Reading Eryk Salvaggio’s 12 Jan 2025 post “Data Prior to Language: If the author is dead, why isn’t the LLM?” I was immediately drawn into this compelling exploration of the current context of synthetic meaning making with what I like to call ✨ “sparkling intelligence” ✨ in relation to the ideas surrounding Roland Barthes’ influential 1967 essay “The Death of the Author”. Reading Eryk’s post, I was immediately reminded of a few hasty notes I had made a while back to explore the same ideas, but in the context of a related — although perhaps not quite as famous — work: Michel Foucault’s response to Barthes’ essay in his 1969 lecture “What Is an Author?”
In my perhaps overly simplistic reading of these two texts, while Barthes’ essay worked to complicate thinking about the process of meaning making, shifting its site — as Eryk rightly emphasizes — from the author to the reader, Foucault takes the same move a step further to discuss how the “function” of the author has shifted multiple times throughout history. From authors first being individuated in Europe during a Christian era as a mechanism to assign heretical blame for ideas, to later being adapted in a modern, capitalist era to become a mechanism to realize property value in works. <cough> copyright <cough> And we still seem to be grappling with this phase now as AI possibly disrupts the previously dominant author “function” and — like Barthes — we might do well to ask how meaning making might also be shifting.
And so the question is not so much “what is an author?,” but “what is an author right now?” And this is a question that seems very good to ask in an age when generative ✨ “sparking intelligence” ✨ is able to perform what might be some sort of author function tirelessly, on nearly any subject.
Foucault asks some basic questions that could guide our inquiry into what an author is right now:
- “What are the modes of existence of this discourse?”
- “Where does it come from; how is it circulated; who controls it?”
- “What placements are determined for possible subjects?”
- “Who can fulfill these diverse functions of the subject?”
And I don’t already have all the answers, but I am ready to suggest some possible lines of inquiry.
FIrst, there is the widely circulating idea that AI helps make everyone an author, dramatically democratizing the author “function” so that the line between authors and non-authors is blurred. Everyone is an author! What happens to meaning in a world where there is no longer the idea of selective authority, or isolated genius, etc, associated with the act of authorship? And is it true that “everyone” will become an author with AI? Or will it only be those with the means and opportunity to procure AI services?
Second, there is the idea of the introduction of a new subject at play: AI itself as an author. The machine speaks! Yes, AI is trained on the collective “wisdom” of humanity, but it transforms that cultural heritage into new works heretofore unseen. And the idea is entertained that AI may itself have already or may soon become conscious, so a new subject that is not just producing, but is also thinking, and maybe feeling?
Third, in this context where AI can produce seemingly infinite works, there is the idea that AI is flooding the infosphere with slop, thus perhaps generating new value for verifiable human authorship. We may be on the cusp of an era when there are at least two very differently valued types of works: the cheap and plentiful outputs of AI, and the precious “organic” outputs of real human authors — perhaps delivered live to guarantee their origin and to only the select few who can afford them.
Fourth, I want to follow the money a little bit. If the previously dominant economic regime surrounding authorship involved “big publishing” distilling the lion’s share of revenue from authored works, what happens to that regime in a world with AI, and where is the money pooling now? Clearly one answer is that some very large corporate entities have put the infrastructure in place to make a lot of money by supporting the first scenario above — making everyone an author — thanks to more and more people paying a monthly subscription to a specific AI model that helps them produce works. You can already see the tension brewing between the dominant and emerging big business regimes as they work out licensing deals, fight intellectual property battles in the courts, and deal with the demands of their striking human creative workers. Where will the author “function” operate at the outcome of these battles? Foucault’s questions about the discourse of the author function like “Where does it come from; how is it circulated; who controls it?” seem especially important here. Take a modern author like Taylor Swift or Beyoncé. Human. Megaauthor. Meanwhile, AI superstar Lu do Magalu has millions of followers on Instagram. Do these authors stay distinct or start to merge? Enter Grimes.
Fifth, we are already seeing AI empower a kind of work/reading where every reader has an entirely singular experience — not because they are just bringing their unique life and psychology to their reading of a common text, as Barthes may have been thinking about — but because they are each actually experiencing entirely different texts, shaped by the work adapting itself to each individual in its audience and each audience member prompting changes in the work. In this scenario, the work takes on a kind of subject position, but also in a dance with each reader’s subjectivity.
There are likely other lines of inquiry to follow too in this moment where it probably makes sense to think of the author less as a mortal spirit that might die, and more like a function that is taking in new inputs, producing new outputs, and perhaps also becoming something different too.
What is your author function?