[karaterobot]

> Yes, it may be not a threat (yet) to professional, especially established author. But they will be good helpers for people like me, who can get suggestions, improvements and illustrations just for the price of my 4090 and time to tinker with models.

I think that's more or less what Atwood was saying: that it's not yet good enough to replace talented professionals. I doubt she'd argue that it can do the other things you mentioned.

[tejohnso]

She seems to feel the gap is really large right now. Even if it is as bad as she indicates, I wonder how long it will be before the gap is closed given the progress we've seen recently.

[hotnfresh]

The feeling among writers generally (and among companies that thought, for a time, they could fire most of their writers and editors…) is that LLMs need another couple huge upheavals in how they operate, to compete with and replace skilled humans rather than being a 1.1x multiplier for a skilled human. Their current trajectory isn’t making them all that worried, now that they’ve had some time to see what LLM text generators can actually do (which isn’t much).