Creative writing has long been considered a uniquely human endeavor, requiring voice and style that machines could not replicate. This assumption is challenged by Generative AI that can emulate thousands of author styles in seconds with negligible marginal labor. To understand this better, we conducted a behavioral experiment where 28 MFA writers (experts) competed against three LLMs in emulating 50 critically acclaimed authors. Based on blind pairwise comparisons by 28 expert judges and 131 lay judges, we find that experts preferred human writing in 82.7% of cases under the in-context prompting condition but this reversed to 62% preference for AI after fine-tuning on authors' complete works. Lay judges, however, consistently preferred AI writing. Debrief interviews with expert writers revealed that their preference for AI writing triggered an identity crisis, eroding aesthetic confidence and questioning what constitutes "good writing." These findings challenge discourse about AI's creative limitations and raise fundamental questions about the future of creative labor.

翻译：长久以来，创意写作一直被视为人类独有的活动，需要机器无法复制的文风与风格。这一假设正受到生成式人工智能的挑战——它能在数秒内以可忽略的边际劳动模仿数千种作家风格。为深入探究此现象，我们设计了一项行为实验：28位艺术硕士作家（专家）与三个大语言模型在模仿50位广受好评的作家风格方面展开竞争。基于28位专家评委和131位非专业评委的双盲配对比较，我们发现：在上下文提示条件下，专家评委在82.7%的案例中更偏好人类写作；但在对作家完整作品进行微调后，该偏好发生逆转，62%的案例更倾向于AI写作。然而，非专业评委始终更青睐AI写作。对专家作家的深度访谈显示，他们对AI写作的偏好引发了身份认同危机，既削弱了审美自信，也促使他们重新审视"优质写作"的本质内涵。这些发现挑战了关于AI创造力局限性的传统论述，并对创意劳动的未来提出了根本性质疑。