culture and former director of the Fondo de Cultura Económica of Mexico at CERLALC (Regional Center for the Promotion of Books in Latin America and the Caribbean).

Sáizar de la Fuente reminds us that “the writer generates verbal architectures; that is their creative power. He is a unique author of texts that combine his thoughts, imagination, experiences, context, admirations, emotions, biography, morality, perspective, and his way of facing the blank page and the world; a combination that, until now, cannot be replicated by AI”.

The Mexican sociologist agrees with Sanguinetti’s emphasis: “The possibilities that open up with AI are ‘tools’ that should not be overvalued or underestimated; they are extensions of our capabilities that we would do well to explore rather than reject, to understand rather than fight against, to make a part of our lives rather than deny realities that may well shape the future of our species. Only by understanding and using AI will we be able to get the most out of it, in literary creation and other fields, instead of fearing it or being displaced by it”.

Does AI liberate or replace art?

A question that is gaining increasing relevance every day is precisely whether, with AI and other technologies, we need to reconsider the meaning of art, the function and/or the role of human beings within the creative process itself. Marta Peirano, a Spanish writer, journalist, and expert in cutting-edge and powerful information technologies, has no doubt:

“I am personally convinced that in media like film, which requires an enormous amount of resources, many more than writing a novel, because you need equipment, you need materials, and the process is more expensive, I think that with these kinds of technologies, it has already happened that when such disruptive technologies arrive, the art they replace frees itself from what it was doing up to that point and begins to do other things. For example, when photography arrived, it freed art from being naturalistic. Then, art could become a million different things. Or before that, when the camera obscura arrived in painting”,

Peirano, author of books such as The Enemy Knows the System and Little Red Book of the Net Activist, explained that “The idea that by replacing certain aspects of artistic production you are replacing the artist is absurd; it has never been that way. What usually happens is that in the commercial and industrial world, artists who are doing illustrations, for example, for marketing companies, will probably lose their jobs. In that sense, in more manual labor jobs, it can replace the worker”.

Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize winner for her novel Girl, Woman, Others (AdNovelas) and a great creator of vivid characters, is frightened by all this talk of artificial intelligence: “It’s scary… I don’t pay much attention to all this, but I prefer that the arts and imagination remain with humans rather than robots doing it for us”.

• With translation assistance from Robert Lienhard.

Complete series of Artificial intelligence in the world of books and literature:

• Artificial Intelligence in the World of Books and Literature (1): Authorship and the New Role of Humans in Creation. You can watch it HERE.
• Artificial Intelligence in the World of Books and Literature (2): Writing and creativity in the posthumanist era. You can read the article HERE.
• Artificial intelligence in the world of books and literature (3): Cultural revolution and paradigm shift. You can read the article HERE.

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