> It is difficult to think that someone who writes for pleasure would abandon it simply because of the exponential volume of AI-generated text.

But the "exponential volume of AI-generated text" turns "writing for pleasure" into a solitary act. There's no chance you'll be able to quit your day job, because people like what you do any will pay for it. So many people faking it with AI means that it'll be struggle to get any attention at all for what you've put so much effort into.

I agree, but I do think it makes the book industry more difficult. A flood of books makes it makes it harder for new authors to make it. Just like a new youtuber has a very difficult time. Eventually publishers will turn to AI just to deal with the volume on submissions, and then it will become just like YouTube, where an algorithm decides who wins and loses.

At the same time, readers will have to sift through an insane amount of books to find what they like. It is already kind of like this, even before AI. This causes people to rely more on reviews and word of mouth, which becomes a volume game and is also influenced by the algorithms.

I don't think it is the end times for literature, and for those who put the work in, they can find their places. But it is a whole new set of challenges.

Photography was not the end of painting.

It was, however, a blow to painting as a vocation where a lot of your work was in the form of portrait painting.

> holds real value when it is of high quality

Does it? This assumption is the core of the entire problem.

It might do as some, bluntly, self indulgent exercise but beyond that in society scarcity of things other people need and want is what drives value.

We are in for an absolutely huge rebalancing of what it is that is considered valuable.