By Nesrine Malik: Here is a nightmare scenario for you. You are writing a book about how AI reshapes reality. You start using it as a research partner, confident that you are applying the right hygiene by not letting it actually write a sentence of the book. You think you’ll be careful, you will double check everything. And then your book comes out and it appears that it includes more than a half dozen misattributed or fake quotes. Steven Rosenbaum, the unfortunate writer, acknowledged that sometimes the output of AI was “staggeringly wrong”, but still, errors crept in.

There are others. A Commonwealth prize-winning short story became engulfed in claims that it carried the hallmarks of AI. And every time I see a story of a journalist caught out by fake AI quotes during research, I cross myself – there but for the grace of God go I. But to make sure it is not left up to grace alone, I never touch the thing. When AI results pop up as the default in a search engine, I reject them, rebuke them, as if they contained a dark sorcery that would through mere engagement creep into my synapses and take control.

This monastic, almost paranoid approach is not only because AI is a risky and unreliable research tool. It is a voice, a tone, a frequency. AI language haunts me in a million similar tinny chants from customer care to social media posts to press releases. I worry even as I write this column that it might sound like AI. That I have somehow through relentless exposure assimilated its blandness and excess. Its short declarative sentences. Its advertorial narration. Its informal mimicry of personhood. Hi there! Hope all is well. I thought you might be interested in a column about AI, an issue that is increasingly occupying thought leaders and writers. Would you like to learn more?  Read On: