I’ll start by saying that none of my stories or poems are generated by AI. In fact, that’s why it takes so long for me to release something new. A lot of work goes into books, even the short ones.
And that makes it all the more disheartening to see AI taking over so much of the creative world. This is AI in a generative sense: not prompts, not ideas and not software that just looks for things like repeated words. For decades, software has been programmed with a purpose. We’re talking about true generative AI that synthesizes two precious human activities: thought and creation.
Waxing Philosophical on AI
Generally, when we get lost in a story or artwork, part of the journey—and the draw—is being embedded in a world someone else created. Though it’s subconscious, we inherently know that another person, someone with life experiences (whether they be extraordinary or mundane), is behind the words and imagery. Maybe that author has something in common with us, and we can find something of ourselves or our own existence reflected in their story or characters. Maybe they simply wrote a fun, entertaining book—don’t people as a whole love to be entertained? Whatever the connection, we know that someone with a heart and soul created it—which convinces us on some deeper level that it has meaning.
Let’s take the example of Of Mice and Men—and this will lead into a spoiler, by the way. When George shoots Lenny at the end, we know it’s an act of mercy from a man wanting to spare his friend from cruelty that he can’t possibly even understand. We know the tale comes from a human being who empathizes with the characters and who understands human nature. It’s not random. The story has meaning.
Take the same story written by AI. If AI created such a storyline that struck a chord, it would be happenstance. It may have followed some mechanical path to reach its destination, but how can there be meaning if AI doesn’t seek to communicate in the first place?
AI doesn’t try to teach us anything. It doesn’t want to inspire or entertain us. It simply doesn’t care. As a society, why would we hand over something so precious as creation to an entity that couldn’t care less what it’s doing?
AI vs. Real Authors
A sad trend has emerged where authors feel the need to prove that they are not AI. Proving a negative is usually a ridiculous notion. And while I wouldn’t want anyone to think my work is AI-generated, I don’t think it’s wise to bow down to weird AI-repudiation techniques.
For example, apparently AI tends to use dashes and semi-colons a lot. As a result, some authors are taking them out of their work. The folly here is that punctuation has always been a tool for the writer to emphasize or connect ideas. We shouldn’t give up some of our most powerful methods to prove that we’re not soul-less bots generating entire stories.
Eventually, writers could end up stripping so much out of their work that it loses all flavor and cohesion. When you subtract from yourself to prove a negative, you only end up with a skeleton in the end.
AI-Generated Images
On my site, I keep images, such as character portraits, settings and the like, as authentic to the best of my ability. I turn off AI options when searching stock photo sites, which unfortunately still yields some AI results. If I have any question about whether a picture is AI, I tend to avoid it. Often, I’ll check the upload date: If it was uploaded before the AI-driven era, I feel pretty safe using it. It’s not a perfect system because of AI infiltration, but it’s as close as most of us might get.
Some may argue that limits the type of imagery available, but I feel it’s worth it. Besides, as someone who does both writing and graphic design, I don’t mind doing image-editing to make an illustration look more like my characters (image editing is allowed in the terms of most stock image sites). This will age me a bit, but I learned to do a lot of design work manually that has since been become “click to get results.” Overall, graphic designers have always created composites, and there’s no reason to hand that over to AI, either.
No Mechanical Brains Here
Personally, I don’t want to read a story written by a mechanical brain synthesizing thought or creation. Sure, the whole thing seems like some cool sci-fi concoction, but let’s face it: Generative AI would have worked better remaining a fictional technology. Ian Malcolm from the movie Jurassic Park talks about being “so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
And so it goes with generative AI1.
So know that Of Squires and Knights, its related short stories and any other literature you find here are created by…yes, an actual human being. I hope you’ll forgive my slow writing as a result. 🙂
Note:
1I’m making the distinction of “generative AI” on purpose. There is some AI that can save lives, such as medical robots doing procedures impossible for human hands. The key is discerning appropriate uses such as this.
