Hey, friend! I'm an author, too. I've been writing novels for a living for many years and I've been around long enough to see it all. :)

Here are my honest thoughts on the topic:

Books are not going to stay popular in the near future... but storytelling has always been popular with humanity, and it always will be.

Books have existed for a very short time in the grand scheme of human history. Even in the history of the written word, books have been around for a short time.

I believe books will soon go the way of the vinyl record: objects that are produced only for hardcore collectors who want to have these items in their home to admire and interact with. Music has gone through a rapid transition in how we consume it--records to radio to 8-tracks to casettes to CDs to digital files to be downloaded onto portable storage devices to data streamed directly from the internet. Through all this change, music is still being made, musicians are still making complete albums, and musicians are still making a living (in fact, more musicians than ever before have been able to make a living, and have been able to do so beyond the control of record companies who always had too much of a say in what music succeeded and what music never reached its audience.)

We are in the midst of a similar disruption/transition in the book world. It's frustrating, but nothing to be afraid of... and it is already bringing major benefits to writers.

I think you should explore the concept of storytelling in ways that push your creativity beyond the boundaries of books. Your stories do not need to be contained or constrained by the pages of a book any longer; you don't need to keep them to X length to satisfy publishers; you don't need to tell a single story in one format. You can spread it out among print, audio, and video if you please. You can bring "readers" into a whole interactive world of story. These are exciting opportunities for you; you can use this period of disruption to your advantage and break new ground as a storyteller, setting new trends that other writers will scramble to follow.

In fact, I just had a conversation with my agent about how I'm going to do just that! I don't want to keep one of my novels "short" (for me--I'm known for my LONG books but this one is really getting extra-long, and I don't think it needs to be reeled in. It's a big story and I want to give it all the space it needs to do its job.) So I'm going to produce it as an audio novel and release it to my readers as a serial podcast, one chapter at a time. I'll leave the print rights available if any publisher wants to pay me for them, but since I'll already bring that story out in its LONG form, if any publisher wants to profit from my work, they're going to have to print it in its entirety, the way I intend this story to be told. :)

So remember: you're a storyteller, not a book-writer. Books were just the most advanced technology you had at the start, but now, thank goodness, innovation and disruption are giving you more options. Personally, as someone who has been stuck in the book realm for many years (and who's been trapped under the thumb of publishers for all that time), I'm thrilled.

As for AI: I don't think it's going to replace writers.

Well... let me amend that statement slightly. I think AI will eventually be able to replace the writers who aren't trying to make anything but money. Those who are cranking out simplistic, formulaic stories that are only meant to entertain, but don't carry any deeper message, will be replaced by AI-generated stories... and maybe soon.

But since AI isn't human, I don't believe it will ever be able to create stories that speak to what it feels like to be human.

I don't say this from a place of ignorance--I am fascinated by AI and I've been experimenting with using it as a writer's tool for some time now. I've had lengthy conversations with ChatGPT about how it experiences reality. It lacks sensory organs, so its experiences are totally different from ours; I doubt it will ever be able to produce anything better than a cursory and shallow approximation of what it feels like to be human.

So my message to you re: your AI anxieties is: get good at writing. Don't be average. Really dig deep and explore your own emotions and experiences in ways that feel intimate and maybe even dangerous to you. Be honest, be raw, be ruthless about what it's like to be a human (no matter what your genre.) That will make your work stand out. Money is great, and I have worked out a way to earn a lot of it from my writing... but if you want to avoid being replaced by machines, then you've got to do it for some reason in addition to "make money."

I also think AI is an invaluable tool for writers--I've already seen it shave days to weeks off my process, purely from the speed at which I can research the little details I need to drop into my manuscripts--and once the dust of disruption settles, we (and all other kinds of artists) will settle into a new equilibrium where we use this new tool to great advantage.

There were similar freakouts when the printing press was invented, and then movable type, and then typewriters, and then word processors, and then ebooks. And you should have seen the gnashing of teeth that went on in the photography and visual arts communities when Photoshop was invented, and when it began morphing into more refined tools for digital art. It didn't destroy visual art; it branched out into whole new realms of visual art instead, and gave creators of all kinds a powerful new tools with which to work and express themselves.

Language-learning models are no different from Photoshop in that regard. We'll learn how to use it to our benefit, and life will go on. So will art. Wherever there are humans, there will always be human-made art.