Authors push back against Reese Witherspoon's AI advocacy
Reese Witherspoon told her social media followers Wednesday that women need to learn AI or risk falling behind. The actor and producer, who built her brand championing women's voices through her book club and production company, posted a video to Instagram calling for women to adopt the technology at higher rates.
"The AI revolution has begun, and I need to learn as much as I possibly can about AI and share it with all of you," Witherspoon wrote. She noted that women hold jobs three times more likely to be automated by AI, yet use the technology 25 percent less than men.
The literary community responded swiftly with criticism.
Bestselling author Roxane Gay posted on Threads: "Oh Reese. Absolutely not."
Screenwriter Charlene Bagcal called the post "a scripted ad" and said it was "genuinely infuriating." She wrote: "Notice how AI's biggest defenders are the ones cashing checks from it. AI isn't inevitable. Technology follows society. If people stop using it, it dies. We still have agency."
Authors raised specific concerns about AI training on their work without consent. Jennifer Wright, author of "Get Well Soon," said: "AI plagiarized all my books. It seems unlikely that I'll be 'left behind' if I don't use it, given that it's trained on work I did years ago."
Literary agent Eric Smith, who champions authors through his work, said the post was disappointing given Witherspoon's track record supporting writers.
Writer Sophia Benoit flagged the framing itself. She wrote: "There's something particularly insidious about seeing that women - the group you have built your brand on - have not adopted something and instead of assuming it's out of wisdom, infantalizing them with 'we're falling behind.'"
Witherspoon's video featured her conducting an informal poll at a book club, where she asked 10 women about their AI use. Only three said they used it, and only one felt confident doing so.
This isn't Witherspoon's first venture into emerging technology promotion. In 2021, her company Hello Sunshine partnered with World of Women, an NFT collective. She faced similar backlash after tweeting that "every person will have a parallel digital identity" and asking followers if they were "planning for this."
Witherspoon's representatives have not responded to requests for comment.
Writers concerned about AI's impact on their work may find value in understanding how the technology functions. Learning about generative AI and large language models can clarify how AI systems are trained and what they can and cannot do. For those in the writing profession specifically, AI resources designed for writers address both opportunities and risks in the field.
Your membership also unlocks:
