181: What You Need To Consider about AI + Writing

 

AI is a big topic in the writing world. In this episode, I share my thoughts as an editor, reader, and writer on using generative AI in the writing process--whether that's brainstorming, character development, getting feedback, or having AI actually write for you. If you plan to query or submit your work anywhere, if you want to work with an editor, if you want to own the copyright to your creative work, you NEED to be aware of the risks of using generative AI.

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What You Need To Consider about AI + Writing

Hi friends. Welcome back to your big creative life podcast. And welcome to when this will be released, it will be May, which is insane. Y'all, April is the shortest month. I like, I felt like the last two weeks of April. I was like, oh, it's early April. Like, I just had no awareness of what date it was, what time it was, and all of a sudden, we're in May, which is insane. January is the longest month and April is the shortest month. I don't make the rules. That's just how it is. But, yeah, I okay this episode, we're going to talk about AI. And I don't want to be like a doomsday person about AI. I don't want to, I want to make it clear my stance on AI, but I also want to say, like, I'm not against AI in all cases.

 

I know that we can't go back this technology is here. It's here to stay. I'm not someone who thinks we need to bury our head in the sand and, like, go back to typing on typewriters and mailing letters like, that's not me, but I do really want to dive into this and share my opinion as a reader, a writer, an editor, a freelancer, on what you need to know about AI, things that you need to consider about AI in the creative process. Okay, I have been getting a lot of comments from people, a lot of DMS, because of some videos that I made on Tiktok about this, and I wanted to share I made a video that I ended up pinning to my Tiktok page because I was getting so many comments and questions and whatever, and kind of outline my reasons for why I'm against AI in the creative process. And I want to do the same thing here, but just go a little bit go a little bit more in detail, because we have to have conversations about this. We're in this really pivotal time with AI. So this is what we're going to be talking about. I want to outline my reasons. And if you have a different opinion in me, if you have a different opinion than than I do, that's okay.

 

My comments are flooded with people who want to tell me how I'm wrong and how I'm not I need to, like, embrace change, or else be left behind. People love to make the argument that, like, oh, it's like the calculator or Google, which makes no sense to me, because those things aren't creative. Like, you're not doing a creative process with a calculator. But yeah, if you have a different opinion than me, that's that's fine. Hopefully you can just hear me out and listen to what I have to say in this episode, and maybe it will help you rethink this. And if not, if your mind is made up, you are going to use generative AI in the creative process. I can't police that. I can't stop you from doing that. And I want to be clear that what we're talking about in this episode is generative, AI, meaning a tool like chat GPT, that's the bulk of what people access. That's the bulk of what we're talking about.

 

I'm not talking about things like pro writing aid or Grammarly. I don't believe that those tools are anywhere near the capacity of a human I tested out. Grammarly, the capabilities were not it's kind of like the suggestions in Microsoft Word, where like half of them were correct, half of them were incorrect, and it missed stuff because of a misunderstanding of what what I was trying to do. So I'm not talking about those tools. I know that AI is integrated into so many things right now, so we're just talking about generative AI in this episode. Okay, so things you need to consider why I have the stance that I do, which is being against AI completely in the generative AI process, meaning, writing the book for you, helping you write the book, brainstorming, developing your characters, giving you suggestions for how to flesh out scenes, how to improve things, all of it, okay.

 

Number one, if you want to query to find an agent, or you want to submit your work to some small presses, some medium presses, if you don't have an agent, you need to proceed with caution, because there are more and more agents and presses who are making it very clear in their submission guidelines, in their contracts, that they do not want any AI assisted work. This is not just, oh, we don't want an AI written manuscript. This is, did you use AI in the character development process, in the brainstorming process, in the right finish this scene for me, process like, and you have to look at individual agents and presses to see what their specific guidelines are, I can't, I can't answer like, Is this okay? Is this okay? Because it's gonna vary. You need to look into that yourself. I can't give you permission. Or if I think those are okay, I've heard from people who are querying, right now, in the trenches, that agents are asking about this before you submit.

 

So if you, if you are using AI in the creative process, generative AI... Remember, I'm going to just say AI in this episode, but just know, like I'm talking about generative AI specifically, because I don't want to have to keep saying generative AI, you're shooting yourself in the foot, and you are severely limiting the options for sending your book out. Publishers, traditional publishers, are also putting things into their contracts. I'm hearing from people about this that they don't want any AI assisted works, so you need to keep that in mind.

