Is there a place for AI in literature?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its place in creative fiction writing will be debated for decades, maybe forever. The opposition keeps switching sides (pro to con, then back); lines drawn in the sand get rubbed out and redrawn; friends become enemies, and significant artistic opportunities are lost to hyperbole and fear. Compromises and promises are made (or imagined), then, like Lucy and Charlie Brown, the football is yanked away. Is this AI a crutch, a creative aid, or the devil? And now it is wrapped up in the political battle over data centers and the end of days. The writer faces a choice.
The literati extremists, those self-appointed gatekeepers of right and wrong, the written word, and thought: publishers, editors, and even booksellers, solemnly and knowingly declare that if a writer uses AI to help outline or edit a novel, they should be banished to a ring of hell lower than the seventh in Dante’s Inferno. God forbid the work is declared AI-written. Public shaming must happen. Careers must be destroyed. The literati (thought police) must prevail.
Some will argue (I among them) that AI is just a tool; an aide not unlike the evolution from the pen to the typewriter to the computer. Others insist that writing must be hard, so difficult that, to produce great art, one must become almost suicidal (too many authors to mention eventually take that route). Writing is a gift from the Gods and must be sacred. Using artificial intelligence to write shows a weak and lazy mind; a not-too-serious writer, a cheat. I say phooey.
The literati tell us that AI removes the difficulty of writing and trivializes the artistic product (and feeds the paranoia of those in the writing clerisy). This has even become humorous: they (whoever they are) develop AI programs to scan the work and declare stories and novels written (or influenced by) with AI as trash. Examples include current em dash use and certain word choices; a Wikipedia site (and others) that can spot AI writing, which of course leads to the cancellation of contracts. There are writers who fear their work has been stolen by AI and then used, without their permission, to produce slop by other writers—and heaven knows a writer should never write slop. Of course, this ignores the questionable restraints that most publishing contracts place on the writer and their own work, but money has changed hands, and the Lord knows that is the bottom line of all of this fear: money. Even after Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, Google, and Amazon stole the content of hundreds of thousands of books and the garment-rendering and lawsuits that followed, everyone seemed deliriously happy when checks were promised. I haven’t heard of many who asked to have their work purged from the database and refused the promised loot.
Publishing houses (gatekeepers) now refuse to accept manuscripts that hint at AI assistance (however, they use AI to peruse the submission for validation), and, when discovered, with some glee, they publicly announce the offender and their crime—alerting the news agencies and social networks. After all, the offender cheated.
Writing contests specifically note that the use of AI to produce the novel invalidates the submission. Many literary agents specify in their contracts how they handle their clients’ use of artificial intelligence. Offenders beware.
Blah, blah, blah. Much of this hyperbole echoes what happened when Wikipedia arrived on the scene (and amateurs debated facts and loaded sites with their own opinions). Safari, Google, and dozens of search engines dove into the information world. Remember when Google scanned (literally copied) every book they could find for their database, and the earliest AI entities (Alexa and Siri) became household voices that responded to your requests for music, information, and to remind you it was time to feed the cat? A line must be drawn, but by whom?
Why is this happening? I believe it is the fear of being replaced by a less worthy writer using AI to write the next best story. Is it the fear of too many books flooding the marketplace, diluting your place on Amazon’s sales list? During the past fifteen years, we have witnessed the collapse of the traditional literary hierarchy that created and elevated, over the past hundred years, crap to shinola. There are many examples where the writer was the least creative of the group that produced the final product – writing as an organized team sport comes to mind. Editors and publishers “fixing” the author’s work to be more acceptable, diverse, and consumable.
How I write.
A confession: I use artificial intelligence to develop my stories. Right now, Gemini Plus is my preferred agent. It is great for bouncing around ideas, searching for threads and ideas, and suggesting prompts for the story. I understand its value and power (sometimes shockingly). The software Grammarly (a Ukrainian startup) looks over my shoulder; its language prompts and rules (based on historical models) work for me. The limits are mine, though. I do not use AI to write the story, not because I could, but because, to me, that would steal the ultimate fun—the telling of the tale. Each writer must make their own choice, literati be damned.
Could a good story be written using AI? I believe yes. Could a great novel or classic be written? Who says that they haven’t been already? The last few years have shown an amazing growth in AI’s abilities. Could a well-known and successful writer use the power of Artificial Intelligence to oversee and manage the production of a novel that is impossible to detect as a product of AI? Absolutely. The writing establishment (clerisy) has lost control of the industry; look at what has happened in the publishing business since 2010. Look at the printing business, the distribution business, the agents, the editors, and even booksellers. Amazon and a dozen other sellers (all owned by large corporate interests) control the marketplace. Even traditional publishers have drunk the Kool-Aid. The world has moved on, not at a glacial pace but at the speed of spinning electrons.
My work is mine, not a committee’s. The market will decide if it is worthy. Is an author’s work to be sanctified by the mob? Would you buy a book because this clerisy has blessed it? Should there be a seal of approval on the cover? Certainly not.
Many believe the Terminator has arrived. The latest horror (professed by the creators of AI themselves) is the end of the world by 2030. You pick a date; the only way out is to pull the power plugs. And of course, that will not happen—there is too much money at stake. Do we (the community) choose an arbiter and then hand this over to politicians and the literary clerisy? How would you even go about this? This choice is scarier than AI itself.
This battle is in the early stages; fear dominates the struggle. And, right now, it is a war. This is a battle for hearts and minds, and above all, the dollars; never forget that.
I used Grammarly to edit this essay; the thoughts and arguments are mine. I created the image using Gemini Plus.
