It has now been made very evident to me that Clippy should wear a scarlet letter for being AI.
Shame on you, Clippy!
In fact, Clippy was not the first AI tool us writers were already using. There was AI before Clippy.
Gasp!
*author covers mouth with a silk-gloved hand in pure horror*
“Say it isn’t so, cruel world!”
Well, it is.
AI has been around for decades. But now there are the AI witch hunters, and they have their pitchforks sharpened and their torches burning hot – and they want to shame any writer that used any level of AI, even just for a copy edit.
Writers are told they have to be “transparent” about their process and the tools they use, though they never had to before. And when they do so, the mob isn’t placated. No, they pounce like wolves. Or like Gaston.
It reminds me of way back in high school. I shall not admit how long ago. But in the advanced placement art class I was taking, the teacher came to watch me as I painted in watercolor.
Finally, he said, “You could never win any contests with this.”
Stupefied, I said, “I wasn’t going to enter it into anything, but why?”
He shrugged. “This isn’t how watercolor is supposed to look. It should be more transparent and flowing. You’re using it more like an acrylic.”
It was the word “supposed” that always stuck with me. It is art. It isn’t supposed to look like anything at all except what the creator wanted to create, and that should be anything they can dream up, using any process they want, with any tool at their disposal. Art cannot come with rules and boxes and policy about what can and cannot be done in it, as then it is no longer art.
That doesn’t mean you don’t have a right to an opinion. Art should elicit feelings and opinions and discussion. But you don’t have the right to tell the artist what they can and cannot do. If you don’t think a toilet that was spray-painted gold is art, that is your right to think. But it’s not your right to tell the artist they can’t do it.
Were Andy Warhol’s works any less artistic or creative just because he used a silkscreen printing machine to make them? No.
If you don’t like what you see or read, don’t buy it.
I believe in human creativity. I believe in human innovation and design and inspiration. I feel this way about many domains of the human experience. I prefer a family run bistro to McDonald’s. I prefer a small, local cafe to Starbucks. I prefer supporting a local artist versus buying mass produced art at Walmart. I prefer indie music to pop music. And I prefer human-written stories to AI-written ones.
But there are those who prefer McDonald’s and Starbucks and Walmart art, and, yes, AI books. And that is their right. Let the consumer choose what they want. There is a world for us all.
And I don’t believe that spelling, grammar, or syntax checkers, which are all AI-driven, fall into the realm of mass-produced art. Whether a word is spelled right is a zero or one answer; yes or no. It is either right or wrong. It doesn’t require human creativity behind it. I see no failing of any writer who uses AI tools for copy edits, because the spelling, grammar, and sentence checkers in Google Docs and MS Word (Grammarly, etc.) were already AI driven for decades.
Yes.
Decades.
If you are a writer, you were using some form of AI for decades already. So we ALL should be wearing the scarlet letter.
Now agents are telling writers what they can and cannot do based on if it might ‘look’ like AI. So, don’t use hyphens, and no metaphors, and cut other time honored parts of the writing world too.
Really?
I draw the line here.
*talk to the silk-gloved hand*
I have used hyphens for decades – I prefer them to semicolons. See, I just used one. Will the AI mob hunt me down?
I understand the ethical arguments around large scale AI machines such as Claude and ChatGPT if they spit out copyrighted material. Those arguments have validity. But that is a legal question. So let’s talk law then, and only law, and avoid making rules about the artistic process.
My writer’s group chose a balanced approach to using AI. Their new policy is that all work should be human written, bien sûr. But it is okay to use AI tools as a creative partner to improve work, copy edit, as a dictionary or thesaurus, an idea bouncer, etc., just as we have done with many tools, for a long time, in many fields of creative endeavors.
As I watch the mobs form online to question the art of every writer in existence, I have to wonder: don’t we all have far better things to do with our time?
I do.
So I will close this out now and waste no more of your time, or mine.
Summary:
You don’t have to ask permission or approval for your creative process. It is yours, and yours alone. Use what you want to create; Create what you want to make. Those who like it will flock to it. Those who don’t, won’t. Ignore the rabble. They will only stifle your creative spirit. It was always this way. It will always be this way.
Period.