Associate Professor Ivan Nazarenko of the Department of History of Russian Literature of the 20th–21st Centuries and Literary Creativity became one of the experts at the "AI in Literature" art school, held at the Tavrida art cluster in Crimea on July 12–18, 2026. The event brought together 194 participants aged 18 to 35 from 54 regions of Russia. The art school was the first educational intensive in Russia where young authors and editors learned to use artificial intelligence in literary creativity and editing of fiction texts. The experts and instructors included IT specialists, game practitioners, writers, and philologists.

Ivan Nazarenko conducted sessions for the participants on the transformation of authorship and creativity in the AI era. The sessions raised questions about how a writer can use neural networks – from the role of an assistant‑editor to a full‑fledged co‑author – as well as how to edit texts generated with the help of neural networks. IT experts, in turn, demonstrated productive techniques for working with AI: fact‑checking, creating datasets of a writer's style, AI training, and others.

"The rapid development of neural networks raises legitimate concerns among creative professionals: won't AI leave them without income? Won't the human voice of a talented artist drown in the flood of 'AI slop'? However, the future has already arrived – neural networks have become part of our lives, and the task of the art school was to show what new opportunities and risks artificial intelligence brings to the arts," notes Ivan Nazarenko. "The participants were given creative freedom: they could use neural networks only for text editing, or as an assistant in creating plots and characters. Still, there seemed to be no authors ready to leave the entire construction of their work to AI: a young writer still values the independent creation of their own artistic world and the personal exploration of reality, taking pleasure in the creative process itself."

During practical workshops, together with writers Anton Mamon, Vladimir Kovalenko, and Lisa Loseva, the participants created and edited science‑fiction stories, which they then presented at the final pitching session. An important requirement was to show exactly how AI was used in the creation of the text.