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Little love has been lost between writers and the AI industry. Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have ripped off their life\u2019s work without permission, incurring countless copyright infringement lawsuits in the process \u2014 while creating a product that\u2019s often putting them out of work.<\/p>\n
So it shouldn\u2019t come as a surprise that when renowned author Dave Eggers was invited to OpenAI\u2019s headquarters in the Bay Area, he had some choice words for the roughly 200 attendees. As he recalled in an interview with the Financial Times<\/a>, Eggers was invited after he excoriated CEO Sam Altman for gushing over an AI-generated short story.<\/p>\n In March 2025, Altman said he was \u201creally struck\u201d by a short story about AI and grief \u2014 which was widely panned as being \u201cjust trash<\/a>\u201d and an \u201catrocious piece of writing<\/a>\u201d that would\u2019ve gotten a first-year creative writing student a failing grade.<\/p>\n Eggers was also unimpressed, telling the FT he thought the story was \u201cpastiche nonsense\u201d and wondered \u201cjust how gullible and ridiculous you\u2019d have to be to think that there would ever be an AI novel that anybody would read?\u201d<\/p>\n In an apparent attempt to prove him wrong, OpenAI invited him to talk to its workers \u2014 and Eggers relished the opportunity to set the record straight.<\/p>\n He told the staff that the \u201ceffect of ChatGPT on educators\u2019 lives is catastrophic,\u201d adding that \u201cwhether you intended to do it or not, you\u2019ve made every teacher\u2019s life infinitely more difficult than it was two years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf students are using it to compose, which is the biggest tragedy of all, they\u2019ll never learn to write,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd their voice is stolen from them. They\u2019ll never have the ability to say their truth and tell their own story. And that\u2019s silencing an entire generation or two.\u201d<\/p>\n Eggers also had some advice for an employee who said they had used ChatGPT to write a poem: to touch grass.<\/p>\n \u201cSo why don\u2019t you leave your house, leave the screen, meet some people, get yourself in a writing group,\u201d he told the staffer. \u201cAnother human might be very encouraging and help you express yourself authentically.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt ended up being a very poignant hour,\u201d Eggers concluded.<\/p>\n The best-selling author\u2019s comments are cathartic, to say the least. Eggers is one of many prominent authors<\/a>, who\u2019ve spoken out against the use of AI, from Lev Grossman<\/a> to Kazuo Ishiguro<\/a>.<\/p>\n For years now, writers have watched as large language model-based tools have made a mockery of their work. The advent of AI chatbots has also minted an entirely new class of people who refer themselves as \u201cnovelists<\/a>,\u201d churning out dozens of \u201cbooks\u201d made up entirely of AI slop that choke out real writing in the marketplace. Amazon in particular has been flooded with meaningless self-published AI drivel<\/a>.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not all. Students are rapidly losing the ability to read<\/a>, having long turned to AI tools to write essays<\/a> and other assignments.<\/p>\n Teachers are returning to the use of pen and paper, banning laptops and smartphones<\/a> amidst an AI cheating crisis<\/a>. Literary magazines are no longer accepting writer submissions<\/a> thanks to the rampant proliferation of AI slop.<\/p>\n Even prominent publisher Hachette Book Group, one of the largest publishing houses in the US, was forced to pull a horror novel earlier this year<\/a> after the author was accused of using AI to help write the book.<\/p>\n In short, Eggers was entirely within his right to call out OpenAI staffers for enabling the rapid cognitive deterioration of an entire generation, tech that has turned educators into involuntary AI detectives, and budding writers into prompt engineers.<\/p>\n At least the author enjoyed being given the opportunity to send an important message to the people monetizing the whole mess.<\/p>\n \u201cI had a ball,\u201d Eggers told the FT.<\/p>\n