UCLA's AI-Based Literature Class Ridiculed for Incomprehensible AI-Generated Textbook

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Dark Ages

UCLA has announced that, starting in 2026, it will offer a comparative literature course on medieval and Renaissance-era writing that will make heavy use of AI-generated materials.

​Officially described as a “survey of literature from the Middle Ages to the 17th Century,” the AI-generated content will not be used merely as occasional supplements. Instead, it will form the foundation of the entire class, including an AI-generated textbook, AI-generated assignments, and AI-generated resources for teaching assistants.

The reaction from writers and academics has been one of outrage, but also mockery. That’s because the cover of the course’s AI-generated textbook is total gibberish. Setting aside the pseudo-illuminated-manuscript-style visuals that appear throughout, the text itself is absolute nonsense.

“Of Nerniacular Latin To An Evoolitun On Nance Langusages,” reads the prominently placed text on the textbook cover.

Closed Loop

​This episode serves as an almost too-on-the-nose metaphor for the well-documented shortcomings of generative AI. AI models can frequently get the facts wrong—if they are not simply inventing them—a phenomenon the industry euphemistically calls “hallucinations” but is more accurately described as bullshitting. They can also distort original sources by inaccurately reproducing their content.

In this case, the AI tool used to create the course materials was Kudu, a platform for creating digital textbooks. Kudu was developed by another UCLA professor, which may explain the somewhat forced plug.

According to course professor Zrinka Stahuljak, she created the textbook and assignments by supplying her own course notes from previous versions of the class to the AI tool. The system was deliberately restricted from pulling from any outside sources, ostensibly making its output more reliable. This approach is also intended to discourage students from using other AIs to cheat.

“It will only respond based on course content,” Stahuljak said. “So it’s there to help our students, but it also reduces the risk of them using ChatGPT to generate their homework assignments.”

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Also read: Startup Mocked for Charging $5,000 to “Edit” Book Manuscripts Using AI

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Desertion of Duty

​The other major advantage, Stahuljak argues, is that using AI saves professors like her a significant amount of time.

“Normally, I would spend lectures contextualizing the material and using visuals to demonstrate the content,” Stahuljak said in the statement. “But now all of that is in the textbook we generated, and I can actually work with students to read the primary sources and walk them through what it means to analyze and think critically.”

So, instead of receiving hours of direct instruction from their professor on essential background for the primary sources they will be reading, students will receive a low-quality AI summary? And this is supposed to be an improvement?

Not according to Stahuljak’s peers.

“If you do this you should have your doctorate revoked and be thrown into the stocks at the center of the main university quad,” tweeted Dan Walden, a philologist and assistant professor at The University of Tulsa. “This is abandonment of professional responsibility to a degree that would be comical if it weren’t so self-serious.”

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