by Thomas Kies
Last week Artificial Intelligence snuck like a digital poltergeist into our writing critique group.
About eight of us have been meeting every Tuesday for months and I’ve enjoyed it tremendously. The group helped me finish my last manuscript.
Most of the participants are former students of mine and their writing skills continue to grow. Many of them are working on novels of their own and every week I look forward to hearing the next chapter of their book. They work hard on their craft and take it seriously.
Recently, we accepted a new member to our group. For the sake of propriety, let’s call her Mary. She’s retired, pleasant, and she self-published a novel a few years ago. It is a harrowing tale about a young girl who is abused and shuttled from one foster family to another. Mary was interested in joining our group because she wanted to rewrite her novel. She felt it needed to be “fleshed out”, details added and include more scene and character descriptions.
All in all, she wants to make it a better book. We enthusiastically welcomed her into our group.
Last week, she read a chapter from her book that had been reworked. We were all impressed with the level of detail and descriptions that she used, and we told her so.
That’s when she dropped the bomb. She was using something called Claude AI. I looked it up and it does much the same as the other A.I. platforms, including “write, edit, and create content”.
Many in the group, including me, were incensed. I inherently despise A.I. We work hard at our craft. We feel that letting A.I. do our writing is not writing at all, but cheating.
We had a few dissenters and an interesting debate ensued. One of our members said, “She’s planning to self-publish again. She’s enjoying herself. What’s the harm?”
Another argued, “What’s the difference between using A.I. in writing and using CGI in movies? Do you use Spellcheck or the Thesaurus on your computer? Isn’t this just an extension of that?”
Mary worried that we were going to kick her out of the group, which none of wanted to do.
But it leads me to a conundrum. Knowing that Mary is using A.I., and that platform is essentially “stealing” word combinations and phrases from other published writers, including myself, how is this different from plagiarism?
And how do we offer criticism and support knowing what Mary is reading isn’t completely her own work?
My contention is if you’re going to let A.I. do your writing, what’s the point of doing it at all?
Since this came up, I’ve read a lot of arguments, both for and against the use of A.I. in creative writing. Some argue that it is no different than using Autocorrect or Grammerly, or for that matter, a pen or pencil.
Others argue that it is, indeed, plagiarizing other writers since what A.I. is giving the user isn’t something new and creative, but something that someone else has already written.
I know that moving forward, I’m afraid that I won’t be much help to Mary. I am concerned that as A.I. moves further into our daily lives, how that will affect the creative process. I know some argue it makes it better.
I liken it a little bit to a handheld calculator. Since their widespread availability, my math skills have gone straight to hell because I don’t use them anymore. I rely on that tiny machine.
Will that happen to creativity? Will we become so lazy and reliant upon computer chips, that the human soul that is inherent in good writing is subsumed by artificial intelligence?
Or am I being a pain in the ass and should let it go, as someone argued, “She’s enjoying herself. What’s the harm?”
