My Stance on AI
I’ve had a few well meaning friends ask me, “Why don’t you have AI write your books?”
The answer is simple: I want to write my own books.
Now let me dive deeper into my stance on AI, and what you can expect from me as an author and publisher.
I Don’t Use AI To Write My Books
When I was a little girl and I imagined myself writing and publishing books some day, I didn’t picture myself asking a machine to write them for me.
I love the creative process of writing: coming up with ideas, seeing a scene, and then doing my best to capture it in words. Followed by the sometimes excruciating process of editing to make sure everything flows and that the story makes sense.
This is a skill that I want to keep practicing and getting better at. I think using AI to write robs me of the pleasure of developing my writing skills.
I Don’t Use AI To Market My Books
After the book is written… There’s a lot of marketing that goes into publishing. From writing the blurb, creating a cover, and designing graphics that will tell people your book is worth reading.
I opt to do the work on my own, or hire people who will do it themselves. I don’t use AI to generate marketing content for me. This type of marketing work isn’t as fun to me as the writing, but it’s another creative outlet, too.
I Hire Real People
I believe that running a publishing business comes with a few perks. If you’re lucky, that includes being able to share the wealth by hiring talented people to help make a book come to life.
I’m committed to hiring editors, cover designers, and artists that are experts at what they do.
They are also people who believe in improving their skills, and they don’t rely on AI to do their work. That’s something I’m clear on when I hire people.
Beyond The Skill Angle
So far, I’ve only addressed why I don’t want to use AI because it stops us from developing our skills… But it goes deeper than that.
AI has a lot of measurable drawbacks:
The environmental impacts of all the data centers, including the electricity and water required to make all that compute.
The wholesale theft of creative works, including from authors, artists, and the entire internet.
AI produces mediocre results by remixing what it has ingested.
The Nuance Required
As you can tell, I’m not a fan of AI. But I also understand that this is a topic that requires us to look deeper than the typical “pro AI” and “anti AI” battles.
There is a big difference between someone using AI to transcribe a recording of their voice, and someone who is using AI to pump out hundreds of books to publish every week.
There’s a distinction between generative AI and assistive AI.
Yes, all of AI use has repercussions, but just like I know that driving a car or taking a plane is not good for the environment… I still do it. I live in a society where driving a car is sometimes necessary. AI is now becoming embedded across so much of technology, it will become increasingly difficult to avoid it entirely.
AI Is Becoming Embedded Everywhere
Amazon uses AI to write summaries of books, there’s an email subject line AI generator in MailerLite, and more graphics in Canva are AI generated than we think.
Grammarly uses AI to correct and suggest a new way to write things, as does Pro Writing Aid, and many other word processors. Google summarizes my emails and documents with AI, search engines show AI results first…
The reality is, it’s becoming harder to avoid AI entirely.
I strive to do as much without the use of AI, but I also know that it can be hard to recognize AI, the more the technology advances.
If I do ever publish something that was generated by AI, it will likely be by mistake, because I wasn’t able to discern that it wasn’t made by humans.
No AI Witch Hunts
My stance on AI is just that: my opinion and decision around not using it. Other authors and creators are free to decide what is best for them and their business.
I don’t believe we should persecute people for their choice to use AI, and I especially don’t think we should assume people have used AI and go after them for it.
I respect my colleagues as human beings and their choices regarding AI. If they are using AI to help them save time so they can put food on their table, I don’t fault them for that.
We are all stuck in the capitalist system that gives us very few good options to work with. Just like many of us who drive cars because of the way our cities and towns are designed. We’re part of the system and we do the best we can to work within it. I’m not here to police anyone, and I don’t think it’s the best use of our time or resources.
The people we should be mad at are the tech oligarchs who are benefiting from the AI rollout.
Pitting us against each other is another way that tech companies benefit, because it keeps us busy fighting on their social networks.
Thank You for Being Human
If you got this far, thanks for reading. I know this is a topic that brings up a lot of emotions for many of us. It’s with so much appreciation for the human on the other side of this screen that I end this piece.
I appreciate you.