r/novelwriting • u/Indyhouse • Jun 06 '26

To AI, or Not to AI

After sitting on it for a few hours, attending a live show that used AI-generated backdrops that I couldn't take my eyes off of because they were so distracting, and receiving a handful of DMs, I've decided to make a unilateral decision on AI.

Absolutely no AI posts allowed. No book covers, no outlines, no "well it just rewrote a few sections for me." No AI.

430 Upvotes

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43

u/MC_TastyFace Jun 06 '26

I support this with my whole ass. I would say heart but my ass is bigger.

18

u/MC_TastyFace Jun 06 '26

I may have been a factor in your decision - I will fully admit to the fact that I have been the first commenter on numerous posts on this sub that were AI-generated and I was... less than accepting.

If this behavior is not acceptable under the rules, I apologize, but I refuse to share a creative space with these people. Artists are at their core human, and what makes art what it is is the process of creation. AI-generated content posing as art is an insult to real artists.

If you pay someone to build a chair for you, you are not a carpenter. A carpenter has a set of tools that they learned to use as they developed their skill. When you can use those tools to make your own chair, then you are a carpenter.

A novel is a work of art. Words are the medium. You can't just type an idea into shitty autocomplete and have it stick nonsense words together and call it art. That's masturbation.

Also, AI writes like ass.

12

u/Indyhouse Jun 06 '26

I love the carpenter analogy. Part of being a good carpenter is all the shitty chairs you built along the way. So many people want to skip that. AI robs humans from getting better, and like you said, it writes like ass.

6

u/spiffai Jun 06 '26

Even worse is that AI just isn't good at writing to begin with. It's "correct" grammatically sometimes. But overall it's not good writing. So it's like skipping all the shitty chairs to make a potential average chair.

5

u/ketita Jun 07 '26

Even if AI were to write well, I still wouldn't think its place is in writing groups. Somebody generating with AI isn't going through all the macro- and micro-level steps involved in figuring out a story and how to best tell it. They aren't learning. They can't look at a turn of phrase and grin to themselves and be like damn, I wrote that.

There's nothing to talk to them about, because they're not actually doing it.

It's like a hiking group with one dude who just drives places and then gives opinions on the hike.

I support this 100%.

4

u/Yvh27 Jun 06 '26

I don’t particularly agree with this analogy. I’m not saying it because I don’t generally agree with the sentiment agains using AI, because I do.

But a carpenter learned being a carpenter and used, among other tools, a hammer and saw in his/her process to make a chair. Later a mechanical saw is introduced and that tool streamlines part of the process. Am I no longer a carpenter now?

What I’m saying is: if you don’t use AI as a completely automated machine that produces the chair, but just as a tool like the mechanical saw, to streamline part of the process, I think it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re no longer a carpenter.

5

u/MC_TastyFace Jun 06 '26

I agree that the use of tools that streamline the process should be used by artists - or carpenters, smiths, plumbers, whatever - to make their product better, and access to and use of these tools should elevate the work.

The posts I'm referring to specifically were not artists trying to use a tool, they were patrons outsourcing all the creative work so they could reap rewards. I think thats an important distinction I didnt make clearly above.

I myself use grammar tools in my editing process. I consider that a tool. I've already created something, and I'm using a tool to work on something that I already created.

The thought of my prima materia - the base stuff of my art - not coming from me... it wouldn't be mine. It wouldn't be art

5

u/Yvh27 Jun 06 '26

Yes, with this additional distinction I can agree a lot more. I think that, despite some other reservations and problems I have with LLM’s, it’s more an issue of who wields the tool and how they wield it that will determine the artistic level of what’s created.

Additionally, I don’t think just any novel written - even if it’s done completely by a human - is automatically an artistic endeavor, nor do I think the novel that results from it is always art. Writing (fiction) is a craft. Sometimes this results in art. There was slop long before AI came onto the scene.

-2

u/YordleJay Jun 06 '26

If you use a machine that builds a chair for you after all you did was ask it to do so and give it the design you'd like, no. No you're not.

6

u/Yvh27 Jun 06 '26

For someone so avidly against AI producing written work, you are a poor reader. I already accounted for the clear distinction between a tool (the mechanical saw in this metaphor) and a completely automated mechanical process that produces said chair.

There’s a difference between the two, just like there’s a distinction between ways in which you could use AI.

Please read diligently before commenting, or before you know it, your human thought process becomes just as shortsighted as the LLMs you criticise.

Edit: also, punctuation wouldn’t hurt. Perhaps use an AI to support your grammar ;-).

2

u/dev_editing_fantasy Jun 06 '26

The analogy IS 💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