The Arts are not immune to the technological revolution that is sweeping the world off its feet as the sun rises on the dawn of the rapidly expanding advent of artificial intelligence, or, for convenience, to use the acronym. A.I. The video depicted above is to market my second novel, Two Minutes, on social media, and it is a creature of A.I. Does it concern me, while also captivating my artistic mind? Indubitably. Granted, I entered the instruction into the software to create an image of the front cover of my novel rising behind Mars, yet after offering that instruction to generate the static image, I pressed the animate key without entering any further instructions or prompts, and A.I., upon reading the various reviews about Two Minutes, and the previous prompts I have entered to generate other advertisements using Zeely, then created this work of video art in fewer minutes than it takes to make a nice cup of coffee. Whereas once upon a time, it might have taken multimedia artists several days to create a product of such visual splendour, and perhaps seen me waving bon voyage to several thousand dollars, under the cover of the nominal monthly subscription, I created this video in a matter of minutes, and all for the cost of about $1.00, The video captures some of the central themes of my novel and, in five seconds, leaves an indelible impression on those who have watched it across the eight social media platforms where I market my novels. I almost immediately created video art to market my novel for a paltry sum. So? What is wrong with that, you say? I will tell you what is wrong with it- the technology is promptly replacing an artistic offspring of marketing literature.

And yet, the indomitable presence of A.I. in the Arts does not end with something as basic as an advertisement for a book. People are now using A.I. to generate an entire book without the gruelling hours that authors like me put in writing the first draft, then the second, then the third, and so on. Indeed, on Facebook, I have seen advertisements supposedly published under the Amazon banner that encourage people to use A.I. to generate a book for sale, and to list it with distributors on that website, thereby entitling them to proclaim they are authors. Pardon the French, but my arse they are authors. To be an author, whether the work be fiction or non-fiction, it must be an emanation of the human mind, blooming within the authentic creative universe of the human mind. Sometimes that work might not be perfect, yet that is why it is called art: we are imperfect, mortal beings whose lifetime experiences inform our creativity. When I write a novel, and currently I am halfway through my third, with a fourth sitting in the background, moaning to be let out of my mind and onto the paper, they are produced from my creative inspiration of lifetime experiences that are authentic expressions of my heart and mind. That aspect of literature can never be replicated by technology. Could a machine experience the range of life’s vicissitudes that inspired Lord Byron to write Don Juan so exquisitely? Could a machine have felt the pain that Ken Kesey did while working in a mental health hospital to inspire him to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? Of course not, and the machines never will have a psyche, the chemical balance, or, indeed, imbalance, to create such beautiful works of literature.

So, my newsletter today is a foreboding warning to all of you reading it about the peril posed by corporate behemoths, such as Amazon, and other marauding corporate monsters whose bottom line is profit rather than art. Do not sacrifice quality for quantity. Do not sacrifice pain and suffering for a mere impersonation of that vital aspect of literature. I do not care how clever the I.T nerd in Silicon Valley might be, they will never see a world in a grain of sand, they will never experience my mental anguish that informs my writing. The I.T. nerds might produce three-dimensional images, but they will never hold infinity in the palm of their hands.