The narrow emphasis on autobiographical content we see today in art is really quite strange. You'll go on Reddit or Twitter and you'll see people insisting that poetry exists only to convey autobiographical content, and so good AI poetry is definitionally impossible. And yet, nothing could be more ahistorical: almost all of the most beloved art throughout history, especially fictional, and especially poetry, lyrics, and novels, is not eyewitness, nor did people find that a flaw or even worth remarking on. How many of Shakespeare's plays are autobiographical? (Is _Romeo and Juliet_ a bad play because Shakespeare did not in fact know anyone in a lover's suicide pact, and simply stole the plot wholesale from a poem? A translated one, at that!) Did Homer ever visit Troy? Did Murasaki Shikibu know a Prince Genji? Did Vince Gilligan have a sideline as a meth cook somewhere in New York during film school before going to Hollywood? (How many Christians are upset that it is, say, the 'Gospel according to Mark', instead of the 'Gospel by Mark'?)

It's amusing how people demand that their fiction be nonfiction. Here's an example I saw the other day, looking up that song which is everywhere, even at the end of random Japanese TV series, because it's so beloved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_(Earth,_Wind_%26_Fir...

> Although several theories about the significance of the date have been suggested, the songwriter Maurice White claimed he simply chose the 21st due to how it sounded when sung.[10] Allee Willis adding : "We went through all the dates: 'Do you remember the first, the second, the third, the fourth ... ' and the one that just felt the best was the 21st," Willis explains. "I constantly have people coming up to me and they get so excited to know what the significance was. And there is no significance beyond it just sang better than any of the other dates. So ... sorry!".[11]

Imagine that: writing a fictional song lyric because it... sounded good, rather than because something happened. (Apparently people can't imagine that, and imagine it had to have not been imagined.)