A century ago, French writer and poet André Breton penned his “Manifesto of Surrealism,” which launched an art movement known for creating bizarre hybrids of words and images. These juxtapositions, often generated…
Tag: Writing
Newsrooms are experimenting with generative AI, warts and all
The journalism industry has been under immense economic pressure over the past two decades, so it makes sense that journalists have started experimenting with generative AI to boost their productivity. An Associated…
Palestinian writers have long explored the horrors of amputation
Words fail as 2,000-pound bombs shred lives and limbs. The sheer number of children killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza is devastating – at least 13,000 children in the first six months…
Indian protesters pull from poetic tradition to resist Modi’s Hindu nationalism
India’s government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, implemented the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, or CAA, in March 2024. Opponents of the law – which fast-tracks citizenship for undocumented, non-Muslim migrants from…
Centuries after Christine de Pizan wrote a book railing against misogyny, Taylor Swift is building her own ‘City of Ladies’
In her work, Taylor Swift has taken inspiration from women of the past, including actress Clara Bow, socialite Rebekah Harkness and her grandmother Marjorie Finlay, who was an opera singer. But sometimes…
What’s behind the astonishing rise in LGBTQ+ romance literature?
CC BY-SA A major transformation is underway in Romancelandia. Once upon a time, romance novels from major U.S. publishers featured only heterosexual couples. Today, the five biggest publishers regularly release same-sex love…
The folly of making art with text-to-image generative AI
Making art using artificial intelligence isn’t new. It’s as old as AI itself. What’s new is that a wave of tools now let most people generate images by entering a text prompt….
Who created the alphabet? A historian describes the millennia-long story of the ABCs
Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com. Who created the alphabet and decided its…
The exploitation of Hollywood’s writers is just another symptom of digital feudalism
The current Hollywood writers strike has drawn international attention to the plight of TV and film writers in the streaming era. Much has been made of television’s golden age, during which streaming…
AI scores in the top percentile of creative thinking
Of all the forms of human intellect that one might expect artificial intelligence to emulate, few people would likely place creativity at the top of their list. Creativity is wonderfully mysterious –…