Josh Jackson Author

All the arguments against AI use in the arts have been made. There’s no need to go over it all once more, and I’ve had my own say here.

What I’d like to say about AI today is not a statement but a promise. Though I do need to say a few things first.

For starters, I’ve never used AI for writing. In fact, I’ve never used autofill on my phone. I tried it long ago when it first came out and decided I prefer to write my own words, thank you very much. I’m a writer, so how bad would it be to use autofill?

I’ve certainly never used writing prompts. I don’t let AI peruse my works for improvements or edits. How could I ethically call myself a writer if I’m not the one doing the writing?

That said, I can’t help AI use where it’s forced on me or not disclosed.

Spell checkers or grammar checkers may now use AI. I don’t know. But I rarely use grammar checkers as it is, other than once on my final drafts to ensure I didn’t miss aything. Usually it’s just typos. I’ve been an excellent speller since grade school in the 1980’s.

And that’s probably the kicker– growing up without AI or internet or smartphones. When I graduated high school, the internet was something nerds used or tech people delved into. Dialup was the only home option, and back then it took over the house phone line, which made mom and dad a little annoyed.

I actually taught myself to type on an actual typewriter at age 13. My mother showed me home row and I took it from there. It was actually a Brother word-processing typewriter, with the option to type each line digitally on a small LCD and check it before typing. Paper and ink cartridges cost money, so you had to get it right the first time. That screen was a godsend.

So my reticence for AI isn’t some distrust of computers or word processing. Heck, I used Windows 3.1 on my first PC, writing short stories in the earlier versions of Word in the mid-1990’s. I’ve been on the scene for days. 

Really, it sort of comes down to the fact that I became a writer on my own, without AI, and in most cases without much encouragement from others. My parents were supportive, as were a few teachers but most peers saw a “word nerd” or “bookworm” weirdo, hiding in novels or my own short stories.

I am a self-made writer, so the very idea of turning the wheel over to AI or even a ghost writer, is antithetical to my very being. I read a writer’s Thanks at the end of the book and they say their editor saved the book from their own mediocrity. Wow. I’d actually worry that an editor would take over my book and ruin it, while other writers depend on that editor to save the work.

Now I get it.

My insistence on actually being a good writer, on doing it all myself and keeping to a strong work ethic or high level of personal integrity, are not how the “bestselling” authors work. They instead churn out crap that anyone could write, their editors (and now AI) save their bacon, and readers are none the wiser.

Even my current favorite writer, the decades-dead Lawrence Sanders, shamelessly turned his final novels over to another writer, which I found so distasteful. Sanders lost some of my esteem, though his earlier works are clearly his own– that incredible prose, still making him one of the greats.

I simply cannot agree with letting others write your work while putting your name in the byline. And thanks to my decade-plus in journalism this ethic was only reinforced further.

So after saying all that, what’s the promise?

I promise to continue never, ever willfully or wittingly using AI in my writing. 

Now, I can’t help if AI runs spellcheckers or grammar checkers, but that would be the absolute limit for me. And of course those things don’t write the book for you. 

I can’t help AI being inserted into so many aspects of our lives, so if some aspect of the writing process used, say, AI in a web search for research, I can’t always help that. I have such features disabled on my end, but can’t shut it off everywhere else. 

But I can honestly say I have never used one of those chatbot GPT things and will not ever. I’ve tried some image generators for my book covers but with moderate success at best. I’d prefer to design my own covers, really. If I were so skilled.

But I’ll always write my own words. My books, stories, blog posts, texts, emails, are, and will always be, written by a human. Me. 

And that’s why my next book won’t come out for a bit. I’m still writing it, and that process, if done correctly, takes time. As much time as it takes. My first novel took an extra two months to complete past the self-imposed deadline I’d given myself. But it wasn’t ready, and I refused to release it until I felt it was complete. And I only asked other humans for feedback.

Judging by the Nigerian scammers hitting me up for cash, AI reads Run, Interrupted, and does not see a quite serious, ever-darkening, ever-tightening tale of an isolated man’s descent into a form of madness, but reads it as a black comedy. AI just can’t understand. Why would I turn to it when it can’t even read?

You’ve experienced it, the AI “support” that doesn’t understand basic speech or language, and certainly is both rock-dumb and fully insane. It’ll even argue, in robotic speech, that no, you’re wrong, it’s a human. I demand to speak to a human and it finally relents, saying “okay I’ll get you to a human support person.” Or it gets stuck in loops you’d expect in a sci-fi comedy routine. Just ridiculous, laughable “support.”

I can’t get AI to find things online but my own digging does. I can’t get AI to generate images of real places, but it does apparently know how to instruct me on suicide. Unreal! 

And since I learned all my life skills sans internet or AI or smartphone, I do not need them to live my life. Well, no more than I’m forced to use them. But for writing, no AI!

And the way things are going, that may end up a selling point, in which people are looking for AI-free books and stories. Look no further!

With a torrent of AI-written books inexorably filling the literary ocean, sea levels ever rise. The remaining land mass of human-only-written books dwindles. 

Perhaps we can develop some sort of seal or mark to place on our works to denote either no AI use or human-only-created content? It could be a classification one can select in bookstores to filter out all the slop.

If we can’t stem the tide at least we can direct it, manage it. Restrain it enough so us true literary laborers can actually get our ships out of port.

So there it is. My solemn, serious vow to you my readers. 

You’ll always read human-only-created stories from me, and never will I use AI to write.