Prologue (I heard some readers skip these.)
The Atlantic released an article insinuating a well-received indie romance soon-to-be traditionally published was heavily written with AI. The piece felt like an irresponsible character assassination.
To be clear, I am anti generative AI. What should be a tool has continually replaced creativity and critical thinking (see the Hank Green controversy). And now, it has mass produced content to such a severe degree, readers struggle to find books that speak to their souls. This isn’t even addressing generative AI’s negative impact on the environment, communities hosting data centers, users’ mental health, and the incomes of the artists’ whose work trained it without their permission.
AI accusations also seem to attack authors with the least amount of privilege. James Frey bragged about using it. Coral Hart spoke to the New York Times about how much money she made from her generated books. Yet when a Black author wrote a popular book, the accusations emerged and had real consequences. The author of Shy Girl lost her traditional publishing deal and recently, a Nigerian debut author lost a $2 million deal. The merit of these decisions is all-the-more questionable as these same publishers embrace generative AI for content and book covers.
Romance = Gross!
That is a lot of preamble to set up what I actually want to talk about. I want to look at a comment found underneath The Atlantic’s article. The gist: if sci-fi, horror, and Romance are slop anyway, why does it matter if AI wrote it?
This is the attitude of a hater. They think genre fiction, especially Romance, is low effort and low craft. The large part of this attitude is due to misplaced misogyny, as the genre has a majority women audience reading stories centering characters’ happiness and pleasure. (I know Romance is enjoyed by men and non-binary people too. Society’s disdain of the genre is still rooted in misogyny.)
Et tu, Romance reader?
I can’t persuade haters to change their minds. But I can speak to the lovers of Romance. Too often self-proclaimed Romance lovers justify their reading choices with phrases like “brain off entertainment” or “it’s fine if you don’t think too deeply about it.” I’ve never seen horror or sci-fi readers say anything along those lines, which makes me think some Romance readers perform self-deprecation to appease the haters. And that self-deprecation invites haters to look down on the genre further. If Romance is brain-off entertainment, what does it matter if a human wrote it? If you don’t have to think deeply, who cares if AI churns it out? The self-deprecation plays directly into devaluing human art and connection.
“But I say brain off because I have a PhD and want to read for fun!” (Or variation of this argument.)
I’m not saying you should get from Romance what you get out of an academic article. Fun and titillation are perfectly fine reasons to read Romance, and fun and titillation are not lesser emotions. Yet readers are guilty of emotion ranking if joy is called “brain-off” while anger and sadness are treated as serious. Further, simpler and more accessible prose doesn’t mean the reader’s brain is off. Disney films and fairy tales invite enormous discussion and analysis while being understood by a general audience. I’ve never seen those called brain-off entertainment.
As Al Pacino said in Scent of a Woman, “I’m Just Getting Started!”
The self-deprecation shows up in insidious ways too. Some readers want mediocre or bad sex depicted on the page because Romance somehow bears responsibility for society’s failures in sex education. This desire to make romance educational stems from good intentions, but ultimately it is rooted in shame. The attitude is that pleasure must have a lesson to be considered valuable. But when it comes to Romance, the joy is the point.
I understand the importance of emphasizing in real life how sex is about connection rather than performance. However, my characters are going to have good sex—reality be damned. They’re going to need to change the sheets early in the session. They’re going to have multiple orgasms easily. Readers who take issue with these common micro tropes might benefit from sitting with the internalized misogyny embedded in those good intentions. If readers need a sex education, they should read informative books. If high heat romance’s common micro tropes make someone feel uncomfortable, they may be reading above their preferred heat level or simply haven’t found their place in the Romance genre yet.
Romance is about happiness, love, and pleasure. If we find ourselves justifying our love of it as brain-off or judging Romance by its realism while being unbothered by characters never using the toilet, we need to pause and think about why we’re explaining our joy to people who never want to understand it in the first place. Quit backhanding Romance.
