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In 2025, human writers will reaffirm their values. In recent years, the race for more and more content has been driven by technological and market imperatives, such as search engine optimization, which serve neither the creator nor the consumer. Human needs and desires have been pushed aside in favor of an economy of attention and drive for clicks.
The early promise of the internet, hailed as a boon for free speech, has failed us. Literature and journalism have been replaced by worthless “content” aimed primarily at filling web pages rather than informing or entertaining. Meanwhile, the income of writers has decreased. Authors’ Licensing and Copywriting Society From 2006 to 2022, adjusted for inflation, authors’ incomes fell by 60.2 percent, it reported. AI for many it felt like the final nail in the coffin for the writers.
But 2025 will not be a turning point for artificial intelligence to replace us, but for a reevaluation of the emotional, spiritual, political, cultural, and ultimately financial value of high-quality human writing. Ironically, the advent of AI-generated search, driving traffic to genuine websites, will eliminate the need for pointless “content” to game the system and drive people to demand better.
Generative AI has sparked a lot of litigation and industry and regulatory action. Data protection regulators in the EU and the UK managed to get a break on Meta’s plans to train its AI on users’ posts, photos and interactions, with complaints from civil society organization NOYB. Traditional publishers like The New York Times have stepped in to protect their interests, and with them the interests of their authors. But some, notably the Financial Times and The Atlantic, have made deals with generative AI companies, perhaps believing the tide is unstoppable. In 2025, they will be proven wrong.
As copyright claims wind their way through the courts, in 2025 we will also see decisions on liability for the inevitable mistakes made by generative AI. As defamatory lies against AI companies and publishers using AI content spread across the web and are amplified by mindless bots and AI search engines, defamation cases will occur. In 2024, academic publisher Wiley, 19 magazines were closed encountered a flood of fake scientific papers. To err is human, but fraud on an industrial scale is a very technological problem. AI has no professional ethics, no soul, and nothing to lose – but the people who use it or want others to use it do.
In the year 2023, AI companies have begun recruiting poets from around the world to imbue their dead-eyed products with something close to creativity. And in 2024, copywriters have found their careers destroyed by AI, resurrected as humanists for synthetic marketing content that doesn’t go algorithmic. The value of human creators is beginning to dawn on corporations that want to crush them, and now even machines aren’t fooled by artificial intelligence. But editing robot posts is boring—will writers eventually say no? But will readers join them?
The London premiere of The Last Screenwriter by ChatGPT 4.0 was canceled in June 2024 after receiving over 200 complaints about the cinema itself.
Publishers that trust people will attract the best writers and ultimately the most profitable audience. With many news outlets offering little or no compensation for freelance writers, these people will be reluctant to sell their souls so cheaply to train an AI to replace their souls. Publishers who sell their writers will see their talent go elsewhere, and their readers with them.
In a world full of derivative automated drivers, human writers will allow readers to breathe air like a green park in a polluted city. Instead of being destroyed by AI in 2025, we will see a recognition of the inherent value of quality human writing, and perhaps human writers will begin to appreciate their worth.
