What’s up, fellow citizens of our modern corporate hellscape and technological dystopia?
If you found this page at the bottom of my website and clicked the link, you’re probably wondering one or more of a couple of things: Do I (A.B. Channing) use AI in my writing? Do I use it for anything else? What are my sentiments about it?
This page is here to put these questions to rest! If you don’t want to read the whole thing, here’s the summary:
Fuck AI
There, that sums things up nicely now, doesn’t it?
Anyway, on to the more detailed (and nuanced) explanation.
There are different types of AI, and I have different thoughts about them. In certain contexts, AI can become a tool for accessibility and other such means of bettering human lives. That’s great stuff! Let’s not concentrate that power in the hands of billionaires and murder the planet in the process, but sure. I’ll back it.
In the writing context, unfortunately, that’s not usually what we’re talking about.
When the word “AI” gets thrown around in writing circles, it’s typically in reference to artistic, generative AI. You know, the stuff that can write your books for you, or make character and cover art without needing to learn graphic design or feed an artist in the process. This form of AI is, at its core, a plagiarism machine. Contrary to its name, “generative” AI (genAI) does not create new material. Instead, it “borrows” and builds from a database of human-made artistic content, which is typically gathered without the original artists’ consent, control, or compensation. For obvious reasons, I do not support this.
Artistic genAI is also not an accessibility tool, contrary to what some organizations may believe when conveniently sponsored by AI-tool-pushing software companies that shall not be named.
I am a prolific writer. I know this. Anyone who’s followed me for any length of time knows this. I have a bad(?) habit of getting all publicly excited about one project while having six more chugging along behind the scenes, then showing up one day to drop a twelve-book series on my readers from low earth orbit with little to no advance warning. Unless you follow me on Discord, of course. I never shut up on Discord.
In my writing career thus far, I have had the great fortune of never (yet) (to my face) being accused of using AI in my writing. I imagine this peace won’t last forever, as we unfortunately live in a world where powerful, deep-pocketed corporations and individuals have a vested interest in making sure nobody can tell what’s real anymore. This is why I write Horror, y’all. To cope with reality. But anyway.
I can’t believe writing this on my website is a sane and reasonable thing to do, but here we go:
I am a real human, and I write my own words, thank you very much.
How do I write so many? Good question! It’s actually the most common question I get from people, so it’s earned a nice, shiny #1 spot in my authorial FAQ on Patreon. The long story short is that I’ve been neurodivergently special-interesting on writing since 2012. That was longer ago than you think it is. No seriously, it’s a lot of years. And I write pretty fast, so let’s just say I’ve accumulated a pretty big number of words since then, and thus a pretty big pile of practice and experience. Longer story shorter, I’m a nerd.
What about everything else, you ask? My covers and promotional graphics? My editing? My website? My profile picture?
All good questions! My profile pic was a commission by my good friend, the exceptionally talented Alistair Reeves. My website is a labor of love built on WordPress with the Gutenberg theme, a grab-bag of plugins, and hundreds of hours of personal time. I’m self-taught at web design, but I wanted the challenge, and I’m glad I went that route. See: nerd.
Editing is something that’s apparently catching on in pro-AI circles. I have Big Words about this, but the FBI is probably already watching me for my Horror-writer search history, so I’ll stick to the basics. First of all, running original content through an AI tool immediately scrapes and feeds that content into its training database. If it didn’t have your work already, it does now! Did it tell you otherwise? Ask it how it makes its money.
Second, AI is really just advanced pattern recognition software. This means that if enough humans make the same grammatical mistakes (ex. “all intensive purposes” or “would of”), the AI will believe this is correct and follow suit.
Thirdly, though, genAI’s outputs are the average of everything it has ever consumed. Think about the internet for a moment. Think about published books. Think about X (Twitter), Reddit, and Wattpad. Imagine the average. Then, because genAI has an error rate of about 20%, reduce that average by one-fifth. Yup. Definitely feedback a professional author would want on their books. I have critique buddies, beta readers, and actual pro editors for that.
Next!
My covers and graphics, when not commissioned, are made in Canva. The free version, because I’d rather save my money for the artists. My main image source is Unsplash, with occasional purchased exceptions from stock-image sites like Shutterstock or Pexels when I need to work with something like model rights. I also maintain an arsenal of free tools like Pixlr, PhotoScissors, and a PNG Transparency Creator to get all the little snippets I then layer together in Canva when a single image doesn’t cut it. This got a lot easier after Canva introduced a Layers function like Photoshop has had for ages already. Thank you, Canva.
That tools arsenal goes further. I have bookmarked tools and resources that let me make cover mockups, grab hex codes from images, merge images online, match fonts, or use fancy fonts I can’t find on Canva. Hell, I even have a glitch text generator. I’m self-taught in graphic design, too (it’s the best form of writing procrastination, let’s be honest here) so if I see something shiny that I’d like for myself, I try to make it at home. Sometimes it takes 12985384756 layers in Canva. Sometimes it’s just one really good free image, a good font, and a bit of noodling around with kerning. The point is, I’m doing this work myself.
I have every intention of continuing this. Not just because I love the skills and the satisfaction of creating beautiful things, but because, as mentioned before, fuck AI. When I have the funds, meanwhile, I can and will pay artists just to spite the billionaires.
Now. This isn’t a 100% guarantee I’ll never end up with AI slop on my profile accidentally. Many free-image sites now include AI imagery, which gets harder and harder to identify as the technology evolves and infiltrates every part of our daily lives. Kinda like slime mold. Except slime mold is actually cool. I’ve replaced at least one cover already after I dove deep into the metadata of an image I was using and found signs that it was AI-generated.
So I’m not perfect. I’m human, humans are fallible, and visual AI can be good at what it does. But I try. And on principle, I will never let ChatGPT or any of its ilk within intercontinental ballistic missile range of my writing. I hope that provides some reassurance to anyone following this page.
Cheers,
A.B. Channing