Thank you, Joe. It's an excellent article. In my own case, I use AI to Query, write book proposals, marketing material, and often for intros and outros for my Substack posts. I've also used it for plot outlines, which still requires a lot of input from the writer. I don't use it for a manuscript's content. In fact, I find it annoying in the ways that it changes the voice, and often makes compelling drama melodramatic. But it's an excellent tool for every writer. As the algorithyms improve, it will probably become a high level editor that can assimilate a writers personal style and ethos. However, there will always be new, individual human experiences and writers to depict them, so that AI will always be playing catch-up.
I agree with all of your points. I don’t have as much of a problem with “AI taking over” as others do. A good story is a good story just as a good film is a good film even though film has gone through dramatic changes through advancements in technology. A Green Screen is a fake location and yet no one has a problem with a scene shot in LA in front of a Green Screen depicting another part of the world. It comes down to how the technology is used to enhance the authencity of storytelling. What’s really going on here is those in power fear the democratization of what they assume is theirs and theirs alone. And isn’t that always the case? If I can write a screenplay using AI that’s just as good if not better than someone who is writing one without AI, what the fk is the difference? The difference is that the general assumption is the writer using AI is uncredentialed using a trick to beat the system. Yeah, like the motor car was a trick to move faster than a horse and buggy.
I was just thinking of the car/horse analogy myself. Very interesting what you say about, "those in power fear the democratization of what they assume is theirs and theirs alone." I hadn't really thought about that. I have mixed feelings. I consider myself a good creative writer (that doesn't mean it's true, but still) and it's nice to think that my skill level validates me. But then I have to wonder why I need that validation. Much to think about here.
Interesting-- the car/horse analogy in this discussion. What has disappeared from the scene, however, is the buggy whip. (Well, disappeared in the transportation industry, anyway.)
Thanks Joe, there's a lot of really thoughtful ideas here. I think I'm like you (and a lot of people here), struggling with determining if AI is a useful tool that will make everyone better or a tidal wave that will wipe out originality. Will it make my words better if I use it? Or leave me totally behind if I don't?
First off, I write marketing copy for a living and AI has made my job very difficult. I write for a very technical data analysis product, so accuracy problems make it hard to use for my own work. The issue is that a ton of people from other teams think they can use AI for marketing copy and just send it to me so I can publish/send it. They spend 10 seconds on something and hand it off to me thinking they've saved me time, but it's done exactly the opposite: invented editing labor that I need to do for marketing work that doesn't need to exist and likely won't be read. The consumer demand for marketing copy isn't increasing, only the supply. My team has no need for a higher quantity of marketing copy, we need better quality.
A different position than an individual writer marketing a novel, but a worthy consideration in the conversation.
As for my fiction, initially I was a holdout on feeding anything into AI, but eventually I gave in. I uploaded my current drafts into both Claude and ChatGPT and asked the AIs to pretend they were literary magazine publishers who were reviewing the stories for publication. They gave me general feedback that was far too friendly to take seriously. But when I started asking specific questions (plot pacing, dialogue realness, character depth), I was very happy with its answers. Like probably a lot of people, I struggle with identify what to cut in my writing. I found that asking both AIs to find 500 words to cut and then cross-referencing them gave me much better clarity than I would have had on my own. It's a good way to get me to kill my darlings.
As an editor, I've found AI tools to be very helpful. I struggle to find readers. The ones I do find generally give me general (overly positive) feedback after a couple weeks. AI will answer specific questions right away and take follow-up questions in depth. Even at midnight when I just finished a draft. And it's read everything, so it is a great resource.
Just for fun, I saved the original outline for a story I just finished and asked AI to write a story from the outline. I compared its result to the one I finished and I was thrilled at how bad it was. I'm not yet scared of AI as a writer, but I'm happy to have it as an editor for now.
Your experiences with AI are very interesting, especially in your role as a copywriter. I guess the unsolicited copy that comes in is a good example of people using AI without understanding the basics of what they are using it for. But it sounds like when you write fiction do you have the experience to recognize when AI is being helpful and when it is not. It's great to have your perspective from both sides of the issue.
I think my experience with using AI for fiction editing is that it is quite helpful when I ask it very specific questions (does the story slow down too much in this monologue? Is the setting described well enough or should I describe more details?) and get answers that I think are more objective than perspectives I can come up with on my own. I've done a small amount of laying groundwork in these conversations so the AI knows I want it to compare my work to published stories. I feel like I get well-researched and trustworthy answers (your story drags at the beginning and needs to get to the action faster or a fiction editor will stop reading before the interesting part).
When I ask general questions (do you think this is good enough to submit to Ploughshares?) I get answers that are obviously designed to make me feel good and keep me engaged, rather than actually help me improve my writing. At first, I thought maybe the AI finally realized how great I was at writing, but as I kept getting gushing feedback on more stories (even my worse ones), I knew it was exaggerated praise.
Well, at least you didn't start talking about carving letters on stone tablets to be considered a 'real writer', which seems to be the average basic bitch response from AI defenders. Most of your points talk about a writer using AI to aid their process of writing. How it can save writers time and money.
