At the 2025 Hay Festival, Salman Rushdie revealed that he prefers to ignore the existence of artificial intelligence and confessed he has “never experimented” with it. He thinks writers remain secure from AI—for now—until it can produce truly humorous content.
The 77-year-old novelist, born in India and holding British-American citizenship, is currently promoting his latest short story collection, The Eleventh Hour. He believes the greatest limitation of AI is its failure to create authentic humor.
“It has no sense of humour – you don’t want to hear a joke told by ChatGPT. If there’s a moment when there’s a funny book written by ChatGPT I think we’re screwed,” the author remarked.
Rushdie made his remarks on AI during his first significant live event in the UK following a serious stabbing incident that occurred while he was speaking on stage in the United States.
This photo seems to have vanished from my tweets. Here it is again, just for the record. pic.twitter.com/nqt34gIuRW
— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) February 7, 2023
At the Chautauqua Institution in New York, Rushdie was attacked and stabbed approximately 12 times when an assailant rushed the stage. The assault resulted in the loss of vision in one eye, an ordeal Rushdie detailed in his 2024 book Knife. Last month, 27-year-old Hadi Matar was convicted and given a 25-year prison sentence for the repeated stabbings.
Since the release of his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, which sparked widespread outrage due to its portrayal of the prophet Muhammad, Rushdie has faced ongoing threats to his safety.
AI vs Authors:
In 2023, over 8,500 writers united to sign an open letter urging technology firms to cease using their works for training artificial intelligence systems.
“These technologies mimic and regurgitate our language, stories, style, and ideas. Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry provide the ‘food’ for AI systems, endless meals for which there has been no bill,” they wrote in the letter.
