[jxcole]

I think it's possible that some generous person determines a sequence of prompts that generate, say novels, and then pipes these prompts into a program causing thousands or even millions of wholly varied novels to be generated in the public domain. I imagine this is what the OP meant.

[BarryMilo]

I've been changing my mind a lot on AI these past few weeks.

I don't think the price is what stops most people from reading books. People already have access to countless works they don't have time to read, adding a bunch of soulless ones to this seems like it won't change much.

[dotancohen]

As a (once avid) reader, the worrying part will be discovery. Why I was eight I could pick any book off the library shelf and it was interesting and enlightening. Today, the noise so outdrowns the signal that I have to rely on recommendations. Tomorrow, when both the books and the recommendations will be generated by bots outpacing human authors by orders of magnitude, I expect that quality new material will be impossible to find.

I pray that I am wrong.

[eternalban]

(Closed) Knowledge communities* -- will resurrect and undoubtedly there will be communities with a spiritual basis. Possibly a new age of Modern Midevalism awaits.

* think monks and manuscripts

[vidarh]

Or maybe you'll just be able to talk to ChatGPT about what you like and get recommendations.

[vidarh]

What can change is that people can get more of exactly what they like. In which case many might well put up with imperfect continuations, and the AI will have material to mimic.

[visarga]

same with art and code