From what I've seen, these aren't the reasons why most people have an issue with AI. The vast majority of writers use technology to write, the problem with AI and my problem with AI is that it allows people who have no desire to learn, to craft, or to develop skills to pump out pieces of 'creative writing' and flood the already oversaturated, hypercompetitive market of literature.
Lastly, I hate AI because I know what AI really is. Its purpose isn't to aid people; its purpose is to be the next societal iteration to fuck over creative people. If anyone can now have a book 'created' then why the fuck does the world need creative people? Why do Trad publishing companies need to part with their 10% when they can just create the novels themselves and keep all the profits?
I wouldn't go as far as to say that AI developers intentionally programmed the technology to fuck over creative people. I don't think they ever gave it a thought. We are simply collateral damage.
Please don't think that I am defending AI. I believe there are several passages in the post that talk about how I would love to go back to a non-technological, human centered writing world. I'm only trying to figure out how writers might cope with a technology that is clearly not going away.
By this logic, the invention of firearms should have eliminated the practice of martial arts.
The problem with your attitude is that it assumes the rise of AI as a tool for writers is inevitable. If you believe this, then of course you're going to use it--and begin to rely on it. But many of us still write by hand. Many of us still go to the library to research. Many of us reject the advice of others for the sake of maintaining a project's artistic vision. And yes, many of us manage to publish traditionally in this fashion.
Writers fall somewhere along a spectrum of outcome-driven and process-driven. It's always been this way. James Paterson has employed ghostwriters to pump out his novels for thirty years. It's likely he hasn't written a single word himself in decades, and yet his books have sold millions of copies. He is only interested in the outcome. Others slave away in obscurity and leave behind posthumous troves of unpublished material. They never try to publish, or they don't prioritize it. They live to sit down and face the page, to sink into the swales of their own minds. For them, writing is compulsive, and there's a religiosity to the process.
Most writers fall somewhere in the middle. The point is that you don't NEED to use AI to continue to be a writer into the 21st Century. It depends entirely on WHY you write. If it's for the accolades, at any cost, then why not. But as I tell my creative writing students, if your goal is to make money and be respected, go do literally anything else.
To paraphrase a great dead author, "Fiction is about what it means to be a fucking human being." I've been reading your newsletter for awhile and I really enjoy it. I know you've struggled to get your work into the world throughout your career. We all have. But reading today's installment, I can't help but worry that you're prioritizing the wrong things. You talk a lot about how AI is going to help you PUBLISH. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But what are you sacrificing in that arrangement? What are you capitulating to? To me, it seems that you're willingly lobotomizing an aspect of your spirit in exchange for a vague and untenable promise of success. AI has its place, and of course people will use it in search of shortcuts in their art. But just because they do it doesn't mean we all have to. Let them chase vanity. The rest of us can search for meaning.
There will always be writers who write without AI. You can be whatever kind of writer you want, but don't trick yourself into thinking you don't have a choice.
Thanks for this very thoughtful comment. I would say that although I think the use of AI in creative writing is inevitable, there will always be some writers who prefer to write by hand, do their own research, and aren't worried about the commercial aspects of what they do. Just as there are still craftspeople who make furniture by hand and use a dark room to develop their photographs. And this may sound out of character for me, but they are the ones that I respect more than any others. But AI is here and a lot of writers will embrace the technology. We live in a capitalist society that encourages people to monetize whatever it is they do. I can't really fault them for wanting to publish. However, I completely respect your position about that.
I hope it's fairly obvious that what I'm trying to do is bring these issues out for discussion. I just don't see a lot of other people doing that.
Excellent article. I’ve been experimenting with it more in the collaborative process you mentioned, and have been enjoying it. But you do need to be able to exercise good judgment with what it gives you.
Hope you're right, Joe. However, have been seeing lotsa' what must be AI generated job seeking Cover Letters; candidate comes in for interview & is asked to hand write a paragraph or two regarding what they believe they might bring to the job for which they're applying. Voila! Stunning reveal. (Did you know many schools no longer teach cursive?)
I did know that and I am not surprised. One thing I have seen recently that I like, is teachers and college professors resorting back to oral examinations to determine what students really know.
I would thank Mr. Ponepinto for candidly broaching his observations about AI as it relates to creative writing's future. I'm also curious, though, about why he didn't mention literary nonfiction or, say, personal narrative essays or memoirs. Would there perhaps be no difference for such genres when it comes to AI and its apparent growing capabilities?
If an AI technology were used, for example, to help an author develop ideas for a personal narrative essay or for a memoir or for a book of personal essays, would the incorporation of AI ideatioon into such works tend to fictionalize them?
Or would an AI tech simply, say, just notice themes and connections in the writers' personal experiences that the writers had not themselves noticed before they resorted to AI assistance? It is all interesting, I think . . .
Great points. I tend to discuss fiction in these posts because I am primarily a fiction writer. But the issues with AI are just as important in the nonfiction realm. I'm sure AI will further blur the lines there. That being said, I can't help wondering how close something like memoir is to the absolute truth. In creative writing today the guide is "how I remember what happened" as opposed to what actually happened. I actually prefer to read rigorously researched and reported nonfiction. I cringe at what AI might do to that area.
