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This article has the subtitle: "We may have robotic authors way before Skynet"

This is yet another example of oblivious, uninformed people breathlessly describing as new, or as predictions, things that have already happened.

Probably long before the author was even born, robotic authors already existed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter

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Thanks for reading and replying! By author I mean "that which writes books on bestseller lists" as opposed to "that which outputs text". Hope that clarifies.

Yes I figured you would come back with something about what a "true" author is or what is "truly" creative. My words, not yours, but your reply is in that spirit.

If your basic point is that people underestimate the potential for creativity by future AIs / programs / whatever we call them, I think you're right that this underestimation is still happening, even though we have had creative tools for many years doing way more than, as Picasso put it, only giving answers.

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