 

Number two, you cannot copyright your work, meaning, if AI wrote your work or assisted and wrote some of your work, you cannot copyright the portions that AI did for you. This is a big deal because you do not own it. It is not an original idea. It was machine generated. It was computer generated. It was AI assisted. You don't own the copyright to it. It is not your original idea. It is not your original work. In that case, you can't copyright it, and that should be a big deal to you.

 

Number three, using a tool you are using a tool that was trained off of stolen work.Those authors that had their work scraped did not give consent for chat GPT for open, AI for even meta to train their tool with their work. There are lawsuits going on right now. People are suing open, AI suing meta because of this. So we'll wait and see what happens with those. I'm really hopeful that there will be some positive outcome, but it just it's frustrating to me that authors who want to be aspiring authors, meaning they're not yet published, they're not yet writing, but they want to be are using a tool like chat GPT to help them with their book, a tool that was trained off of stolen work, and then wanting to be part of this author community and join and be in community with people when their book was partially written because of stolen work like it just, it just boggles my mind.

 

Okay,what AI is doing? I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert in AI. I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert in chat GPT and how it scrapes things, how it spits out information. I'm not but when you ask chat GPT for a suggestion, or you want chat GPT to finish writing a scene for you, or to give you some idea of dialog, or to write some description for you, whatever it is, if, when it spits back an answer, it is spitting back an answer that is a cobbled together, copied and pasted kind of version. It's synthesizing all of these other books that it has quote, unquote read because it didn't actually read them machine, right? It has scraped all of that stuff and spit back out a version that is not original. It's not unique. It's based off, off all of this stolen work. I just think, from an ethical standpoint standpoint, I'm not okay with this. I'm not okay with with that.

 

If you are a published author and your work has been stolen. Like I don't know how you would be okay with then going to chat GPT and saying, hey, help me with this. It just defies logic to me. Next up is the need for a writing community. I've seen comments from people who say, Okay, well, I don't. I'm not using chat GPT to like, write the book for me or to help me, but I use it as a cheerleader. I use it to give me a pep talk. I use it to give me feedback. I use it to whatever. This is a little bit harder for me to to argue against, because I understand what it's like to not know any writers, to not have writer friends, to not have a writing community or beta readers. But in the future, with AI taking over more and more jobs and industries and being a bigger presence in our lives, we have to maintain human relationships.

 

This is going to be more and more important in the future. Like I cannot overstate this, having connections with each other, forming relationships and friendships with writers, even if they're writers that you don't see in person, if it's just online, this is essential. We have to we cannot get to a place as a society where we don't know how to talk to each other, because we're outsourcing all of that to chat GPT. I've even seen people use chat GPT for therapy, because they just, you know, they type things in and they have a conversation, and putting that in quotes with chat GPT, yeah, I just think we need to maintain human relationships, and it can be difficult to find that online. I know I've been in that position where I put it out into the universe. I set the intention years ago because I didn't know any writers. I didn't know anyone who write it, who wanted to write a book. I wasn't really active on social media when I first started writing, and so like I didn't have anyone. But I put it down to the universe. I did the work to try to find people. I ended up finding a writing group because I was taking writing classes at a literary center that was in... Well, I started at I took my first writing class when I was living in Washington, DC.

 

But then I moved to Nashville and started taking a lot of classes at a literary center called the Porch in Nashville, and I started going to this thing called draft chat, which was like a critique circle for people, and we would all read each other's work and give feedback, and that was a great experience. But I met someone who was forming a private critique group and invited me to join, and that's how I made my my community of people in Nashville who were writers, and that was so valuable for me to have, that we would meet once a month, and, yeah, it was just it was vital to have people so that you could be to read and critique and get better as a writer, but also just for support, you know, like when I was querying, it was really hard, and the writers in that group gave me support when my book died on submission, that writer, the writers in that group were there for me.

 

That's all part of it, so and even on social media, like I've made connections. I've made writer friends because I'm commenting on their stuff. They're commenting on my stuff. They messaged me. I messaged them. We started chatting like it's hard. I know it's hard to put yourself out there, but this community, the writing community, is incredible, and there are so many people who are in this boat. You're not alone if you're struggling to make connections or find a beta reader, or whatever. This is so common that people are struggling with this. So I really think we need to prioritize that in the future, when it is going to be easy, like taking chat GPT. Take using chat GPT is the easy way. It's the easy way to do things. But we're going to have to be more intentional about putting in the work, even though it's uncomfortable, even though it is work to form those relationships and keep up those relationships with other authors.

