Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, who won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature, has found herself at the centre of a debate over artificial intelligence after remarks she made at Impact’26 in Poznań were widely interpreted as an admission that she uses AI in her writing process. During the talk, she described AI as a tool that can broaden creative thinking and help with developing ideas. She also warned that the technology can produce factual errors. What began as a discussion about creativity and technology soon turned into a heated debate about the future of literature and the role of AI in artistic work. Tokarczuk later issued a clarification saying her forthcoming novel was not written with AI and that she mainly uses the technology for brainstorming, developing ideas, preliminary research and fact-checking.
What Tokarczuk said about using AI
According to Notes from Poland, Tokarczuk said she had bought “the highest, most advanced version” of a language model and was often “deeply shocked” by how much it expands her thinking. She joked that she sometimes throws ideas to the machine and asks, “Darling, how could we develop this beautifully?”At the same event, she said AI could help create a “symbiotic future” for writers and might become “an asset of incredible proportions” in literary fiction.She also said that while writing her latest novel, due in Polish this autumn, she asked the model what songs her characters might have danced to decades ago. Tokarczuk added that one suggestion included a wrong name, which led her to warn that users “have to be careful of hallucinations”.
Why the remarks triggered backlash
The reaction was intensified by Tokarczuk’s status as one of Poland’s most admired literary figures. As a Nobel Prize winner, her comments carried far more weight than a casual interview. Notes from Poland reported that the remarks drew criticism from online commentators and some Polish writers.One of the strongest responses came from novelist Szczepan Twardoch, another speaker at Impact’26. In a Facebook post, he said he would have to “lose my mind” to use a language model for literature. He also compared entering into a relationship with a language model to “marrying a vibrator”.
Tokarczuk’s clarification
After the backlash, Tokarczuk released a statement through her publisher and to Lit Hub saying her remarks had been “incorrectly understood”. She said clearly that she did not write her forthcoming book using AI or with anyone else and that she has written alone for decades.She added that she uses AI “as a tool that allows faster documenting and checking of facts” and said she verifies the information every time she uses it. Tokarczuk also stressed that none of her texts, including the novel due later this year, had been written with AI apart from “faster preliminary research”.That clarification shifted the debate away from claims of AI-written fiction and towards a broader question: how much assistance should writers take from generative AI tools?
A wider literary debate
The controversy reflects a larger debate across the publishing world. Some writers see AI as a research aid and brainstorming tool. Others view even limited use as a threat to authorship and artistic integrity.Tokarczuk’s comments touched a nerve because she presented AI as useful for creativity while still defending traditional literature as a deeply human craft. During the same remarks, she said she feels sorrow for the disappearing era of solitary writing and does not believe chatbots can match a true literary voice.At the same time, writer Ziemowit Szczerek defended Tokarczuk and criticised the “moral outrage” surrounding her comments. He argued that she should be free to experiment with AI if she wants to.The Tokarczuk episode shows how quickly nuance can disappear once AI enters the conversation.
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