May 15, 20232 min read

Is AI Muddying the Waters for Writers?

Last week, I came to the depressing decision to stop sharing my #fridayKiss lines on social media as well as my First Wednesday WIP excerpts at Bryn Donovan’s website because of my growing anxiety about AI. Donovan announced on Twitter on May 8, 2023 that June 2023 will be her last First Wednesday WIP. Maybe I’m overly protective or paranoid, but I went so far as to delete all previously posted #fridayKiss images and stories from all my social platforms. The decision was not an easy one. Writing is such a solitary effort, I looked forward to the interaction on Fridays and those first Wednesdays of the month. I relished sharing my WIP excerpts as readers offered kudos and insights that helped motivate and dial in my prose.

AI-generated writing usually copies information it finds across the internet, meaning it tends to plagiarize and steal ideas from other writers. This muddies the water when it comes to writing styles and makes people more likely to copy instead of forming their own ideas. --Seth Franco, Purbalite

This thoughtful article from Purbalite (a high school newspaper—a HIGH SCHOOL! but that’s beside the point) solidified my decision.

With ChaptGPT and other AI writing programs, I don’t want my hard work to one day be “rewritten” for someone else’s gain.

Some writers may say they use it to get out of writer's block... But with all that is being put out there with the Hollywood Writers' Strike—regulating use of AI, writing for scale, writing for free—it is worrisome. But I fear the genie is out of the bottle and there is no putting it back in.

Any thoughts on AI? And if you post your work on the internet, as AI develops, has it made you rethink sharing your work online?

2 Comments

Christina Morland

May 15, 2023

Posting online has always been fraught because, as we know too well in JAFF, there are humans who plagiarize. My understanding of ChatGPT and other AI large language models is that the "learn" from what's online, but technically, what they produce is "unique" each time (certain words, phrases, character names will be different with each request to the AI)...so it won't be your writing that appears in someone else's chatbox, but something that could sound very much like your writing or your story, produced in just a fraction of the time. So the real concern, I think, is not plagiarism but effort/reward. If it costs nothing (which is pretty much what it costs) to produce an AI-generated story or novel…

Replying to

I agree with everything you said. My little post is just my small take, but as always, you are more thoughtful and looking at the larger scope. I think the genie is out of the bag and there's no putting it back.