 

Okay, next, as a book editor, I have a policy that I don't edit any AI written works because I don't have, well, number one, I just don't want to support it for ethical reasons. But number two, I don't have any confidence that if someone used chatgpt to write the book for them or assisted in writing the book I don't have any confidence that if I were to do a developmental edit and give them feedback on characters, plot, pacing, conflict, et cetera, that they would know how to implement those changes. You learn how to write a book by writing a book, and you learn how to edit a book by editing your own work and and if you're outsourcing that to chat, GPT, I don't have any confidence that you would know how to make those changes. It would almost be kind of a pointless exercise for me to edit a book that was heavily AI assisted or AI written or whatever, because what is that person going to do? They're not going to know how to improve those things without chat GPT, so would they just feed my notes into chat GPT and then ask chat GPT to fix it?

 

Like, I'm not confident that they would know you have to learn the skills of writing. There's this sentiment. I see this all the time in comments, where people are like, I just use it because I get stuck. You know, I if I'm stuck on something, I use it to help me brainstorm. I use it like getting stuck is part of the writing process. Y'all feeling frustrated, having writer's block, not knowing what to do about something. Feeling frustrated with your characters, that's all part of the writing process. It's uncomfortable and it sucks sometimes, but that's just what Writing a book is.

 

There's nothing wrong if you're experiencing experiencing those things, and it doesn't mean you need to run to chat GPT to solve it for you. You learn how to write a book by pushing yourself and going through all of these things and gaining the experience. And then over time, it gets easier. So you have to remember that you're not learning the skills of writing a book if you're outsourcing that.

 

Next up we so I've talked to already about this, that art is human. Art equals human, created art. Okay, I do not want us to get to a place as a society, a culture, where art is just computer generated. I talked a lot about this a couple of weeks ago in our Q and A episode for April, because someone asked a question about AI generated art to help them sell their book as an indie author, so that there's some overlap there. Because my answer is this, like, I don't want us to get to a place where art is just AI generated. It's important for us as a society and culture that we have human generated art, and that that includes human written books like so, on a moral, on a philosophical on an artistic level, that is part of why I'm so against generative AI in the process.

 

And I do feel like we are in this really pivotal moment right now where we get to dictate as readers, as book lovers, as a community, we get to dictate what happens next with AI? Because if publishers get wind of, hey, AI assisted books, AI written books, there's a market for those, then you know that they're going to start churning those out, and they're going to not prioritize human authors. So we have the power with our vote, with our Well, vote. I mean, I'm not even going to get it into politics, but we have the power with our dollars, how we're buying books, what kinds of authors were supporting, to show that we're not going to support this.

 

The last note, I'm gonna, I'm gonna end my final point is this, and it's going to sound very Doomsday, and I just want to include a little bit of caution note here, because none of us we don't know how the market is going to grow and change. We don't know what's going to happen with AI. None of us do. There are people who are AI experts, who are sounding alarms about what this is going to mean for industries, millions of jobs being wiped out entirely. I don't know it can feel very Doomsday, but I want to plant this seed for everyone. I'm imploring you to listen to me when I say this.

 

I just became aware of a tool that is a fan fiction AI generator, meaning you type in what kind of fan fiction you want to read the themes, the characters, and it spits out an AI written fanfic for you. Okay, so just think about that for a second. How fucked up that is. Number two, I was having a conversation recently with my husband. He's a software developer who is laid off in August. He's been working for this company for eight years. He has, I have his permission to share this. He was working for that company for eight years, and they laid him off, and he negotiated for one month of severance.

 

So he saw the writing on the wall that coding is going to be outsourced, that his days are limited with the type of job that he has, and so he decided that he's not going to get a job doing the same thing. Also, he was burned out. It was stressful, so he decided he's not going to do that. And he's been reading a lot about AI and just thinking through different possibilities for his own future. He's working for his dad. His dad's a contractor. He works in the construction industry, and so he has been working part time for his dad and gaining some money. So we're okay financially. We can kind of get by in this interim period where he's figuring things out.

