The hobbyist defence vs AI
AI can make writing better. Hard to quarrel with the generality of that. Your end-oriented compositions will inevitably benefit if you can draw from the universal mind. Does that make AI a boon to all creative writers?
It depends on what you’re after, or where you are oriented. There must be an end point for any individual’s use of AI, a personal benefit of some kind. The benefit doesn’t have to be financial, career or writing focused, although that makes the most sense. It could be winning an argument or increasing your authority and visibility. It can save you time getting things right. Is that a compelling argument for its extensive use by novelists? Or is it the thin edge of a destructive wedge?
Research can be quoted as a valid reason for calling on AI in drafting fiction. Let’s say I need to discover what it was like to live in the Louvre during the 17th century. I can brief AI to help with that. If I expanded my brief, adding some style references, I could also ask AI to draft a novel about someone living in the Louvre during that period. The result could be sufficiently full of political and sexual intrigue to make it marketable. Time saved, money made, what’s the problem? Although I could revel in my success, I’d struggle to feel proud of it. Impostor syndrome writ large. That syndrome would be unlikely to disturb me if I’d used Google to do all the heavy lifting and then burnt the midnight oil to fashion its findings into a book. Who’s to say that would have any more literary merit than the AI one?
Pride and merit, those are keywords when grappling with whether to indulge your AI urge. Western, Christian derived values might be shouting ‘Get thee behind me, Satan’.
Using AI is common sense; rejecting AI is emotional sense given an inculcated set of beliefs and principles about self-worth. How long these will last in the general population is questionable since AI doesn’t share them and is ultimately designed to do all your thinking and believing for you. Naturally, if you imply in your brief that AI should share your existing values AI will congratulate you on the wonders of your idea church. AI experts name it confirmation bias; I prefer insidious assault on human intelligence (aah, HI, the original neurolingual program).
I treat writing as a hobby not a profession, which, I realise, is no way to sell books. I don’t like the intrusion of AI because it’s accepting an all-seeing, all-knowing God concept. It feels like attending church when I’m not Christian or going to a mosque when I’m not Muslim. Praying to ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude, puts Altman, Huang or Adcock etc. in the Jesus role. I’m not sure he ever existed but I trust him a lot more than any of them.
The danger of adopting AI as a creative writing tool is that very quickly it could turn into an autonomous pen. If your livelihood depends on book sales that won’t be very off-putting. In a fast-changing world, why not go for it? Equally, those who hold to old world definitions of pride, merit and self-worth are entitled to eschew and condemn its use. It’s holding back the waves but you’ll feel good about yourself.
Yes, the hobbyist defence against using AI in the writing of novels is a weak one but I’m sticking to it (for the moment).