A lot of food for thought here. I'm old fashioned in that I prefer art created by humans, not machines. I can follow the article's premises, because AI can offer an easy (lazy) solution, and I don't want that. Part of what makes good art good is the human effort that went into it. Somebody struggled to make this. So what if it has imperfections; humans are imperfect.
Market pressures for cheaper and faster will bring in more AI, as the article says. People will look for shortcuts for a competitive edge, and there's no stopping it. Personally I won't have anything to do with AI, because it's artificial, counterfeit. The same reason why I hate Disney parks: everything is artificial, forged, and too damned perfect.
Don't get me started on how much I hate Disney! I'm old enough to remember when they made movies making fun of minorities and marginalized people. Now they worship them. All in the name of profit.
The point being made here is that no writing is truly creative. All knowledge is borrowed. AI is using the experiences of people from all walks of life and applying them to the great stories of our time. As the technology improves, it'll replace us entirely. Cheaper. Faster. Able to double down on trends. It's only a matter of time.
Yes, and as I've said I completely disagree. There is creative writing and there is non-creative writing. Current AI produces only non-creative writing. End of story. When AI starts to think, as opposed to merely analyze what words are most likely to go together then we can talk about machines being creative.
Yes, and as I've said I completely disagree. There is creative writing and there is non-creative writing. Current AI produces only non-creative writing. End of story. When AI starts to think, as opposed to merely analyze what words are most likely to go together then we can talk about machines being creative.
I think we have to be careful about hyperbole from Silicon Valley. Large language models haven’t progressed in recent years in the key areas of logic that can withstand close scrutiny, in metacognition, or in long-term memory. No doubt tons of books will be written by AI very soon, but tons of books written by humans are junk. It’s the best stuff that always has counted.
There's a big difference between using AI as a tool and having it "take over creative writing" as your title says. If you want to use AI to write your query letter, or even your synopsis, why not. Writing those is a drag. Writing those is part of the "business" of writing. Writing the actual story is the fun part, and if we give that up, we might as well quit writing entirely and switch careers to any of the many AI-assisted jobs that pay far better than publishing.
Putting AI in charge of writing entire novels would produce the literary equivalent of a hot dog IMO. It might be reasonably tasty, but it's a poor substitute for a real meal.
One of the biggest reasons I love to read is that it puts me inside somebody else's head. It allows me to understand another human being better than I did before, and by extension, all of humanity. I have no desire to understand the mind of a robot. AI might, one day, be able to churn out 1,000 books a day or whatever, but would there even be a market for that? The book market is already saturated now. Unless AI is going to buy and read the books in addition to writing them, that's not a sustainable business model.
To me it all boils down to the same question: why should I be bothered to read a novel that nobody could be bothered to write?
Believe it or not I agree with pretty much everything you say. My issue is that I don't have much faith in the reading public or in corporate America's pandering to them. Based on what my insider friend tells me most people (the few that actually do read novels) soon won't be able to tell the difference between an AI written novel and a human written one. I suspect there will be drastic change in our industry. I started my writing career as a journalist on a community newspaper. We tried to bring a human touch, and a community centered approach to reporting the news, in a way that the big dailies never could. None of us ever thought that industry would be decimated by technology. But it was.
"The few that actually do read novels" buy 700+ million books a year in the United States alone. As a reader, I would never buy a book labeled as AI-written. I want to read books written by human beings. In fact, I would pay more for books written by humans. In fact, I wouldn't read an AI-written book even if it were free. I suspect I'm not alone. It's all about what the market wants, and we're not there yet. The market might soundly reject bot-written novels. There's no reason to be defeatist and accept a slippery slide into "AI writes everything." Let's not be part of the problem due to FOMO. Believe me, I understand the pressure. My day job is pushing these tools at us on a daily basis. We can say no.
FWIW, I attended last month's Futurescapes workshop, and AI of course came up as a topic during the agent Q&A. The agents' general view on whether they want people to pitch them AI-written books was "absolutely not."
I'm not surprised about that. But in the last couple of days I saw something about how a couple of companies are developing software that will allow agents to screen query letters using AI. Obviously I can't say that they will start to use it, but it's something I want to keep an eye on. I doubt they will change their stance on AI written books. I certainly hope they don't. But I wonder if they may begin to accept AI written query letters.
AI is not about writing a better, more engaging story; it’s about improving the chances of making lots of money. If someone is not willing to put in the hard work of writing a story, poem, essay or novel and has no life experience, no insight into human nature, no ability to use language in new ways, no inspiration, no originality, and nothing of enduring value to say about the human condition, they should do something else like go golfing!
Ditto all those who commented, "Excellent article." So many substacks, so little time--- but I did take the time to read yours today and glad I did.
I'm your quintessential starving artist, and writing's my first art. I would pledge my support in a heartbeat to your Stack, Joe, but first must get my guitar and banjo, fiddle and sax outta' hock!
