I'd actually push back on the "average person" framing — a lot of people online can't even produce a grammatically coherent sentence, so the bar there is lower than it sounds.
That said, I do agree LLMs can grasp the surface-level "style" of a famous author fairly quickly. But for writers whose real strength lies in observation and selection of detail — think Peter Hessler, Robert Macfarlane, John McPhee, and others in that vein — I don't think LLMs can replace that. That kind of writing depends on a way of seeing, not just a way of saying.
Yeah and it's degraded significantly since then. Older llms were still mostly language focused and had a lot of latent knowledge about things like writing styles. Now it's crowded out in favor of agenetic work, programming etc.
Ask the LLM to describe that author's style. Then start a new chat and tell it what you want it to write, giving it the author's style as a guide but without mentioning the author. While I've never used it for this particular purpose, I've used variations of this technique to get around other blocks quite well.
Another one of those interventions that'll just put US labs at a disadvantage. The public at large doesn't want to use models gimped so as to protect a bunch of pre-AI special interests who should adapt, not obstruct.
That said, I do agree LLMs can grasp the surface-level "style" of a famous author fairly quickly. But for writers whose real strength lies in observation and selection of detail — think Peter Hessler, Robert Macfarlane, John McPhee, and others in that vein — I don't think LLMs can replace that. That kind of writing depends on a way of seeing, not just a way of saying.