Margaret Atwood slams AI, says ‘it’s garbage in, garbage out’

Acclaimed Canadian author Margaret Atwood has described artificial intelligence as “garbage in, garbage out,” recalling that the only time she used an AI chatbot, it provided her with an incorrect answer.

Speaking at the inaugural Babell Literary and Cultural Festival in Porto, Portugal, Atwood said she turned to Anthropic’s Claude AI to learn the ending of the British detective series Father Brown. However, the chatbot gave her the wrong answer because it had relied on television reviews that intentionally avoided spoilers.

Atwood said the experience highlighted the limitations of large language models, arguing they cannot always be trusted without human verification. “It didn’t know it was lying because it’s not a human being,” she said, adding that AI systems are only as reliable as the information they are trained on. She also warned that while people may use AI to make tasks easier, its outputs must always be checked because mistakes are common.

The discussion also touched on censorship, with Atwood joking that book bans often boost sales. Her novel The Handmaid’s Tale was among the most-banned books in U.S. school districts last year.

While praising Canada’s commitment to free speech, Atwood voiced concern over what she described as attempts to suppress political dissent in the United States and warned against growing media consolidation by wealthy political supporters. She noted, however, that independent digital media outlets are emerging as a counterbalance. Ending the session with humour, Atwood refused to name her favourite among her own books, saying the others “would get their revenge.” (ANI)

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