In the longer term, which almost no one worries about, will we find the human soul has been reduced to bits? And given the enormous wealth disparity, to what extent will this soul inputting become one more way the wealthy make regular ordinary meat sacks like you and me irrelevant? Part of me thinks that’s silly. The computer hasn’t led to less literary writing, right? Right?
It's here for now, no question. But right now it's not much more than a horrifically expensive calculator that is mostly correct and investors may become disenchanted with time. Continued development depends on investment dollars and more data points, and there are conflicting reports about whether enough of both still exists. We've seen tech bubbles like this before. I feel less sure than you about machine sentience. An LLM is mainly a very good mimic. If humans don't fully understand the source of creativity, how could they program a machine to reproduce it? The whole has always been greater than the sum of the parts.
My admittedly limited understanding of how AI works is that it has the ability to access incredible amounts of information (sometimes accurate and sometimes inaccurate) and almost instantly aggregate it and use its algorithms to determine the most likely possible answer. I can't help thinking that the synapses of the brain work in a similar way. You mentioned that "an LLM is mainly a very good mimic." Don't shoot me for saying this, but I think a lot of people operate in exactly the same way. And I'm not sure I can agree with your premise that humans need to understand the source of creativity before they can program a machine to reproduce it. I will say that our limited understanding keeps us from being able to see where the technology will eventually take us, whether that is a good or bad future. That's why I wanted to talk about it.
One of the things that I've noticed in these kinds of conversations is the conflation of two separate lines of inquiry: 1) Can a machine replicate human intelligence? 2) Is such a project a good idea for humanity?
I don't think we should conflate them. The truly interesting question #1, as a research question and an existential one, requires endless experimentation that may or may not come to some kind of satisfactory answer. To do this kind of experimentation requires infinite resources, which we don't have. Not only money and data points, but also water and electricity. The environmental cost of this research is massive and well documented. Which means that we should be giving serious thought to question #2.
Microsoft and the other tech giants are all in (the expenditure and development resources) and trying to raise enthusiasm so they can continue to pursue this question. AI hype is everywhere. As a longtime journalist, that raises my suspicion instantly. We have, as a species, made other errors of judgment (some catastrophic, like the atom bomb) in the quest to conquer the unknown.
The other huge problem pursuing this question, IMHO, is who is in control and why. It has long ceased to be an interesting question and become a capitalist enterprise. The motive has shifted sharply. Do we trust Big Tech to look out for the betterment of humankind or the earth itself, when the big prize (wealth) is in concentrated in the hands of very few? I don't.
I agree, in principle, with what you say. But as I alluded to somewhere in that long post many of the technologies that wind up changing the way we live our lives initially started as something that was thought would benefit humankind. Even atomic energy. The physicists who first realized the power of the atom did not immediately think of making a bomb out of it. No matter what we think of, there are people who instantly try to imagine ways in which the technology can be abused for their own benefit. Does that mean we shouldn't try? Maybe. There is always a price to pay for progress. And what is the alternative? Do we go back to an agrarian and fundamentalist society in which we forget about technological improvements? Am I being hyperbolic? Probably. But how do we find that perfect, middle path?
That's a great question, and I think we should keep asking it. I don't think we're in any real danger of turning the clock back that far, but who knows what happens when half the world burns?
There do seem to be early indications that machine learning can improve medicine in really exciting ways. But we can't let it drive. Lawyers who did both in the US and Canada have been disbarred because the case law generated didn't exist.
We need guard rails and Big Tech won't put them there. I saw that Gavin Newsom enacted the strongest legislation yet to protect consumers. I assume you've read how easily folks are being tricked in all kinds of ways by fakes and scams? This use has already been deployed by those with unethical motives and become a destructive force in society.
I know the act of writing to be a way of thinking. I don't plan on outsourcing my thinking anytime soon and I hope others feel the same way, whether they use chatGPT to help with a draft or not. If we hand over the thinking to those whose project is wealth, we won't like where we end up.
That's for sure. I wish we had more of a European style approach to big tech. They seem to be more aware of the abuses that unrestrained technology can foster, and far more willing to do something about it. As for relinquishing my independent thought, that will never happen. But a lot of people will gladly let AI do their thinking for them, just as they have always let politicians and others do their thinking for them.
Another great post. AI is definitely here to stay, whether we like it or not.
It’ll be up to each creative writer to decide whether to use it or not, and those that do use it, how much of their creative process to trust it with.
I think a lot of writers simply don’t understand what AI is, and what it is able and not able to do. Some writers just really, really, really wish we could go back to a time before the AI genie came out of the bottle.
I think you touched on a very important point, which is that most writers (and most people) don't really understand what AI is, how it works, or what it is potentially capable of.
Thank you, Joe. It's an excellent article. In my own case, I use AI to Query, write book proposals, marketing material, and often for intros and outros for my Substack posts. I've also used it for plot outlines, which still requires a lot of input from the writer. I don't use it for a manuscript's content. In fact, I find it annoying in the ways that it changes the voice, and often makes compelling drama melodramatic. But it's an excellent tool for every writer. As the algorithyms improve, it will probably become a high level editor that can assimilate a writers personal style and ethos. However, there will always be new, individual human experiences and writers to depict them, so that AI will always be playing catch-up.
