Good afterevenmorn Readers!

This is going to be a personal post, brought on by the various, incredibly depressing discussions around A.I. and artistic creation. As I’m primarily a writer, or, at least, I’m hoping to make a living as a writer. I draw and paint as well, but those are things I do mostly for me and I’m not trying to make a career of that. Perhaps more than one of you can relate to the state of, well, creation right now.

First, a note about A.I. I think there are some fantastic applications for it; particularly with what it can help do in the medical fields, just as an example. However, I don’t believe it belongs in the creative fields, and all I see of people using it in these fields are folks who want all the perceived reward of creative work, without ever having to put in the actual work.

It takes work to gain the skills to make art. It’s a work that is never perfected; always practiced, always changing and improving, experimenting and failing. Over and over and over. And here’ the thing, if you don’t enjoy that work, and many people don’t, then the creative fields aren’t for you.

Because here’s the thing about art; it is the act of creating it that makes it worth the time and effort. It’s not having finished a painting. It’s not about just having a painting on your wall. That does give an enormous sense of satisfaction, no doubt. But the act of creating it, of putting brush to canvas and pulling something beautiful out of the mind and onto something to be shared with the world… that is by far the worthiest part.

When it comes to writing, I often hear writers bemoan the act of writing. Sayings like “I hate writing, I love having written” are everywhere. I, personally, don’t understand this take. I’m not saying it’s not valid, I’m saying I don’t understand it. The act of writing is work, yes. It requires discipline, of course. But the act of writing is glorious! The pulling of stories from my head and onto the page is an act of joy. I am never more content than when I’m sitting before the computer, writing. Of course there are days when I’d rather be sleeping, or when I just don’t feel like plinking myself on that computer chair. The words come more easily some days than others. And yet, there is no sense of euphoria I’ve ever experienced quite so strong as when I’ve finished a writing session.

My point is, it is the act that makes the completed thing worth it.

That so many people are missing out on that makes me quite sad, really.

And also angry.

The anger is reserved for those who called themselves artists or writers, never having touched so much as a pencil or put text onto a page with their own fingers (in my case — typing is so much faster that writing by hand, and so I don’t have to slow my mind quite so much for my hands to keep up). Writing a prompt does not make one an artist, or a writer.

What you’ve done is simply commissioned a piece of art, except instead of commissioning a person, you’ve commissioned a machine. You are not an artist. You are not a writer. You are a patron who, irritatingly, refuses to actually support the arts. You are no different from a person who commissioned a painter for a painting, and then claiming you painted it yourself.

No. No, you did not. You commissioned it. You just elected to commission an environment-destroying plagiarism machine, instead of feeding a painter and their family (paying someone).

A.I. written books are flooding the market, and making it harder for real writers to be discovered.

Worse, as A.I. improves, it is getting harder and harder to prove that your work is, indeed, your own. The fact that A.I. was trained on the stolen works of real writers, and it can now imitated writing styles so well that you could run a piece of genuine human-created writing and it will come up as 90% positively “created by A.I.”

There is already a case of a writer who lost his publishing contract because there was the suspicion of the use of AI. Jerry Falade’s book Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body gained a 2.4 million dollar contract with MacMillan. A contract subsequently lost when A.I. detection tools and industry rumours said the text was written with A.I. It’s a claim the author strenuously denies.

Are they lying? Or was their career ruined by a false positive. It’s absolutely impossible to tell.

It has become such a problem that writers are apparently changing the way they write to avoid coming off like A.I. They’re literally stripping texts of their own voices, of character, just to try and evade the accusations of using A.I.

Writing in this mess is maddening. And it’s all but obliterated whatever small hope I had of making a living with my writing. I can say I don’t use A.I. to write (or even edit) until I’m blue in the face. The mere accusation may be enough to end my career before its even started.

What is to be done? Nothing, really. You can ask readers turn their back on A.I. slop, to support real human writers. Many readers are refusing that call. Cheap books? Who cares whether its purchase feeds an artist? Many reader are answering that call. But what good does that do you if you come under suspicion of using it? Even if the accusation is false, the conscious reader will avoid your work now.

There really doesn’t seem to be any solution that I can see. So we must do what we can. And what we can do is create anyway. Paint anyway. Write anyway.

So I will. And am.

Hopefully people will eventually find my work, and will also believe me when I say it wasn’t written by A.I., but by me. In stolen moments — visits to the library on my way home from work. An evening while I’m waiting for the laundry to finish, or my dinner to finish cooking.

It’s slower going than I’d like. It’s hard to make the time or find the energy sometimes. But the work is imperfect, but it is mine, and the work is wonderful.

Write anyway. Write anyway. Write anyway.

---

When S.M. Carrière isn’t brutally killing your favorite characters, she spends her time teaching martial arts, live streaming video games, and sometimes painting. In other words, she spends her time teaching others to kill, streaming her digital kills… and sometimes relaxing. Her most recent titles include Skylark,  Human and The Timbercreek Incident.