 

But anyways, we were having a conversation about the future of writing, and I was expressing my concern that, like, what if we get to a point in five years, 10 years, or even, like, three years, where the people who are publishing books are just they're churning out AI written books at a rapid pace and flooding the market, and traditional publishers get wind of that and start doing it, and it's just like human created books are small. And to be clear, I always think there's going to be room for that, even if AI books become the norm, like, I truly believe authors, human authors, will always have a space in this, because there always will be readers who value that and will pay for that. So that's not going away completely. I truly don't believe that. And my husband was saying, and he kind of, he kind of, we were having this conversation in the car, and he got quiet, and he was like, I think you need to think a little bit more. I think you need to think differently about this, about who's going to be, how, what the future of publishing could look like.

 

And I was like, okay, and I was talking through different scenarios, and he kept shaking his head, and he's like, no, what if it gets to a point where a lot of readers are fine, going to chat GPT or a tool like it, directly, typing in exactly the type of book that they want to read. So let's say they're a romance lover. They want to read a romance novel that's a second chance romance set in a small town with characters like this. They include a prompt. They go to chat GPT, and then chat GPT spits out a book for them to read.There is no publisher. Like, I'm getting chills. I almost, I almost want to burst into tears thinking about this. I'm not being dramatic.

 

Like, I'm okay.There is no publisher in that scenario. There is no physical book or electronic book. The publisher, the in the author, they don't exist. In this scenario, a person is able to go to chat, GPT, type in the type of story they want to read, and, boom, they can read it. That is a very real possibility, not for everyone. Again, I'm really hesitating, like, I don't want to be too doomsday. But what if that happens? We're already seeing that with fan fiction. So if you're an author, if you're an aspiring author, you should care about that. I saw a comment in my on a video I did recently where someone it was some screenwriter was essentially saying, Oh, you've got to catch up. This is just the future you're going to get left behind if you don't use AI. And this person responded back and said, You are endorsing your own obsolescence. And I responded back to them, I was like, oh my god, I love this. Like it's so fucked up, but it's so true.

 

We don't want to be endorsing our own obsolescence as writers, as creatives. So let that be my final point to you. My plea, if you do not want to see a future where readers are able to just go to chat GPT, there's no books being published. Like, yeah, that's a dramatic, extreme version of it. But if you don't want to see that type of future, why are you endorsing and using AI, you are, you are endorsing your own obsolescence. I just thought that was such a good way to say it. It was like a gut punch to me.

 

So if you don't want to see that as a future, why are you using a tool that aids in your obsolescence as a creative person? I don't understand.Okay, I just ranted and lectured at you for 20 minutes. But, um, yeah, again, I just wanted to put all my thoughts in one episode. You are, of course, free to disagree with me. You can see this very differently than I do. I would just reiterate, though, that none of us have a crystal ball like we don't know exactly what's going to happen in the future of publishing writing, AI. I mean, a more sunny, positive spin on this is that the lawsuits could proceed open AI could get shut down. Chat GPT ceases to exist, and there's a lot of government regulation that prevents this. And if you use AI in any part of the process, you have to put a sticker on your book.

 

Like, there could also be a very rosy kind of version of this where, yes, AI exists, but, like, it's just this fringe thing that people use, and it's not the main focus of publishing that could also happen. But I just want us to be cautious again. I feel like we're in this really pivotal moment right now to dictate how this all unfolds, and I don't want us to be in that doomsday scenario in 5,10,30 years. And for anyone who's like, oh, well, how would they know? How do people know if you're using AI like you could just lie about it. If that's you. I want to, I want to just say that I believe in karma. I do. And if you are lying to people saying that you didn't use chat, GPT, open, AI, generative, AI when you did, is that really the energy that you want to be putting out into the world, deceiving people, essentially being a fraud? Like, is that how you want to start your author career or continue your author career?

 

There's no way to verify for sure, at least there isn't right now, the AI generated like, or the AI detection tools are not great, from what I've heard, but is that the energy that you want to put out into the world? I would hope not okay. Thank you for sticking with me on this and listening to my lecture again. No, no one knows how this is going to unfold, but this is a really important conversation that we have to have, and ultimately, it's up to you as an author, as a creative, to decide how you want to think about this and how you if you use it or not going forward, because I can't decide that for you. No one can give you permission or approval like you have to decide if you're going to use it or not, what you think about it. So all right, well, thank you for sticking with me on this one. I know it's tough, I know it's heavy, but it's important, so I'll see you next week.

Katie Wolf