Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction winner Rachel Clarke has described literature created by artificial intelligence as the “emptiest, most vacuous object imaginable” and cautioned that the real challenge lies in identifying which works have employed AI.
Clarke’s Warning on AI in Literature
Clarke, an NHS doctor and author, made the remarks ahead of her State of the Nation Lecture at the Cambridge Literary Festival. She won the Women’s Prize last year for The Story of a Heart, which recounts the journey of a child receiving a heart transplant. Her earlier memoir, Breathtaking, about working in the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic, was adapted into an ITV drama in 2024.
Concerns over AI’s role in the literary world have intensified. Mia Ballad’s novel Shy Girl was recently withdrawn by publisher Hachette amid allegations it was AI-generated, while Amazon has seen a surge in AI-written books across genres from fantasy to self-help.
Speaking to The Independent, Clarke emphasised that the issue is “much deeper than just ‘will this take my job?’” and doubted readers would genuinely prefer an AI-generated book over one by a human author.
Trust and Authenticity
“I think it's about trust and authenticity and what really matters to each of us as individual human beings,” she said. “With works of art, whether literary or painting, we have a bond of trust with the artist. We believe we are experiencing something they have created, built on the edifice of their life.”
She argued that a painting by Vincent van Gogh derives significance from its connection to “his life and everything he’s suffered and endured.” Removing that context leaves only “the product of a very clever algorithm. How does that even constitute art at all? It’s not creative; it doesn’t stem from everything this human has experienced.”
She likened an AI-generated book to “a crisp packet that doesn’t even contain any crisps. It’s the emptiest, most vacuous object imaginable – and I can’t imagine there is anybody who really wants to read a book written by a computer, even if they are unable to distinguish that book.”
Industry Concerns
A Cambridge University study last year found that nearly half of UK novelists feared AI would replace their work. In March, the UK Society of Authors launched a logo to identify human-written books. Clarke noted that reading involves “entering into a relationship with an author” and without that, “I’m not even sure I know what the point of reading is.”
“The challenge is how do we now distinguish the authentic works from the AI-generated works, particularly if we have authors who are perfectly willing to lie and say that they’ve written something when it just stems from AI,” she said. “I don’t have the answer to that question but I hope that some of the very clever Silicon Valley minds are focusing on that problem.”
Kindness and Empathy Under Assault
In her lecture on Saturday 25 April, Clarke will argue that the UK faces a crisis of care and has become “kindwashed”, with institutions promoting performative kindness. “Kindness and empathy are qualities that are fundamentally human and what make us the remarkable species we are,” she said. “They’re under assault from all manner of different directions – from the corporate realm that tends to judge value in terms of productivity.”
She criticised political narratives focused on conflict and domination, and a devaluing of care as “soft, weak, feeble, optional extra” rather than profoundly important. She referenced Elon Musk’s remarks last year that empathy towards undocumented immigrants was destroying society, calling it a “fundamental weakness of Western civilisation.”
Clarke urged people not to “flinch away” from others’ suffering, acknowledging it is hard to keep caring but warning that “the alternative is deeply corrosive to our sense of self.” She added, “We need to tell stories, not only about the power of care but also what an absence of care really looks like. Life is tough for everybody at the moment – we don’t really want to consider more of other people’s suffering but actually we need to do that. We need to discipline ourselves not to give up and not to stop caring because once we do that, our indifference makes us part of the problem.”
