The New Fabio Is Claude

Last February the novelist Coral Hart began an experiment, using artificial intelligence to churn out romance novels. Over eight months she created 21 pen names and published dozens of books, discovering clear limits: some programs refused to write explicit content, others such as Grok and NovelAI produced graphic sex that lacked emotional nuance, and Claude delivered elegant prose but was “terrible at sexy banter.” “You are going to get hammering hearts and thumping chests and stupid stuff,” she said.

A longtime romance writer who once released 10 to 12 books a year under five pen names, Ms. Hart found that A.I. drastically increased her output. Last year she produced more than 200 novels across subgenres and self-published them on Amazon; collectively they sold around 50,000 copies and earned her six figures.

During a Zoom call, an A.I. program she was running produced a full novel in about 45 minutes.

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