I hope you're right about AI always having to play catch-up. It will give us humans a reason to keep writing.
There's always that reason to keep writing which is to discover things about ourselves.
I agree with all of your points. I don’t have as much of a problem with “AI taking over” as others do. A good story is a good story just as a good film is a good film even though film has gone through dramatic changes through advancements in technology. A Green Screen is a fake location and yet no one has a problem with a scene shot in LA in front of a Green Screen depicting another part of the world. It comes down to how the technology is used to enhance the authencity of storytelling. What’s really going on here is those in power fear the democratization of what they assume is theirs and theirs alone. And isn’t that always the case? If I can write a screenplay using AI that’s just as good if not better than someone who is writing one without AI, what the fk is the difference? The difference is that the general assumption is the writer using AI is uncredentialed using a trick to beat the system. Yeah, like the motor car was a trick to move faster than a horse and buggy.
I was just thinking of the car/horse analogy myself. Very interesting what you say about, "those in power fear the democratization of what they assume is theirs and theirs alone." I hadn't really thought about that. I have mixed feelings. I consider myself a good creative writer (that doesn't mean it's true, but still) and it's nice to think that my skill level validates me. But then I have to wonder why I need that validation. Much to think about here.
Interesting-- the car/horse analogy in this discussion. What has disappeared from the scene, however, is the buggy whip. (Well, disappeared in the transportation industry, anyway.)
Thanks Joe, there's a lot of really thoughtful ideas here. I think I'm like you (and a lot of people here), struggling with determining if AI is a useful tool that will make everyone better or a tidal wave that will wipe out originality. Will it make my words better if I use it? Or leave me totally behind if I don't?
First off, I write marketing copy for a living and AI has made my job very difficult. I write for a very technical data analysis product, so accuracy problems make it hard to use for my own work. The issue is that a ton of people from other teams think they can use AI for marketing copy and just send it to me so I can publish/send it. They spend 10 seconds on something and hand it off to me thinking they've saved me time, but it's done exactly the opposite: invented editing labor that I need to do for marketing work that doesn't need to exist and likely won't be read. The consumer demand for marketing copy isn't increasing, only the supply. My team has no need for a higher quantity of marketing copy, we need better quality.
A different position than an individual writer marketing a novel, but a worthy consideration in the conversation.
As for my fiction, initially I was a holdout on feeding anything into AI, but eventually I gave in. I uploaded my current drafts into both Claude and ChatGPT and asked the AIs to pretend they were literary magazine publishers who were reviewing the stories for publication. They gave me general feedback that was far too friendly to take seriously. But when I started asking specific questions (plot pacing, dialogue realness, character depth), I was very happy with its answers. Like probably a lot of people, I struggle with identify what to cut in my writing. I found that asking both AIs to find 500 words to cut and then cross-referencing them gave me much better clarity than I would have had on my own. It's a good way to get me to kill my darlings.
As an editor, I've found AI tools to be very helpful. I struggle to find readers. The ones I do find generally give me general (overly positive) feedback after a couple weeks. AI will answer specific questions right away and take follow-up questions in depth. Even at midnight when I just finished a draft. And it's read everything, so it is a great resource.
Just for fun, I saved the original outline for a story I just finished and asked AI to write a story from the outline. I compared its result to the one I finished and I was thrilled at how bad it was. I'm not yet scared of AI as a writer, but I'm happy to have it as an editor for now.
Your experiences with AI are very interesting, especially in your role as a copywriter. I guess the unsolicited copy that comes in is a good example of people using AI without understanding the basics of what they are using it for. But it sounds like when you write fiction do you have the experience to recognize when AI is being helpful and when it is not. It's great to have your perspective from both sides of the issue.
I think my experience with using AI for fiction editing is that it is quite helpful when I ask it very specific questions (does the story slow down too much in this monologue? Is the setting described well enough or should I describe more details?) and get answers that I think are more objective than perspectives I can come up with on my own. I've done a small amount of laying groundwork in these conversations so the AI knows I want it to compare my work to published stories. I feel like I get well-researched and trustworthy answers (your story drags at the beginning and needs to get to the action faster or a fiction editor will stop reading before the interesting part).
When I ask general questions (do you think this is good enough to submit to Ploughshares?) I get answers that are obviously designed to make me feel good and keep me engaged, rather than actually help me improve my writing. At first, I thought maybe the AI finally realized how great I was at writing, but as I kept getting gushing feedback on more stories (even my worse ones), I knew it was exaggerated praise.
Well, at least you didn't start talking about carving letters on stone tablets to be considered a 'real writer', which seems to be the average basic bitch response from AI defenders. Most of your points talk about a writer using AI to aid their process of writing. How it can save writers time and money.
From what I've seen, these aren't the reasons why most people have an issue with AI. The vast majority of writers use technology to write, the problem with AI and my problem with AI is that it allows people who have no desire to learn, to craft, or to develop skills to pump out pieces of 'creative writing' and flood the already oversaturated, hypercompetitive market of literature.
