Generative AI – boon or doom for the creative industries? Panel Discussion

Generative AI – boon or doom for the creative industries? 

Chat GPT, Claude, Meta AI and their equivalents raise big questions:  is this book human authored? Is this song written by a machine? Does the advance of generative AI force us to ask what is art, and whether art must be human? In our rapidly changing world, what is the future for literature, music and fine art when software mimics everything a human can do? Does it matter? Is it any good? Who profits and who loses?

 This panel, chaired by Sean lusk, with leading thinkers, Barbora Gáborová,  SJ Groenewegen, and Heather Parry will consider a thought-provoking and stimulating discussion on the future of creativity itself. 

Local author Sean Lusk’s most recent novel, A Woman of Opinion won the 2025 Saltire Prize for fiction. His new novel, No Place for Us, set in Europe and the Caribbean on the eve of World War Two, will be published by Doubleday in February 2027. 

Barbora Gáborová is a Highlands-based marketing specialist, podcaster and filmmaker. An alumna of  the University of Cambridge, she is former editor  of The Nairnshire Community Newspaper, and host of the State of Flow podcast. 

SJ Groenewegen is an Aussie-born author of speculative fiction, whose work includes The Disinformation War (2023), and a variety of Doctor Who-related novels, short stories and criticism. SJ appears often as a panellist at science fiction conventions, and has presented on disinformation and info-tech at various events. For 20 years, SJ worked as a strategic intelligence analyst in criminal justice. 

Heather Parry is a Glasgow-based author of fiction and non-fiction. Her books have been longlisted for the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year Award, the Polari First Book Prize and the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing. In 2025 The Skinny named her as one of the 'Next Generation of Scottish Writers'.