NEW YORK (NEWSnet/AP) — For book-writers, artificial intelligence represents a threat to livelihood and the concept creativity. More than 10,000 writers endorsed an open letter from The Authors Guild, urging AI companies not to use copyrighted work without permission or compensation.

Conversely, AI is a story to tell, and goes beyond science fiction.

Artificial intelligence is becoming part of the narrative for novelists and short-story writers.

“I'm frightened by artificial intelligence, but also fascinated by it,” said Helen Phillips, whose upcoming novel “Hum” tells of a wife and mother who loses her job to AI. “There's a hope for divine understanding, for the accumulation of all knowledge, but at the same time there's an inherent terror in being replaced by non-human intelligence.”

Book proposals involving AI themes are becoming more common,  said Ryan Doherty, vice president and editorial director at Celadon Books, which recently signed Fred Lunzker’s novel “Sike,” featuring an AI psychiatrist.

“It’s the zeitgeist right now,” Doherty said. “And whatever is in the cultural zeitgeist seeps into fiction.”

Other AI-themed novels expected for release within the next two years include Sean Michaels' “Do You Remember Being Born?", in which a poet agrees to collaborate with an AI poetry company; Bryan Van Dyke’s “In Our Likeness,” about a bureaucrat and a fact-checking program with the power to change facts; and A.E. Osworth’s “Awakened,” about a gay witch and her titanic clash with AI.

Jeffrey Diger, known for writing thrillers set in contemporary Greece, is working on a novel that involves AI and the metaverse, the outgrowth of being “continually on the lookout for what’s percolating on the edge of societal change,” he said.

In Sierra Greer's “Annie Bot,” the title character is an AI mate designed for a human male. For Greer, the novel provides a way to explore her character’s “urgent desire to please,” adding that a robot girlfriend enabled her “to explore desire, respect, and longing in ways that felt very new and strange to me.”

Amy Shearn’s “Animal Instinct” has its origins in the pandemic and in her personal life. She recently was divorced and began to explore dating apps.

“It’s so weird how, with apps, you start to feel as if you’re going person-shopping,” Shearn said. “And I thought, wouldn’t it be great if you could really pick and choose the best parts of all these people you encounter and sort of cobble them together to make your ideal person? I don’t think anyone actually knows what their ideal person is ... so much of what draws us to mates is the unexpected, the ways in which people surprise us. That said, it seemed like an interesting premise for a novel.”

Some authors are writing about AI and working alongside it. Journalist Stephen Marche used AI to write the novella “Death of An Author.” Screenwriter and humorist Simon Rich collaborated with Brent Katz and Josh Morgenthau for “I Am Code,” a thriller in verse generated by the AI program “code-davinci-002.”

Michaels centers his new novel on a poet named Marian, in homage to poet Marianne Moore, and an AI program called Charlotte. He said the novel is about parenthood, labor, community and "this technology’s implications for art, language and our sense of identity.”

Believing the spirit of “Do You Remember Being Born?” called for the presence of actual AI text, he devised a program that would generate prose and poetry, and uses an alternate format in the novel so readers know when it is AI-generated.

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