Yet Another AI Rant

AI is problematic.

I’m going to skip over all the usual reasons. Yes, I know my work was stolen to train models. Yes, I get the copyright issues. Yes, I know about the environmental impact. Yes, it probably is making us dumber.

But let’s forget all that and talk about some implications.

We can’t put the AI worms back in the can. It’s a technology that we now have to learn how to live with, navigate and create around. I think this is going to be an even bigger problem for images than text. That new Sora update? Whew, man. We are headed for a reality crisis.

But I digress.

There is now a spectrum of people, from AI evangelists to AI haters, and everybody thinks they are an expert and can spot AI in all its forms from a mile away.

Which has ushered us into the Age of the AI Witch Hunt.

I know this is going to be a controversial opinion, but I don’t think your average reader cares if AI was used in the creation of a book or any entertainment product. They just want a good time from their money.

I think book enthusiasts, creatives and authors care. But they are not the ones driving sales. There’s an author in my niche who has published 30 full length novels in under 2 months. Now, there are plausible explanations for that. Like, Kindle Vella imploded, so maybe she took a bunch of her serials and repackaged them for KU. Maybe she has a legion of ghostwriters. Maybe she’s been writing for 20 years and has been sitting on them and has some novel rapid release plan in place.

Or, it is AI.

I read one of them. The prose was boring. The story cookie cutter, but engaging enough to keep my attention. And a lot of other people had the same opinion as it climbed high in the ranks and is making money.

Lately, many authors have been smacked with AI usage accusations, in their covers, in their marketing, in their writing to which there is no good defense for. If someone thinks your cover is AI and then therefore the whole book must be, what information can you give them that will really change their minds?

Sidebar - Can I just bitch about the em dash problem. AI is trained on good English usage, so it’s going to use the correct grammar. The em dash is a sign you know what you are doing with the written English language. I don’t know how to use an em dash, so I don’t. My very human editor has the delightful task of putting them all in the proper place for me. Stop saying the em dash is a sign of AI. It’s a sign of good writing.

Are we as authors going to have to collect evidence that we write our words? And what’s going to be good enough? Time stamped documents? Live video footage of all of our shitty first drafts? What is going to quell you inner Karen take down of authors you don’t like? And why do I have to fucking answer to keyboard warriors who can threaten my entire career, over an opinion they are not qualified to have? If you don’t like my work, say that. That’s fine. Whatever.

This is especially rich knowing that AI detectors do not work. At all.

Just for shits and giggle, I put a few of my own pieces into Zero GPT, the leading free AI checker. And guess what. It found AI.

Now, it could be I’m just a generic basic ass bitch and my writing sounds like all other basic ass bitch writing. It could be that my own books have been used to train AI. That is a fucking mind trip thought experiment right there. My books were used to train AI, so AI now sounds like me and AI is going to detect AI because my work was used to train it? Man, I don’t want to live in this Black Mirror episode.

And here’s the proof for you how very wrong this all is. I took the first chapter of Accidental Vampire and ran it through Zero GPT. Oh lookie, 18% suspected AI generated content.

Oh I know, you’re going to go look at the publishing date on Amazon. Ah HA! It could have been AI generated, you shout! Tsk, tsk, tsk, Accidental Vampire was published on March 7, 2023 (My 50th birthday week by the way).

And you know that, you are certain, because Google’s search AI told you that Chat GPT was released on November 30, 2022. I had a whole four months that I could have dicked around with Chat GPT to write Accidental Vampire.

Only problem is, my polished draft was ready for my editor on Sept 14, 2022. The whole book was done, polished, formatted and ready for an editor a big fat month before Chat GPT was even a twinkle in our digital landscape.

After I tested that, I put the chapter of Knot Your Pucking Sunshine (the book I’m currently writing. Pre-order for April 2026 release!) through the detector. 20%! I did a messy first draft, that I will not show you because, frankly, the typos are embarrassing. That scored 6% precent, so I guess it sees shitty writing as human.

And then I put juiciest thing I’ve written in a while... I mean this piece, every syllable was crafted as if channeled from the gods directly. That hit 6%.

This little bit of blog fluff? This thing I’m writing right now? The thing that you are reading? This is 0% AI crafted.

So, I don’t know what the fuck means. My polished prose looks AI to the AI? And yet, I can fling words at a screen in some rage-filled stream of consciousness where IDGAF about form, style, pretty words and fucking em dashes? That?? THAT? That is what AI thinks is human? And not the paragraphs where I spend an hour on Word Hippo trying to decide between “lush” and “posh”. Or the twisting of scene mechanics just so I can make a Machiavelli joke?

No, AI likes my off the cuff all-thoughts-no-craft work.

So what do we do? We are all going to get hit by the AI Accusation stick at some point. And there will be authors who jump all the way into AI tools who are going to be making vacation house payments with the 400 page billionaire romance they generated in 12 hours.

I don’t have any answers here. But we need to start having a different conversation about AI. Using it as a weapon right now is not working and it exhausts all of us.