Autoriais

Autoriais is a term used in digital humanities and literary theory to describe a mode of authorship in which creative production emerges from a distributed network of contributors, including human authors, editors, readers, and automated systems. The term blends the root auctor (Latin for 'author') with a pluralizing suffix to signal relations of agency rather than a single origin.

Origin and usage: While not widely standardized, autoriais gained usage in scholarly discussions during the 2010s as AI tools, crowdwriting platforms, and collaborative ecosystems expanded who could claim authorship and how credit is allocated. In scholarly writing, the concept helps examine processes such as version histories, provenance metadata, and the social embeddedness of texts.

Definition: Autoriais refers to the attribution of creative force and responsibility across participants in a work. It foregrounds process, collaboration networks, and the dynamic negotiation of credit, often using artifacts like edit histories or contribution logs to map authorship.

Applications: In fiction, autoriais can describe ensemble novels or transmedia projects where humans and algorithms co-create narrative elements. In online communities, it analyzes how edits by multiple users contribute to a single article or story. In music and game design, it accounts for contributions from composers, programmers, and AI-assisted tools.

Criticism: Some scholars worry that autoriais complicates legal concepts of copyright and moral rights, while others see it as a more accurate representation of contemporary creative practice. Critics also caution that the term could obscure individual accountability or power dynamics within collaborative projects.

See also: authorship, collaboration, open source culture, AI-generated content, attribution.