AI Writing and the Indie Author

"Julia was twenty-six years old... and she worked, as he had guessed, on the novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department. She enjoyed her work, which consisted chiefly in running and servicing a powerful but tricky electric motor... She could describe the whole process of composing a novel, from the general directive issued by the Planning Committee down to the final touching-up by the Rewrite Squad. But she was not interested in the final product. She "didn't much care for reading," she said. Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces."

-George Orwell, 1984

One of the more controversial things in our business these days is the use of AI writing. Basically, algorithms that are "trained" on the works of millions of other authors that are given prompts to generate unique manuscripts under the auspices of, "Write me an Agatha Christie novel" or "Write me a Stephen King novel."

Many authors you wouldn't expect to be entered into these machines are ones that have been used in the training of AI such as myself. Books pirated from various torrent sites if that makes a difference versus paid for their use (which may or may not make a difference to you, dear reader). According to LibGen, I have several of my books used in the process. AI knows me well enough that if you entered, "Who is CT Phipps" you'd get an answer but might be stunned that you could also ask it to write a story in the style of CT Phipps and get results.

What did it produce?

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The Vampire Accountant vs. The Apocalypse Bar Tab

You know you’ve hit rock bottom when your immortal unlife is being threatened by an unpaid bar tab.

“Mr. Drake,” the orc bartender growled, leaning across the mahogany counter like he was about to collect with interest, “it’s been three weeks. Either you cough up the gold, or the Guild’s coming for your fangs.”

Now, I’m a vampire. That comes with a certain reputation—mysterious, elegant, brooding in moonlight, yadda yadda. Truth is, I’m an accountant. And not even a good one, unless you count being really good at hiding from creditors as a marketable skill.

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Now, obviously, this isn't me and it seems like some unholy fusion of me, Drew Hayes, and Travis Baldree. Which is something we need to talk about a community. Which is to say that AI...aren't. Specifically, they may be artificial but they're not intelligent. It's much the same for AI being trained on other authors' work. No, they're not. Because an AI isn't trained, it's not actually learning but programmed to assemble loose combinations of stories that are "good enough" to pass muster to causal observers.

Yes, dear readers, AI writers are basically all search engines. They don't know what's good or what's bad but are meticulously programmed by real people (let's call them the real authors of this, plagiarism aside) to have data points that make the millions of data points form into coherent-ish paragraphs. Like the old TV show, Dragnet, the stories are real enough but the names have been changed to protect the innocent. For some value of the word innocent. Okay, to protect the wallet of the people who spent a shit ton of money to make a machine to make a book versus pay someone for writing it.

I'm simplifying and the machines are genuinely impressive in what they can assemble from other people's work but it's really a jigsaw puzzle of shredded manuscripts. Sam Spade goes to Whitby in order to kill Dracula and rescue Princess Zelda. Honestly, that probably is a better premise than some authors might have come up with on their own. A lot of work is also needed to make these data-harvested fishing nets' catch into something vaguely readable. Perhaps less so than actually writing a book, though.

There's plenty of people who are excited about the possibilities, but I think they should curb their enthusiasm and also realize the downsides. From the artistic side of things, generating an AI book is not actually writing one and you're depriving yourself of the experience of creation.

There's nothing wrong with doing it for yourself and fun but it's basically the Guitar Hero of writing. No one should care if you put it up on your website or send it to your friends or on your mailing list. It's not really you but AI isn't going to go Skynet on authors for people playing around with the toy.

I'm much more worried about the people who think they can make a business generating content to push out the people who want to make the content and are invested in it. The guy who thinks he can write 4000 novels with ChatGPT, publish them all, and sit back to enjoy his little empire. Well, aside from the idiocy of trying to become rich by being a writer, it's even sadder because that sort of effort is stealing from dozens of writers rather than just one. Not every AI generated book will be worse than what a living writer creates, we have the guys who wrote The Rise of Skywalker after all, but it will have less soul.

Is it impossible to turn back the clock? Maybe, maybe not. More likely it's better to push through. I, for one, am determined to remain 100% organic author and may advertise it on my covers soon.