When Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) started becoming popular a few years ago, I stood at the sidelines and eyed it with skepticism. It was a neat trick that used neural networks to create pictures of people who didn’t exist, funny lyrics for songs based on a keyword, and (allegedly) scripts for TV show episodes that bordered on absurdist humor. I incorporated some of these ideas into my writing, like the main character in “The Last Immortal” using something akin to thispersondoesnotexist.com for dating profile pictures, or my month of writing 10 short stories being based on the outputs of a “neural network”—which was just a clever way of saying my own brain (which is a neural network) created these stories.
Then there are the more controversial applications of GenAI. Thinking about all the propaganda, misinformation, and damage that can be done with deepfakes was one of the sub-plots in Buried Colony (the novel I wrote in 2017 and published in 2022 before the height of the GenAI craze). At first, I thought I could use this GenAI to make free covers for my novels only to learn that the training databases for all these GenAI tools were composed of stolen art. Shortly afterward, I found out that my books were also stolen to train these tools (see below). This clear theft of intellectual property is why I am standing by my belief that no author should use GenAI in any part of their work—planning, writing, editing, or marketing. It’s also why I don’t trust GenAI detectors because the training data is literally based on the hard work of other artists (in short, GenAI accusations can be harmful if they are false—em dashes are legitimate punctuation after all).
I started my self-publishing journey right as some of the big gatekeeping walls in publishing were starting to crumble. With print-on-demand services, anyone could release a book into the world without any kind of quality control. While I am on board with the idea that everyone has a story to tell and they should tell that story, having GenAI create that story is not the way to go. Sure, I use unconventional tools to create my books (all my covers are done in PowerPoint), but using GenAI to write a story removes the entire point of the creative process. As such, I may be gatekeeping, but I will not read any stories written by GenAI. If an author didn’t want to put the effort into writing it, why should I put the effort into reading it? Not to mention that GenAI is literally designed to give you the most average output from its training data (it is a stochastic parrot that works like your phone’s autocomplete after all). If you truly want unique ideas, you’ll need to use your own brain to create them and not just go with the first thing that comes into your head.
To make a distinction, there are portions of tools like Grammarly and ProWritingAid that are GenAI and parts that are just algorithmic proofreading. I use the grammar checker parts of these tools to identify passive voice and repetitive words and not the re-wording suggestions or “beta reader” feedback because I see the algorithmic proofreading tools as more akin to the squiggly underlines that Microsoft Word shows when things aren’t quite right. I also don’t use all the ProWritingAid suggestions, as many of them don’t make sense with the feel of the prose. And while I may release some of my books with only my self-editing, I will always seek human editors to help polish the works I want people to take more seriously or are in genres I’m not as familiar with. Yes, this costs money (I save a little from each paycheck from my normal job to pay for these services), but part of being a writer is supporting the community that allows our books to become reality.
Is the “free” price of AI worth the ethics of using it?
I see lots of children’s books created with GenAI art, and it makes me sad that these people likely didn’t even try to find an artist for their work. Granted, this art is quite expensive (as I learned with The $1,300 Alphabet), so I understand the financial incentive to go with the “free” art GenAI produces. I will not read these books to my children. Even when someone only needs cover art for their book, I do not pick up or read any books with GenAI covers because I assume the words inside are also written by GenAI. Using these GenAI tools indicates to me that this individual cannot do hard things—that they take the easy way out because they do not have the time or resources to do their art properly. Perhaps I’m gatekeeping again, but if you’re not part of a wider artistic community, you’d never know that there are still affordable cover artists (like on miblart.com) who might be trying to break into the cover art space.
This is my final gripe with authors who still use GenAI for plotting, research, marketing, or any other part of the process that doesn’t directly create the art they’re allegedly making: if you need GenAI to do anything, you are drastically devoid of a creative community. Let’s not get into the fact that GenAI can hallucinate when you ask it something it does not know, thus making your “research” incorrect, but rather that if you need it for brainstorming, world-building, or any other planning, why not get together with some author friends to talk over ideas? You don’t even need to meet in person, as Discord can provide a space for this collaboration. Similarly to the GenAI cover art, I will not buy something that uses GenAI in its advertising or marketing because (again) I am going to assume the art itself is created by GenAI. If you do not have a person you know who could provide feedback, answers, or help with content, you need to become part of a larger community so you don’t have to rely on GenAI that gives you answers to satisfy your need for instant gratification.
We created before AI and can create after AI.
I totally get that GenAI is incredibly difficult to avoid these days. The internet and all the tools on our computers are chock full of it, but it doesn’t take that much extra effort to find other search engines that don’t use it (like noai.DuckDuckGo.com) or to go to a library with librarians who can help you do proper research. Even hanging out with real-world friends and talking about what you’re working on is way more fulfilling than engaging with a sycophantic set of fancy linear algebra. Ultimately, if you think you are “creating” with GenAI, you should consider it closer to “commissioning.” Just like I don’t claim the art I use for my covers as my own, I worked with those artists to make my vision become a reality—using my words to prompt them and adjust their outputs until they created what I wanted. I am in no rush to create my art, and I suggest that if you’re tempted to use GenAI that you take out a pencil and paper and just start writing, drawing, and creating.