Page last updated on March 6th, 2023.

Where do you stand?

I will never use AI to write on my behalf.

That’s pretty blunt.

Yes, I wanted it to be clear. There are some nuances though, so please do read on for the fuller picture.

What do you mean by AI?

This is a good question, and not an easy one to answer. Does the grammar checking tool in Microsoft Word count (you know, the one that complains about your perfectly formed sentences)? Or the website that gives you an idea of the reading level of your prose? Or ProWritingAid , which literally says ‘AI’ on its home page?

I define things like those as ’tools’, as they can make suggestions or provide insights into my writing. But no matter how many times I right-click, Word isn’t going to fill up the blank page for me. ProWritingAid might suggest an alternative version of a sentence, but there’s no way to get it to create something out of nothing.

For example: I gave PWA the paragraph above, and it made the suggestion you see below:

ChatGPT is definitely ‘AI’ for the purposes of this discussion. You ask for something, and it writes something “new”. There’s an ever expanding variety of applications like this, and I can’t list them all here, or keep up with them for that matter. Most of them are trained on existing material, which makes them a copyright and moral minefield, so I won’t use them.

Enough nuance, what do you actually use?

Here’s a list of the tools I’m using, which some people might consider ‘AI’. It’s up to you whether you feel any of these fall into that category or not.

• ProWritingAid

  Grammar, spelling, and writing style checker.

• Adobe Photoshop

  Image editor (some features are described as ‘AI’, such as content filling)

• Various ‘personal assistants’

  Siri (Apple’s assistant) or Alexa (Amazon’s version), etc. Mostly for checking the weather, asking ‘what was that actor in’ and similar tasks.

I will update this list as and when I start using other tools.

What else, though? You only talked about writing…

You’re right. I won’t use AI to create book covers, either. Quite apart from the fact that it’s a legal minefield¹, it’s something I’d rather have humans working on.

So what will you use AI for?

I might use it from time to time for creating images in blog posts, rather than using a stock image library. I might use it to generate ideas for book covers, prior to contracting an artist (though not to negotiate a reduced fee, since I ‘did half the work already’ - which is something some artists are already seeing!)

And I will definitely continue to play with it, so I can get an idea of the capabilities as they inevitably evolve.

You mean I might run into AI-generated stuff anywhere here?

If I use it for anything on this blog, you’ll know. I’ll mark it clearly (as I have, for example, in this blog post )

If you’ve paid for something of mine (such as an ebook, paperback, or audiobook) you can rest easy that there will be no AI-generated content there. The same goes for free downloads of my stories or books. From now on I will be including a link to this page in all my work, so you can read with confidence.

What if this changes?

If anything changes, I’ll keep this page up to date.

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