Generative AI gives us a parody of Eliot’s creative process. Tradition is replaced by a vast statistical model constructed of digital representations of the works of the past. Individual talent is replaced by a prediction function that mindlessly extracts patterns of data from the model and serves them up in the form of text, image, or sound. “Poetry,” Eliot wrote, “is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.” He immediately added a crucial clarification: “Of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.” from How Big Tech killed literary culture