The topicality of AI in academia as well as in popular culture is undeniable, impacting not only how we write but also what we read. While academia cautiously negotiates AI’s use in university classrooms, AI writing aids like Sudowrite, ChatGPT, Bard, PaperGen, and Murder Ink, are marketing tailored genre-specific guides for the would-be fiction writer. As the website writifyai.com (2024) promises, “The intertwining of AI in genres like thriller or fantasy can provide unique twists while also adhering to reader expectations.” Furthermore, AI is no longer just an aid, but also a collaborator: Stephen Marche famously co-wrote a detective novel Death of an Author (2023) with ChatGPT. Not everyone is persuaded, however. In Monica Ali’s 2023 PEN H.G. Wells Lectureshe warns that AI might lead to “increasing homogenization… perpetuated and supported by a ‘more-like-this’ algorithm that crowds out diverse voices or those that challenge the status quo.”

Meanwhile AI is having an effect on fiction in another way, as sentient clones, humanoid robots, and holograms emerge as main characters in recent titles: Jo Callaghan’s Kat and Lock series; Sierra Greer’s Annie Bot; Martha Wells’ Murderbot series, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, to name just a few. The tendency today to tag anyfictional text featuring an AI character as scifi disguises the extent to which AI is engaging with and potentially hybridizing genres including the romance, fantasy, thriller, and detective novel.

This panel welcomes considerations of the impact of AI characters on genre fiction and specific texts, as well as the implications of AI’s burgeoning role in writing genre fiction. Does the AI character as non-human Other provide a critique of human-centered experiential knowledge? What does it reveal about gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality? How do these hybridized texts conform or push back against genre fiction’s conventions and tropes? Do writing tools like Sudowrite or Murder Ink exert a conservative influence, reinforcing formulaic patterns and stereotypes, or do they encourage creative experimentation?

Please submit an abstract of 250-300 words, along with a brief academic bio, via the SAMLA abstract submission portal.

The 97th annual SAMLA Conference is taking place Thursday, November, 6, through Saturday, November, 8, 2025, at the Wyndham Atlanta Buckhead Hotel & Conference Center in Atlanta, GA.  For more information, see https://southatlanticmla.org/.