Biography
Prof. Salim Kerboua is a Professor of American and Cultural Studies at the Department of English Language and Literature, Mohamed Khider University of Biskra. He is affiliated with the ISILC Laboratory, where his academic work is situated within the fields of American studies, cultural studies, and English-language scholarship.
Conference contributions 2
RETELLING ALGERIA BY ALGORITHM:
Generative AI, folktales, and the flattening of oral heritage
Generative AI is increasingly becoming a mediator through which cultural narratives are retold, adapted, and circulated, raising questions about how culturally specific forms of meaning survive algorithmic reconstruction. This study examines AI-generated retellings of three Algerian folktales representing distinct narrative traditions: Lalla Loundja, Bechkerker et l'Ogre, and Uccen d Insi. The tales are approached as culturally embedded narratives whose distinctive meanings emerge through different configurations of female agency, grotesque survival, animal symbolism, and pragmatic morality. Using qualitative comparative textual analysis, documented versions of the three tales are compared with retellings generated by ChatGPT through a deliberately minimal prompting protocol. The analysis examines transformations in narrative structure, character agency, moral logic, humor, symbolism, cultural attribution, and oral storytelling features. The findings reveal four recurring forms of transformation: narrative domestication, in which culturally specific conflicts are reshaped according to familiar narrative conventions; narrative compression, in which episodic and cumulative oral structures are substantially reduced; narrative substitution, in which a documented tale is replaced by a substantially different narrative; and cultural misattribution, in which regional identity is inaccurately assigned. Taken together, these transformations suggest that generative AI tends to privilege familiar plot structures, coherent moral frameworks, and accessible narrative conventions over culturally specific forms of storytelling. The study argues that AI-generated retellings constitute acts of cultural mediation rather than neutral reproduction, contributing to a process of algorithmic narrative normalization through which underrepresented oral traditions may be reshaped as they enter digital circulation.
THE AUTHOR IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:
Reconsidering Barthes' "death of the author
The rapid emergence of generative artificial intelligence has reignited debates surrounding authorship, creativity, and textual production in contemporary literary studies. This paper revisits Roland Barthes' seminal essay The Death of the Author (1967) in light of AI-generated texts, examining whether artificial intelligence confirms, challenges, or transforms Barthes' conception of authorship. Barthes argued that the meaning of a text should not be determined by the intentions or identity of its author but by the active role of the reader in interpretation. The rise of AI writing systems complicates traditional notions of authorship by introducing new agents into the creative process, including algorithms, developers, training datasets, and users who provide prompts. Drawing on Barthes' theory alongside contemporary discussions of digital authorship, this study explores how AI-generated literature destabilizes the idea of a singular author and reconfigures the relationship between writer, text, and reader. Through a theoretical and critical analysis, the paper argues that while generative AI appears to reinforce Barthes' claim that the author is no longer the sole source of meaning, it also reveals new forms of distributed and collaborative authorship. Ultimately, the study demonstrates that the age of artificial intelligence does not signal the disappearance of the author but rather a transformation of authorship itself, raising important questions about creativity, originality, and literary interpretation in the digital era.