Thoughts on GenAI
When I published Saint of the Shadows, generative AI was pure comedy: a barely recognizable Will Smith eating spaghetti—or was it eating him?—or a computer-written Applebee’s commercial with an absurd level of enthusiasm and literalism. However, generative AI has vastly improved since then. I feel like I’m still able to clock AI writing and art, but my ability to do so has diminished.
As an indie author, I have many concerns about generative AI. My book Personal Best was used to train Meta’s AI, and as much as I laughed at that news (because if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry), I also felt violated. I wasn’t paid. They used my book, which had been uploaded to a piracy website that has notoriously lost lawsuits but whose victims haven’t been able to recoup financial damages. Flat out: generative AI's current models steal from artists.
For supporters of indie authors, I also see generative AI tainting the reader experience from dishonest or inaccurate AI-penned reviews on popular sites to subpar AI works hurting the search engine experience for readers trying to find the books that interest them. Not to mention the handful of indie authors who left ChatGPT prompts in their books…
On the traditional front, the Chicago Sun-Times among other reputable newspapers published a summer reading list written by generative AI with made-up books. How can a reader trust a newspaper if its reporters and editors can’t be bothered to write or fact-check the articles they publish, even if it is as something as innocuous as a summer reading list? Furthermore, traditional publishing has championed genAI-created book covers and most recently, gave an opportunity to an author who had generative AI assist in writing his most recent book. And this is in addition to this author notoriously deceiving readers, most famously Oprah, with his first book. Clearly, generative AI impacts indie and traditional spaces alike.
I want to make my position clear: I absolutely do not intentionally support generative AI art nor will I ever use generative AI at any point in my writing. On one hand, I enjoy the process of writing too much to share the work with a computer. On the other hand, generative AI’s environmental impact, particularly in how it is affecting communities’ air and water quality now is enough to make me step away from it.
Most AI proponents raise the wonders of assistive AI. I can't argue the help a spelling or grammar checker has offered me or the ease of Alexa reading a recipe to me while I'm working in the kitchen. But, assistive is different from generative.
Ultimately, you as readers, are owed a human experience, warts and all. To paraphrase author Jeff Zentner (whose novel Goodbye Days I adored and read in one sitting), I don’t want to read about love from something that has never experienced it.
If you’re American, I’d highly recommend contacting your representatives and senators to allow regulation of generative AI and to encourage safeguards in its use. As with any innovation, it needs to be used responsibly with care to people's livelihoods and the planet.
