Joe Hill on AI: ‘It’s just part of the general rot’

Joe Hill is uneasy about the future.

The author’s feelings of horror about technology, and especially AI, are evident in both of his novels. king sorrow And his frequent posts on threads.

Hill’s new book tells a decade-long story in which six friends enter into a terrifying pact with a dragon. This doesn’t sound like the kind of novel that would be fascinated by technology, but mentions of social media and tech oligarchs – including several name-checking for Elon Musk – are scattered throughout.

Mashable sat down with Hill to ask him about his uneasy relationship with technology and why AI is a particular concern for him.

Hill says, “It’s part of the general rot in many ways. There are tech companies run by these multi-billionaires who are richer than the countries. People like Elon Musk.” “None of these people really have to answer to the laws, because when you’re that rich you buy new laws if you don’t like the way things are turning out. Or at least that’s what the cynical part of me believes. There’s a slightly more optimistic part of me that thinks they could still get in trouble.

“But these guys, they don’t care what they break. They release crappy, reckless, addictive tech products one after another all over the world and, you know, as long as it makes them money, they don’t really care about the consequences.”

Speaking specifically about artificial intelligence, Hill criticizes OpenAI’s Sora app, launched in 2024, which can generate AI videos based on text prompts – and its second, 2025 version, Sora 2, which have led to the proliferation of AI videos shared on social media.

“OpenAI has released a video tool, a video creation tool, that will obviously lead to a sea of ​​misinformation in every election,” Hill says. “You know, videos of people saying things they didn’t say and doing things they didn’t do, and you know, Sam Altman and these guys shrug and say, people will get used to it. I mean, what kind of attitude is that?”

The creative industries have had a tense relationship with AI in recent years. Streamers and studios have come under criticism for using AI instead of paying human workers, while writers – including big names like George RR Martin – are currently suing OpenAI for copyright infringement. ,Disclosure: Mashable’s parent company Ziff Davis filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April, alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI system.) Animation companies including Studio Ghibli and video game publishers including Square Enix have demanded OpenAI stop training Sora 2 on their content.

Hill’s father, famed horror author Stephen King, wrote an essay atlantic In which he talked about his own “terrible fascination” at the possibility of fiction writing by AI. However, that was published two years earlier, and Hill feels that her father’s views have changed since then.

Hill says, “I don’t think they realized at the time that they had stolen 80 of their titles, which they had actually downloaded from pirate sites like some thief. And I think that was probably a bit of a shock to them.” “You know, all this software is built on towers of theft, huge towers of theft, to say nothing of the tremendous environmental waste.”

Hill sees AI in its current form as a kind of autocomplete – something that spits out what it thinks is most likely to follow the sentence. This worries him about upcoming artists, but he doesn’t believe it will replace real art.

“I think there will always be a market for humans to express themselves to other humans through their hard-earned art,” he says. “Not by typing the prompt.”

king sorrow Now available at bookstores and online retailers.