Thieves and pirates and AI, oh my

The Atlantic recently alleged Meta used the massive pirate site LibGen to train its generative AI tool Llama 3. Five of my books were included.Obviously, many authors are furious, especially because court documents allege CEO Mark Zuckerberg approved using the LibGen dataset knowing it contained pirated material. They defend their data scraping on the grounds of fair use.

If AI can produce content that mimics my author style or regenerates portions of my books, I call that infringement, not fair use. Innovation doesn’t excuse exploitation. So, here I am iterating that I don’t use AI. I put on my copyright page that I don’t use it, nor do I grant permission to use my books to train AI.

AI content has flooded the book market, even my niche genre of JAFF. And these AI-aided books don’t just mean books entirely written by generative AI. We can agree those are terrible—for now. Brilliant stories that understand and examine the human condition can’t yet be replicated by a machine.

But AI can plot (“write an outline for a 15 chapter book where Darcy and Elizabeth meet after Hunsford at a house party and he’s jealous when another man flirts with her but then Darcy rescues her from him”). It can brainstorm (“how should Darcy and Elizabeth reconcile after they argue about Wickham in chapter 3?”). It can research (“explain to me how inheritance and entails worked in regency England”). And it can rephrase our words (“rewrite these paragraphs with more feelings and descriptions to show they’re both sorry.”)

Everyone has to decide where to draw the line, but I don’t do any of those things or read books where I know for sure AI was used in those ways. I research my own books and take classes to learn more (thank you Regency Fiction Writers). I plot (pencil and paper) and outline (Word) myself. I use humans to review and edit and proofread my work.

(So, that stupid typo that made it in the book? It slipped past many, many human eyes.)

It’s me and my keyboard putting in the work outlining, plotting, researching, and toiling through some crummy drafts before you get that kickass final product. And that means I can only put out 2 books a year. Like, at most 😅

Authors who use AI to plot, brainstorm, or even write for them can release more books faster. But I feel using AI can make one dependent over time. Everything from error fixing, to plotting, to writing dialogue, they’ll lose the skills to improve. How creative, how interesting, will their future books be? How good are their current ones if AI did the heavy lifting?

The AI genie isn’t going back into the bottle, but it’s also not a substitute for the critical thinking, creativity, and the expertise of human authors. Ultimately, it is up to individual authors to weigh the potential benefits and drawbacks of using AI to support their writing, and readers must decide how much AI use they’ll support with their wallets and time.

Aside from all of that, there are economic and environmental concerns about using AI. For me, I won’t marginalize human creators. AI isn’t a productivity tool I can use and still sleep at night. So it’s just me over here working on that next book, plotting, and rewriting, and researching until it’s something I’m proud of enough to share with you.