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It turns out AI-generated “literary” slop existed long before there was any real electronic AI around to even generate it—the pre-Chat GPT-era artificial intelligence in question belonging to black and brown people.
In 2005, the prestigious British literary magazine Granta ran an essay by a black Kenyan author with the only seemingly AI-generated name Binyavanga Wainaina. Called How To Write About Africa, it did not consist simply of the single word “DON’T!” but was a long and sarcastic list of literary clichés culled straight from prize-winning pieces about the continent which, in Wainaina’s view, did not deserve to have won any prizes at all. (more…)











