In the last few years, Artificial Intelligence has demonstrated a remarkable ability to mimic the structures of human creativity. It can compose poetry in the style of Pablo Neruda, produce short stories that echo the rhythms of Achebe or Hemingway, and even draft novels with coherent plots. Yet a haunting question lingers – can AI ever truly write literature, or will its efforts forever remain elaborate imitations, clever but ultimately hollow?
The answer, however, lies not in whether machines can produce grammatically flawless prose, but in whether they can replicate the essence of literature itself. This is because literature possesses the capacity to distil human emotion, memory, and struggle into words that resonate across generations.
At its core, literature is regarded as the language of experience. Literature is not simply words on a page but an act of human testimony. When African writers like Olaudah Equiano and Buchi Emecheta write about the scars of slavery, or when Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie recounts the dislocations of war and identity, the power of their work comes not just from craft but from lived experience. Their sentences are infused with histories carried in their body, particularly with the pain and the resilience drawn from memory.
AI, by contrast, has no childhood to remember, no heartbreak to nurse, no injustice to resist. It learns by prediction, by sifting through oceans of human writing and stitching together patterns that seem convincing. Its stories are mosaics, not memoirs. They may capture the form of literature, but they stumble when confronted with the soul of it.
This is not to say that AI-generated texts cannot move us. Readers have already reported being startled by the beauty of certain machine-produced poems. But is that beauty the product of genuine insight, or our human tendency to project meaning onto patterns?
There is, however, a big concern around the question of authenticity. One might argue that literature has always been an act of imitation. This is because writers borrow, echo, and reimagine endlessly. T. S. Eliot declared that “immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” Shakespeare himself adapted plots from earlier works and histories. If human literature is built on borrowing, one may then ask the question, “Why dismiss AI’s pastiche as inauthentic?”
The difference, perhaps, lies in intentionality. Writers borrow to transform. As such, they reinterpret inherited forms through the lens of their own struggles. Achebe retold colonial narratives to restore the dignity of the Igbo world. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o shifted language itself to resist the cultural dominance of English. Their choices were acts of defiance, rooted in context. AI, however, borrows without purpose. Its recombinations are not acts of resistance or confession, but exercises in probability. It is, therefore, germane to note that literature without intentionality risks becoming mere simulation, as it might appear beautiful but hollow.
Meanwhile, some literary critics are of the opinion that it would be shortsighted to dismiss AI entirely. Throughout history, technology has reshaped literary creation. The printing press democratized access to books, typewriters quickened the pace of composition, and digital platforms transformed publishing. Today, AI might become another tool to amplify human creativity.
Imagine a poet using AI to generate alternative metaphors, selecting and refining them to align with personal vision. Or a novelist deploying AI to model historical dialects to enrich the authenticity of a dialogue. In such cases, one could argue that the machine has become a collaborator involved in enhancing the writer’s creative process.
There is also the possibility that AI will give birth to new forms of literature that we have not yet imagined. Interactive, adaptive narratives already exist, where readers influence plotlines in real time. Coupled with AI, such texts could become endlessly generative, which would produce unique novels for each reader.
In the end, the question is less about whether AI can write literature and more about whether we, as readers, will accept it as such. Literature is not only authored; rather, it is also received. A poem only becomes literature when it enters the bloodstream of culture, particularly when readers invest it with meaning.
If we choose to embrace AI texts, they may one day be anthologised alongside human works. Contemporary writers must remain vigilant, as AI will always lack the embodied histories that make literature a record of human existence. What AI offers is not testimony but tapestry, which was woven from our words, but not from our wounds.
To my mind, I believe that this is where AI’s role should remain. It should not serve as a replacement for the human storyteller. Instead, it should be a mirror that reflects the stories we have already told. The deepest literature will still come from hearts that bleed, from voices that tremble, from memories that ache. AI may successfully echo those voices, but it cannot originate them.
.Akinrinde is a literary critic and fictional writer
