How has artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT changed our society—and us? These questions seem important for us as people of the word, so to speak—creators and appreciators of literary work—as we adjust to AI’s dramatic encroachment into what has traditionally been ‘our’ space. In order to begin to answer, we need to go well beyond a focus on the software and code, and into larger considerations of the structure and nature of our society. New technology never appears in a vacuum; it is always as an expression of larger patterns of human relationships and behaviour.

ChatGPT is unquestionably a useful tool and a remarkable one. It is, in effect, a giant autotext, answering questions it receives on the basis of its finely granulated algorithmic analysis of very large quantities of data accessible via the web.