Theme: Joint Human–AI Systems (TDAI Speaker Series)
Title: AI, Authors, and Markets: Human-Centered Evidence for Copyright and Creative Labor
Speaker: Tuhin Chakrabarty, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, Stony Brook University (SUNY)
Date & Time: Friday, February 27, 2026 · 4:00 PM (ET)
Location: Pomerene Hall Room 350 (Project Zone)
Food: Light refreshments provided
Host: Sachin Kumar (he/him), Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University
Website: https://shocheen.com
Event Overview
The use of copyrighted books to train AI models has sparked widespread legal disputes, with authors raising concerns about stylistic imitation and market harm. Yet there is limited empirical evidence on whether AI systems can truly replicate high-quality literary writing in an author’s voice—and how readers perceive that output.
In this talk, Dr. Tuhin Chakrabarty will present results from a preregistered study comparing MFA-trained writers with frontier AI models (ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini) tasked with emulating the styles of 50 award-winning authors. Based on blind evaluations by 527 readers, the study finds that human writing is strongly preferred when AI is prompted without fine-tuning. However, when models are fine-tuned on an author’s complete works, reader preferences shift markedly toward AI-generated text.
The talk will also examine evidence from self-published book markets, where AI-generated works are already receiving positive reviews, suggesting emerging market impacts. These findings have direct implications for copyright law, fair use doctrine, and disclosure requirements in creative labor markets.
About the Speaker
Tuhin Chakrabarty is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stony Brook University. He earned his PhD from Columbia University and conducts interdisciplinary research in AI, natural language processing, and human–AI interaction.
His work has been featured in MIT Technology Review, Bloomberg, and The Washington Post, and he has received awards at ACM CHI and ICML. His recent research on generative AI and fair use has been cited in ongoing U.S. copyright litigation and covered by The New Yorker and Literary Hub.