Google AI writing study sparks backlash against 13 celebrated speculative fiction authors

Google’s 2022 experiment, called the Wordcraft Writers Workshop, gave thirteen prominent speculative fiction authors access to a LaMDA-based editor named Wordcraft under nondisclosure agreements. Participants were free to use the AI as much as they wished while writing an eight-week short-story project, and the resulting works were published alongside a research white paper. As public opinion on large language models has hardened, a recent Bluesky post by Lily Lachance labeled the study as “AI slop” and urged readers to avoid the authors’ future work, sparking a wave of online condemnation and boycott threats.

Writers such as Eugenia Triantafyllou, Lincoln Michel and Vajra Chandrasekera have responded, some expressing regret and denouncing LLMs, while others like Ken Liu and Robin Sloan have remained largely out of the social-media spotlight. The controversy reflects broader concerns about AI training on copyrighted material and its potential impact on creative professions.