Each week seems to bring a new twist in the story of creative expression and intellectual property in the age of AI.

From the “human written” stickers some authors are now placing on their novels, to the debated AI-generated book covers in the Ockham NZ Book Awards, to the landmark NZ$2.6 billion settlement over the illegal downloading of books by the AI company Anthropic, the speed and scale of generative AI’s impact on creators and publishers is unprecedented.

Claire Mabey meets Karen Hao, author of the New York Times bestseller Empire of AI; leading New Zealand author Catherine Chidgey, whose work was among that scraped by Anthropic; and Sam Irvine of Copyright Licensing New Zealand to take stock of where the AI-author relationship stands today, and how writers and readers might navigate the evershifting terrain ahead.