Lastly, I hate AI because I know what AI really is. Its purpose isn't to aid people; its purpose is to be the next societal iteration to fuck over creative people. If anyone can now have a book 'created' then why the fuck does the world need creative people? Why do Trad publishing companies need to part with their 10% when they can just create the novels themselves and keep all the profits?
I wouldn't go as far as to say that AI developers intentionally programmed the technology to fuck over creative people. I don't think they ever gave it a thought. We are simply collateral damage.
Please don't think that I am defending AI. I believe there are several passages in the post that talk about how I would love to go back to a non-technological, human centered writing world. I'm only trying to figure out how writers might cope with a technology that is clearly not going away.
Yeah. It's all money.
By this logic, the invention of firearms should have eliminated the practice of martial arts.
The problem with your attitude is that it assumes the rise of AI as a tool for writers is inevitable. If you believe this, then of course you're going to use it--and begin to rely on it. But many of us still write by hand. Many of us still go to the library to research. Many of us reject the advice of others for the sake of maintaining a project's artistic vision. And yes, many of us manage to publish traditionally in this fashion.
Writers fall somewhere along a spectrum of outcome-driven and process-driven. It's always been this way. James Paterson has employed ghostwriters to pump out his novels for thirty years. It's likely he hasn't written a single word himself in decades, and yet his books have sold millions of copies. He is only interested in the outcome. Others slave away in obscurity and leave behind posthumous troves of unpublished material. They never try to publish, or they don't prioritize it. They live to sit down and face the page, to sink into the swales of their own minds. For them, writing is compulsive, and there's a religiosity to the process.
Most writers fall somewhere in the middle. The point is that you don't NEED to use AI to continue to be a writer into the 21st Century. It depends entirely on WHY you write. If it's for the accolades, at any cost, then why not. But as I tell my creative writing students, if your goal is to make money and be respected, go do literally anything else.
To paraphrase a great dead author, "Fiction is about what it means to be a fucking human being." I've been reading your newsletter for awhile and I really enjoy it. I know you've struggled to get your work into the world throughout your career. We all have. But reading today's installment, I can't help but worry that you're prioritizing the wrong things. You talk a lot about how AI is going to help you PUBLISH. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But what are you sacrificing in that arrangement? What are you capitulating to? To me, it seems that you're willingly lobotomizing an aspect of your spirit in exchange for a vague and untenable promise of success. AI has its place, and of course people will use it in search of shortcuts in their art. But just because they do it doesn't mean we all have to. Let them chase vanity. The rest of us can search for meaning.
There will always be writers who write without AI. You can be whatever kind of writer you want, but don't trick yourself into thinking you don't have a choice.
Thanks for this very thoughtful comment. I would say that although I think the use of AI in creative writing is inevitable, there will always be some writers who prefer to write by hand, do their own research, and aren't worried about the commercial aspects of what they do. Just as there are still craftspeople who make furniture by hand and use a dark room to develop their photographs. And this may sound out of character for me, but they are the ones that I respect more than any others. But AI is here and a lot of writers will embrace the technology. We live in a capitalist society that encourages people to monetize whatever it is they do. I can't really fault them for wanting to publish. However, I completely respect your position about that.
I hope it's fairly obvious that what I'm trying to do is bring these issues out for discussion. I just don't see a lot of other people doing that.
Excellent article. I’ve been experimenting with it more in the collaborative process you mentioned, and have been enjoying it. But you do need to be able to exercise good judgment with what it gives you.
Fascinating times.
I agree about needing good judgment. I don't think using AI will turn non-writers into good writers.
Hope you're right, Joe. However, have been seeing lotsa' what must be AI generated job seeking Cover Letters; candidate comes in for interview & is asked to hand write a paragraph or two regarding what they believe they might bring to the job for which they're applying. Voila! Stunning reveal. (Did you know many schools no longer teach cursive?)
I did know that and I am not surprised. One thing I have seen recently that I like, is teachers and college professors resorting back to oral examinations to determine what students really know.
I would thank Mr. Ponepinto for candidly broaching his observations about AI as it relates to creative writing's future. I'm also curious, though, about why he didn't mention literary nonfiction or, say, personal narrative essays or memoirs. Would there perhaps be no difference for such genres when it comes to AI and its apparent growing capabilities?
If an AI technology were used, for example, to help an author develop ideas for a personal narrative essay or for a memoir or for a book of personal essays, would the incorporation of AI ideatioon into such works tend to fictionalize them?
Or would an AI tech simply, say, just notice themes and connections in the writers' personal experiences that the writers had not themselves noticed before they resorted to AI assistance? It is all interesting, I think . . .
Great points. I tend to discuss fiction in these posts because I am primarily a fiction writer. But the issues with AI are just as important in the nonfiction realm. I'm sure AI will further blur the lines there. That being said, I can't help wondering how close something like memoir is to the absolute truth. In creative writing today the guide is "how I remember what happened" as opposed to what actually happened. I actually prefer to read rigorously researched and reported nonfiction. I cringe at what AI might do to that area.
