AI has no capacity for originality, zero role in literature: Salman Rushdie

The Booker Prize-winning author said AI can process vast amounts of information but lacks the originality needed to create art, while also reflecting on adaptations of Midnight's Children

Celebrated author Salman Rushdie does not believe AI has any role to play in creative work as it has no capacity for originality.

The Booker-winning author spoke about AI before accepting Liberatum's 14th Cultural Honor at a ceremony in London on July 8.

"Nothing. Zero," Rushdie told Variety when asked what part AI should play in creative work.

"It's not useful to creative work because AI has no capacity for originality. What it can do is suck up enormous amounts of information and produce versions of that. But what it can't do is something nobody's done before. And that's what art is, is to find things people haven't done before. So, I mean I have less than zero interest in AI."  "Art at its best is a lot more than entertainment. It's challenging. And you challenge people, sometimes people don't like it, but that is all the more reason for doing it."  Rushdie, who had once collaborated with director Deepa Mehta to adapt "Midnight's Children for the 2012 film, also discussed the shelved television adaptation of the 1981 book with filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj.

 

"Yeah, that fell apart. For money reasons and, and script reasons, I think Netflix didn't like the direction that the scripts took. It happens. A very talented filmmaker, just didn't work out."  The author revealed that there is a lot of interest in adapting the novel to a multi-episode format. People have also expressed interest in adapting his 1999 novel "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" for a film.

"There are conversations around two or three of my books but believe it when you see it," he said.

Asked about the notion that great novels rarely translate well into movies, Rushdie gave the example of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, Luchino Visconti's "The Leopard" and Martin Scorsese's "The Age of Innocence" as movies that were equal to their literary source.

He may be willing to lend his stories for screen adaptations, but Rushdie said he is not that keen on a book or film on his life.

"I didn't become a writer in order to write about myself. In fact, I think I'm the least interesting subject. But I became a writer to make things up," said the author.

Rushdie has written a memoir, "Joseph Anton" about his years in hiding after writing "Satanic Verses" and the controversy surrounding it.