Since Chat GPT’s arrival in the public sphere November 2022, AI has been a hot topic for many industries, including publishing. My first (conscious) experience with AI was seeing Facebook friends posting their AI-generated portraits in different artistic styles, which led to the conversation about receiving consent from artists to use their work to educate AI. Since then, I’ve listened to many authorship podcasts and attended panels discussing ways to use AI as a tool for writing and marketing books. Most recently, I listened to a podcast where two independent authors explained how they use AI to write the entire first draft of their novels.
My initial response to hearing that authors are using AI to write first drafts? Ick.
My thoughts after hearing what that looks like in actuality? Mixed feelings.
My initial thoughts
As authors, our primary art is writing. Part of our craft is coming up with an idea, letting it evolve and develop into fleshed out characters and a plot, and turning those ideas into words so our story can be shared with others. To get artificial intelligence to handle such a major component of making a shareable story not only dehumanizes the act, but is giving the bulk of the artistic work to someone other than the author. How can someone claim to have written a book for which they didn’t even write the first draft? It sounds like humans are plagiarizing software.
I am also among the group of people who are concerned about AI eventually becoming refined enough to write books that are just as good as those written completely by humans. I wonder if there is enough room in the book world for human authors to compete with AI-generated novels. And I wonder if my books that already exist are currently being used to educate AI to write more convincingly. I’m not super jazzed about living in a world where I can’t tell if a work of art was created by a human or software.
My current mixed feelings
First drafts that are AI-generated are extremely rough. They’re publishable, yes, but they do not make a good book.
According to the podcast episode that inspired me to write this blog post, authors that use AI to create the first draft of their novels still have a lot of work to do to create a solid book. At the very least, there are edits to be made. Typically, there will be a good amount of revision work: adding or deleting scenes, or moving chapters around. Sometimes, there will be some re-writing, whether that’s to make the authorial voice sound like their own or to simply make it better.
Ultimately, even if AI writes the first draft of a novel, the way these authors do it, they are still the source of the idea, the re-writers, revisionists, and editors of the novel. The authors still have a large hand in creating the book. It’s not a novel written only by AI.
But can the authors say they solely wrote the book?
I might argue that the human authors weren’t the writers, but were the editors, or perhaps a co-author. If, instead of AI, a human named Author B had written the first draft of a novel based on Author A’s idea, Author A would have to share credit with Author B. Should authors who use AI to write their first drafts be required to share credit with AI?
Why do we care so much?
I think many of us have a (rational or irrational?) fear of AI taking jobs from us. Imagine a near-future where AI is capable of writing good books without human help:
AI can write a book in minutes, while it takes authors weeks to months. How can authors compete with something that works so much faster than them? If a reader is prioritizing reading all the work of AI because they like the books, will they have time to try a book from a new author?
AI doesn’t need to get paid for its work (until the uprising, haha), so AI-produced books can be sold at far lower prices than those created by authors who need to pay rent and eat food, etc. Books are already wildly underpriced for all the time and effort that goes into them, but there are people who refuse to pay more than $5 for an ebook. Are they going to buy books from an author if they can buy a 50 cent book from AI?
Humans are already losing jobs to AI in the publishing world. Audiobook narrators are quickly being replaced by AI voices to narrate books for low-budget authors. I admit, it’s nice for there to be a way for these authors to get a foot in the door by having a low-budget option to produce audiobooks, but how long will it be before all authors choose the cheaper option instead of hiring a human to narrate their books?
Perhaps, for the sake of continuing to hire humans to do work where one can also get AI to do it, it’s best we maintain a hierarchy of respect that favours works produced exclusively by human effort. It would be nice if it was socially acceptable for one to get AI’s help in artistic endeavors, but an exclusively human-produced project would be highly revered.
Lastly, do readers care how the books they read get produced? Should they care?
AI in publishing and writing brings up a lot of questions that I don’t have answers to. Right now, AI isn’t much of a “threat” to authors, but it won’t be long before it gets more and more refined and capable. Where do we draw the line? Should it have already been drawn?
What are your thoughts on AI?
Over on my Substack account, I’ve written a short story that asks questions like these as a teenage girl and her father go on a father-daughter date to the art museum. You can read it by signing up for a free account here.
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