“I will never use AI.” AI and authenticity were at the center of this declaration.

It came up during a meeting when one team member Googled a question and read the answers.

“Where did you get that? Was it AI?”

“Yes?” He wasn’t sure because he used Google, but the answer was AI generated.

“I refuse to use AI.”

I get it. The fear of losing authenticity and integrity in our own work or of taking creative work from real artists and writers.

And

I see AI as a tool.

Honestly, many of the apps we use have had AI support and features long before we started using the term “AI.”

The “I refuse” declaration prompted another comment: “Not so long ago, a lot of folks refused to use the Internet, and then Google, to research because ‘go to the library!’ But look at us now.”

My introspection (inner Googling?) lit up, and I began digging into where my hard stops are and why. Where am I with AI and authenticity?

Where I’ve Use AI

I have used AI for creating graphics for blog posts and my newsletter when I didn’t have a good photo or time to take one. I sometimes use the AI feature in PhotoShop to fill space or remove objects.

“But you don’t identify as an artist and you were never going to pay a professional for blog or newsletter art, so that’s not cheating.”

Hmm. So when is it cheating? I wiggled deeper into my inner Google.

I have filtered drafts of resumés and query letters through AI. Since I identify as a writer, is that cheating?

“No,” I say with confidence. The CV and queries to publishers are NOT part of my œuvre. They are appeals to get my creative work and skills recognized. And guess what companies who are hiring and publishers on the prowl for authors do. They use AI to filter CVs and queries. If the bouncer at the gate is AI, how can it be cheating if I use AI to enhance the pleas to unlock the gate?

Additionally, I use AI for the massive proposal document. After writing the summaries of a novel and its chapters for the proposal, I filter the drafts through ChatGPT. Often —and this always feels good —AI congratulates me on the very good/strong/compelling whatever and makes few or minor suggestions. Is that cheating?

Still a confident, “No.” The proposal is also a tool to get me past the AI bouncers. I’ve done my work. I wrote the novels. When it’s time to query, I refine my proposal, not my work, through AI.

“So what’s going to stop you from letting AI write your novel or refine it?”

“My heart.”

Writing into the Heart

Like most writers, I want published works and I enjoy sharing words on my websites and in my newsletter. But the reader-facing finished work is only a fraction of my writing story. I write tomes and tomes of content, fill hundreds of notebooks with words no one will ever read.

I write every day. And here’s why without AI: I write for myself.

I write fiction, essays, and journal entries to find myself, to figure out what I think, to understand who I am and how I fit in this world. Using AI to write my “real work” would be like sending someone else to a therapy session. I would lose out on the purpose of the session. Only I have access to my writer’s heart, my inner Google app. No AI can help me do that work.

This morning, I was reading “Positive Effort,” a chapter in Natalie Goldberg’s Wild MindShe shared these words: “I do this not for you. I do it so I can shut up the gnawing, dimwitted critics in my brain who tell me I am nothing.” And this I know for sure: AI has no power over those gnawing, dimwitted critics. Only I have the power to shut them up. So I write.

©Pennie Nichols. All Rights Reserved. 2024