Your Problem, Not Mine

The AI debate continues to rage in the creative writing space.

Personally, I don’t care. AI can be a useful tool for brainstorming or research. It is good at giving summaries and performing technical analysis. Sometimes it can even provide helpful editorial suggestions.

But I write because I enjoy writing. I’ve played around with AI for creating stories and found it kills my unique voice. It trends toward the predictable, the already said before. It can be quirky, but only if the quirks have already been trodden by others before me. So, if you work with it for any length of time, you begin to see repeating patterns in its output that are identifiable without an AI screening tool. This, to me, is dead prose. I want to write something alive in its unique imperfections, something that reflects its creator’s soul.

This is not a judgement on others. As a reader, I don’t care who or how a story was created so long as it entertains me. I tend to believe that the best, most surprising stories will be those told by humans, but I won’t be disappointed or disenchanted if a few AI-generated tales happen to delight me.

Should creators disclose if they used AI in their work? Ethically, yes, I think that is the proper way to go about it. Am I interested in conducting witch hunts to identify and condemn those who don’t? Not at all. Sounds like their problem, not mine.

Folks are going to find shortcuts in every endeavour. Just look at the industry of performance-enhancing drugs in sports. Some people will do anything to win. Some people will find ways to justify and rationalize it. But unlike writing, sport is a zero-sum game. There can be only one winner.

In the creative space, there is no single winner. J. K. Rowling’s popularity does nothing to detract from Stephen King’s. And yes, I know you are concerned about drowning in a deluge of AI-created content, but the more AI stories there are, the more human-written stories will stand out.

I prefer stories with jagged edges, tales where the author’s personality shines through. The type of impolite, unpredictable storytelling that AI’s guardrails will not allow. With the rise of AI, I suspect that these stories will rise to the top because of, instead of despite, their lack of polish.

One of my current favourites to follow is Jake Bible. You can tell he is having fun with his writing. It makes it fun to read. And he takes his stories places that AI just can’t go. It is refreshing and delightful.

I hope that my stories can surprise and delight in a similar fashion, that they can transcend the bland world of AI-generated prose. And if they can’t–well then, I suppose they deserve to drown in the deluge.

The world is always full of people worrying about what other people are doing. Me, I’m too busy writing to worry about it. Writing is fun; worrying is not. Your power resides in the things you can control.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

Meanwhile, as the AI debate rages, I just finished the first draft of Ghost Drivers for submission next month in another upcoming Raconteur Press anthology and am almost through the first edit of my 10,000 word Sword & Sorcery tale for the anthology Savagery on the High Seas (both stories will require several passes before they are submission ready).

There are six submission opportunities for July that I will begin writing for.

And then there is figuring out the layout and design for Soiled Undies. June promises to be a busy month.

Today’s Substack story from my Bleeding the Dark Humours collection is Mirror, Mirror: https://brainsoupfic.substack.com/p/mirror-mirror