A lot of food for thought here. I'm old fashioned in that I prefer art created by humans, not machines. I can follow the article's premises, because AI can offer an easy (lazy) solution, and I don't want that. Part of what makes good art good is the human effort that went into it. Somebody struggled to make this. So what if it has imperfections; humans are imperfect.
Market pressures for cheaper and faster will bring in more AI, as the article says. People will look for shortcuts for a competitive edge, and there's no stopping it. Personally I won't have anything to do with AI, because it's artificial, counterfeit. The same reason why I hate Disney parks: everything is artificial, forged, and too damned perfect.
Don't get me started on how much I hate Disney! I'm old enough to remember when they made movies making fun of minorities and marginalized people. Now they worship them. All in the name of profit.
No, AI is not going to take over creative writing. It will just attempt to replace it with non-creative writing.
The point being made here is that no writing is truly creative. All knowledge is borrowed. AI is using the experiences of people from all walks of life and applying them to the great stories of our time. As the technology improves, it'll replace us entirely. Cheaper. Faster. Able to double down on trends. It's only a matter of time.
Yes, and as I've said I completely disagree. There is creative writing and there is non-creative writing. Current AI produces only non-creative writing. End of story. When AI starts to think, as opposed to merely analyze what words are most likely to go together then we can talk about machines being creative.
Let me make it simpler.
There is no such thing as creative writing.
Of course. There’s no such thing as English literature either.
Yes, and as I've said I completely disagree. There is creative writing and there is non-creative writing. Current AI produces only non-creative writing. End of story. When AI starts to think, as opposed to merely analyze what words are most likely to go together then we can talk about machines being creative.
I think we have to be careful about hyperbole from Silicon Valley. Large language models haven’t progressed in recent years in the key areas of logic that can withstand close scrutiny, in metacognition, or in long-term memory. No doubt tons of books will be written by AI very soon, but tons of books written by humans are junk. It’s the best stuff that always has counted.
There's a big difference between using AI as a tool and having it "take over creative writing" as your title says. If you want to use AI to write your query letter, or even your synopsis, why not. Writing those is a drag. Writing those is part of the "business" of writing. Writing the actual story is the fun part, and if we give that up, we might as well quit writing entirely and switch careers to any of the many AI-assisted jobs that pay far better than publishing.
Putting AI in charge of writing entire novels would produce the literary equivalent of a hot dog IMO. It might be reasonably tasty, but it's a poor substitute for a real meal.
One of the biggest reasons I love to read is that it puts me inside somebody else's head. It allows me to understand another human being better than I did before, and by extension, all of humanity. I have no desire to understand the mind of a robot. AI might, one day, be able to churn out 1,000 books a day or whatever, but would there even be a market for that? The book market is already saturated now. Unless AI is going to buy and read the books in addition to writing them, that's not a sustainable business model.
To me it all boils down to the same question: why should I be bothered to read a novel that nobody could be bothered to write?
Believe it or not I agree with pretty much everything you say. My issue is that I don't have much faith in the reading public or in corporate America's pandering to them. Based on what my insider friend tells me most people (the few that actually do read novels) soon won't be able to tell the difference between an AI written novel and a human written one. I suspect there will be drastic change in our industry. I started my writing career as a journalist on a community newspaper. We tried to bring a human touch, and a community centered approach to reporting the news, in a way that the big dailies never could. None of us ever thought that industry would be decimated by technology. But it was.
"The few that actually do read novels" buy 700+ million books a year in the United States alone. As a reader, I would never buy a book labeled as AI-written. I want to read books written by human beings. In fact, I would pay more for books written by humans. In fact, I wouldn't read an AI-written book even if it were free. I suspect I'm not alone. It's all about what the market wants, and we're not there yet. The market might soundly reject bot-written novels. There's no reason to be defeatist and accept a slippery slide into "AI writes everything." Let's not be part of the problem due to FOMO. Believe me, I understand the pressure. My day job is pushing these tools at us on a daily basis. We can say no.
Very good point. Sometimes we forget what we have to focus on what we don't have.
FWIW, I attended last month's Futurescapes workshop, and AI of course came up as a topic during the agent Q&A. The agents' general view on whether they want people to pitch them AI-written books was "absolutely not."
I'm not surprised about that. But in the last couple of days I saw something about how a couple of companies are developing software that will allow agents to screen query letters using AI. Obviously I can't say that they will start to use it, but it's something I want to keep an eye on. I doubt they will change their stance on AI written books. I certainly hope they don't. But I wonder if they may begin to accept AI written query letters.
No surprise there. It's similar to how companies are already using AI to screen resumes.
AI is not about writing a better, more engaging story; it’s about improving the chances of making lots of money. If someone is not willing to put in the hard work of writing a story, poem, essay or novel and has no life experience, no insight into human nature, no ability to use language in new ways, no inspiration, no originality, and nothing of enduring value to say about the human condition, they should do something else like go golfing!
But they are probably not very good at golfing either.
They can always take lessons from an AI pro.
Ditto all those who commented, "Excellent article." So many substacks, so little time--- but I did take the time to read yours today and glad I did.
