Texts without authors: ascribing literary meaning in the case of AI

Abstract

ABSTRACT With the increasing popularity of large language models, there has been an increase in the number of AI-generated literary works. In the absence of clear authors, and assuming such works have meaning, there lies a puzzle in determining who or what fixes the meaning of such texts. I give an overview of six leading theories for ascribing meaning to literary works. These are Extreme Actual Intentionalism, Modest Actual Intentionalism (1 and 2), Conventionalism, Actual Author Hypothetical Intentionalism, and Postulated Author Hypothetical Intentionalism. I argue that only Conventionalism and Postulated Author Hypothetical Intentionalism show any promise of adjudicating how we ought to ascribe meaning in the case of AI-generated texts, and further that Postulated Author Hypothetical Intentionalism is the stronger of the two views.

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