AI is increasingly encroaching on romantic literary composition thanks to its creativity and high frequency response

Experts say that AI is increasingly encroaching on romantic literature because of its high creative ability and response to the frequency of writing.

On August 30, Jeff O'Neal - co-founder of the literary website Book Riot - commented on the future of the creative writing industry in the context of AI increasingly replacing humans "holding the pen". In it, he mentioned the case of Coral Hart, a South African female writer specializing in writing adult love stories. This author has published more than 200 novels with the help of AI in 2025. According to the New York Times, she once used artificial intelligence to create a complete manuscript in about 45 minutes.

O'Neal sees this as an example of AI being introduced into the production of literary books on a large scale, especially in the romance series. Experts say it's not surprising that the first exposé of a professional writer using AI to mass-produce books came from the "world of romantic literature". According to him, the problem does not lie in the aspect of morality, art or anything else, but only concerns two factors that have long promoted this genre of writing: innovation and frequency of writing.

Compared to most other genres, romance literature is said to be leading many trends for decades such as: Self-publishing, fanfic (stories created by fans about characters available in novels and movies) and e-books. Another advantage of this series is that the works are created more often and faster.

From there, he assessed that generative AI lies at the intersection of the above characteristics. In terms of market relevance, this seems to be the book line that has the potential to apply serious AI experiments on a large scale. According to O'Neal, the fact that writer Coral Hart used artificial intelligence to compose writing in a short time and opened a class to teach writing using AI shows that his point of view is correct.

Experts also say that today it is difficult to determine what is a work written with AI, especially for genres with motifs and formulas such as romance stories. He posed the question: Can large language models (LLM, Large Language Model) write books in any field, replacing content written by humans. "The answer increasingly appears to be yes," O'Neal replied.

In 2025, the romance book genre in the US continues to grow while artificial intelligence begins to penetrate the creative process. According to an announcement by market research company Circana in June 2025, 51 million copies of this genre were sold in 12 months. About 26% of buyers said they read more of the genre "than they did a year ago."

Helen Taylor - emeritus professor of English literature at the University of Exeter - once wrote on Literary Hub (excerpted from the book Why Women Read Fiction: The Stories of Our Lives) that "modern romantic literature puts women at the center of the story". According to her, this genre satisfies readers' deepest desires for love and committed relationships, and speaks strongly to readers about their dreams and fantasies.

The development of genres also contributes to the expansion of the readership group. According to American writer and photographer Kirk McElhearn, the main character is gradually changed to be closer to real life. "The female lead is becoming increasingly strong, independent, and proactive in pursuing her desires," he commented on the Literature & Latte blog. McElhearn thinks the broader level of representation means more people can find similarities with the characters they're reading about.

The way readers find and choose stories has also changed. According to the Guardian, motifs with specific names such as enemies-to-lovers (from confrontation to love), fake dating (pretending to date) appear more often in book introductions and promotional activities. The change in perspective helps the genre gain more attention, thereby bringing the work to many new readers.

Jeff O'Neal's review appears in the context of academics and writers increasingly expressing their opinions on the situation of AI encroaching on the field of creative writing. In August, Villanova University (USA) published a study showing that readers rated some short stories created by ChatGPT 4.0 as good and as easy to read as human works. Previously, the publishing industry was caught up in many scandals, from manuscripts suspected of using AI, literary contest entries having to review the creative process, to concerns about copyright and the ability to determine which text was written by a human.