Provenance Anxiety: Death of the Author in the Age of Large Language Models
David M. Berry Generated on Google Gemini Dec 2025: Prompt: "A high-quality, realistic, and colorful 3D infographic diagram illustrating the 'Jagged Frontier' of AI capabilities. The image shows a progression from left to right using distinct shapes". In 1950, it may have been possible to choose other paths. In the third decade of the new millennium, however, our reliance on cognitive assemblages and computational media has progressed so far that there is no going back N. Katherine Hayles, 2025. Though the sway of the Author remains powerful... it goes without saying that certain writers have long since attempted to loosen it Roland Barthes, 1977. "What difference does it make who is speaking?" Michel Foucault, 1979. Academics are currently debating what is being called the " provenance problem " in regard to Large Language Models (LLMs) (see Earp et al 2025). In these discussions there seems to be an underlying anxiety that the...