I'm your quintessential starving artist, and writing's my first art. I would pledge my support in a heartbeat to your Stack, Joe, but first must get my guitar and banjo, fiddle and sax outta' hock!
Anyway, nice work here. Great conversation, too!
I totally get it. There are a ton of substacks I would love to support monetarily, but I have to be very selective when it comes to that.
In the longer term, which almost no one worries about, will we find the human soul has been reduced to bits? And given the enormous wealth disparity, to what extent will this soul inputting become one more way the wealthy make regular ordinary meat sacks like you and me irrelevant? Part of me thinks that’s silly. The computer hasn’t led to less literary writing, right? Right?
Yeah, the wealthy always find a way to get wealthier at our expense. To them I am already irrelevant.
It's here for now, no question. But right now it's not much more than a horrifically expensive calculator that is mostly correct and investors may become disenchanted with time. Continued development depends on investment dollars and more data points, and there are conflicting reports about whether enough of both still exists. We've seen tech bubbles like this before. I feel less sure than you about machine sentience. An LLM is mainly a very good mimic. If humans don't fully understand the source of creativity, how could they program a machine to reproduce it? The whole has always been greater than the sum of the parts.
My admittedly limited understanding of how AI works is that it has the ability to access incredible amounts of information (sometimes accurate and sometimes inaccurate) and almost instantly aggregate it and use its algorithms to determine the most likely possible answer. I can't help thinking that the synapses of the brain work in a similar way. You mentioned that "an LLM is mainly a very good mimic." Don't shoot me for saying this, but I think a lot of people operate in exactly the same way. And I'm not sure I can agree with your premise that humans need to understand the source of creativity before they can program a machine to reproduce it. I will say that our limited understanding keeps us from being able to see where the technology will eventually take us, whether that is a good or bad future. That's why I wanted to talk about it.
One of the things that I've noticed in these kinds of conversations is the conflation of two separate lines of inquiry: 1) Can a machine replicate human intelligence? 2) Is such a project a good idea for humanity?
I don't think we should conflate them. The truly interesting question #1, as a research question and an existential one, requires endless experimentation that may or may not come to some kind of satisfactory answer. To do this kind of experimentation requires infinite resources, which we don't have. Not only money and data points, but also water and electricity. The environmental cost of this research is massive and well documented. Which means that we should be giving serious thought to question #2.
Microsoft and the other tech giants are all in (the expenditure and development resources) and trying to raise enthusiasm so they can continue to pursue this question. AI hype is everywhere. As a longtime journalist, that raises my suspicion instantly. We have, as a species, made other errors of judgment (some catastrophic, like the atom bomb) in the quest to conquer the unknown.
The other huge problem pursuing this question, IMHO, is who is in control and why. It has long ceased to be an interesting question and become a capitalist enterprise. The motive has shifted sharply. Do we trust Big Tech to look out for the betterment of humankind or the earth itself, when the big prize (wealth) is in concentrated in the hands of very few? I don't.
I agree, in principle, with what you say. But as I alluded to somewhere in that long post many of the technologies that wind up changing the way we live our lives initially started as something that was thought would benefit humankind. Even atomic energy. The physicists who first realized the power of the atom did not immediately think of making a bomb out of it. No matter what we think of, there are people who instantly try to imagine ways in which the technology can be abused for their own benefit. Does that mean we shouldn't try? Maybe. There is always a price to pay for progress. And what is the alternative? Do we go back to an agrarian and fundamentalist society in which we forget about technological improvements? Am I being hyperbolic? Probably. But how do we find that perfect, middle path?
That's a great question, and I think we should keep asking it. I don't think we're in any real danger of turning the clock back that far, but who knows what happens when half the world burns?
There do seem to be early indications that machine learning can improve medicine in really exciting ways. But we can't let it drive. Lawyers who did both in the US and Canada have been disbarred because the case law generated didn't exist.
We need guard rails and Big Tech won't put them there. I saw that Gavin Newsom enacted the strongest legislation yet to protect consumers. I assume you've read how easily folks are being tricked in all kinds of ways by fakes and scams? This use has already been deployed by those with unethical motives and become a destructive force in society.
I know the act of writing to be a way of thinking. I don't plan on outsourcing my thinking anytime soon and I hope others feel the same way, whether they use chatGPT to help with a draft or not. If we hand over the thinking to those whose project is wealth, we won't like where we end up.
That's for sure. I wish we had more of a European style approach to big tech. They seem to be more aware of the abuses that unrestrained technology can foster, and far more willing to do something about it. As for relinquishing my independent thought, that will never happen. But a lot of people will gladly let AI do their thinking for them, just as they have always let politicians and others do their thinking for them.
Another great post. AI is definitely here to stay, whether we like it or not.
It’ll be up to each creative writer to decide whether to use it or not, and those that do use it, how much of their creative process to trust it with.
I think a lot of writers simply don’t understand what AI is, and what it is able and not able to do. Some writers just really, really, really wish we could go back to a time before the AI genie came out of the bottle.
Happy writing!
I think you touched on a very important point, which is that most writers (and most people) don't really understand what AI is, how it works, or what it is potentially capable of.