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\n\t\t\tPosted by\t\t\tJohn Scalzi<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u00a0\u00a0
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Because it feels like a good time to do it, some current thoughts on \u201cAI\u201d and where it, we and I are about the thing, midway through February 2026. These are thoughts in no particular order. Some of them I\u2019ve noted before, but will note again here mostly for convenience. Here we go:<\/p>\n
1. I don\u2019t and won\u2019t use \u201cAI\u201d in the text of any of my published work. There are several reasons for this, including the fact that \u201cAI\u201d-generated text is not copyrightable and I don\u2019t want any issues of ownership clouding my work, and the simple fact that my book contracts oblige me to write everything in those books by myself, without farming it out to either ghostwriters or \u201cAI.\u201d But mostly, it\u2019s because I write better than \u201cAI\u201d can or ever will, and I can do it with far less energy draw. I don\u2019t need to destroy a watershed to write a novel. I can write a novel with Coke Zero and snacks. Using \u201cAI\u201d in my writing would create more work for me, not less, and I really have lived my life with the idea of doing the least amount of work possible. <\/p>\n
If you\u2019re reading a John Scalzi book, it all came out of my brain, plain and simple. Better for you! Easier for me! <\/p>\n
2. I\u2019m not worried about \u201cAI\u201d replacing me as a novelist. Sure, someone can now prompt a novel-length work out of \u201cAI\u201d faster than I or any other human can write a book, and yes, people are doing just that, pumping into Kindle Unlimited and other such places a vast substrate of \u201cAI\u201d text slop generated faster than anyone could read it. Nearly all of it will sit there, unread, until the heat death of the universe. <\/p>\n
Now, you might say that\u2019s because why would anyone read something that no one actually took any effort to write, and that will be maybe about 5% of the reason. The other 95% of the reason, however, will be discoverability. Are the people pumping out the wide sea of \u201cAI\u201d text slop planning to make the spend for anyone to find that work? What are their marketing plans other than \u201ctoss it out, see who locates it by chance\u201d? And if there is a marketing budget, if you can generate dozens or hundreds of \u201cAI\u201d text slop tomes in a year, how do you choose which to highlight? And will the purveyors of such text slop acknowledge that the work they\u2019re promoting was written by no one? <\/p>\n
(Answer: No. No they won\u2019t). <\/p>\n
I am not worried about being replaced as a novelist because I already exist as a successful author, and my publishers are contractually obliged to market my novels every time they come out. This will be the case for a while, since I have a long damn contract. Readers will know when my new books are out, and they will be able to find them in bookstores, be they physical or virtual. This is a huge advantage over any \u201cAI\u201d text slop that might be churned out. And while I don\u2019t want to overstate the amount of publicity\/marketing traditional publishers will do for their debut or remaining mid-list authors, they will do at least some, and that visibility is an advantage that \u201cAI\u201d text slop won\u2019t have. Even indie authors, who must rely on themselves instead of a publicity department to get the word out about their work, have something \u201cAI\u201d text slop will never have: They actually fucking care about their own work, and want other people to see it.<\/p>\n
I do understand it\u2019s more than mildly depressing to think that a major market difference between \u201cAI\u201d text slop and stuff actual people wrote is marketing, but: Welcome to capitalism! It\u2019s not the only difference, obviously. But it is a big one. And one that is likely to persist, because:<\/p>\n
3. People in general are burning out on \u201cAI.\u201d Not just in creative stuff: Microsoft recently finally admitted that no one likes its attempt to shove its \u201cAI\u201d Copilot into absolutely everything, whether it needs to be there or not<\/a>, and is making adjustments to its businesses to reflect that. \u201cAI\u201d as a consumer-facing entity rarely does what it does, better than the programs and apps it is replacing (see: Google\u2019s Gemini replacing Google Assistant), and sucks up far more energy and resources. Is your electric bill higher recently? Has the cost of a computer gone up because suddenly memory prices have doubled (or more)? You have \u201cAI\u201d to thank for that. It\u2019s the solution to a problem that not only did no one actually have, but wasn\u2019t a problem in the first place. There are other issues with \u201cAI\u201d larger than this \u2014 mostly that it\u2019s a tool to capture capital at the expense of labor \u2014 but I\u2019m going to leave those aside for now to focus on the public exhaustion and dissatisfaction with \u201cAI\u201d as a product category.<\/p>\n In this sort of environment, human-generated work has a competitive advantage, because people see it as more authentic and real (which it is, to the extent that \u201cauthentic\u201d and \u201creal\u201d mean \u201ca product of an actual human brain\u201d), and more likely to have the ability to surprise and engage the people who encounter it. I don\u2019t want to oversell this \u2014 humans are still as capable of creating lazy, uninspired junk as they ever were, and some people really do think of their entertainment as bulk purchases. Those vaguely sad people will be happy that \u201cAI\u201d gives them more, even if it\u2019s of lesser quality. But I do think in general when people are given a choice, that they will generally prefer to give their time and money to the output of an actual human making an effort, than to the product of a belching drain on the planet\u2019s resources whose use primarily benefits people who are already billionaires dozens of times over. Call me optimistic. <\/p>\n Certainly that\u2019s the case with me:<\/p>\n 4. I\u2019m supporting human artists, including as they relate to my own work. I\u2019ve noted before that I have it as a contractual point that my book covers, translations and copyediting have to be done by humans. This is again both a practical issue (re: copyrights, quality of work, etc) and a moral one, but also, look, I like that my work pays other humans, and I want that to continue. Also, in my personal life, I\u2019m going to pay artists for stuff. When I buy art, I\u2019m going to buy from people who created it, not generated it out of a prompt. I\u2019m not going to knowingly post or promote anything that is not human-created. Just as I wish to be supported by others, I am going to support other artists. There is no downside to not promoting\/paying for \u201cAI\u201d generated work, since there was no one who created it. There is an upside to promoting and paying humans. They need to eat and pay rent.<\/p>\n \u201cBut what if they use AI?\u201d In the case of the people working on my own stuff, it\u2019s understood that the final product, the stuff that goes into my book, is the result of their own efforts. As for everything else, well, I assume most artists are pretty much like me: using \u201cAI\u201d for their primary line of creativity is just introducing more work, not less. Also I\u2019m going to trust other creators; if they tell me they\u2019re not using \u201cAI\u201d in their finished work then I\u2019m going to believe them in the absence of a compelling reason not to. I don\u2019t particularly have the time or interest in being the \u201cAI\u201d police. Anyway, if they\u2019re misrepresenting their work product, that eventually gets found out. Ask a plagiarist about that.<\/p>\n With all that said:<\/p>\n 5. \u201cAI\u201d is Probably Sticking Around In Some Form. This is not an \u201c\u2018AI\u2019 Is Inevitable and Will Take Over the World\u201d statement, since as noted above people are getting sick of it being aggressively shoved at them, and also there are indications that a) \u201cthis is the worst it will ever be\u201d is not true of AI, as people actively note that recent versions of ChatGPT were worse to use than earlier versions, b) investors are getting to the point of wanting to see an actual return on their investments, which is the cue for the economic bubble around AI to pop. This going to be just great for the economy. \u201cAI,\u201d as the current economic and cultural phenomenon, is likely to be heading for a fall.<\/p>\n Once all that drama is done and we\u2019ve sorted through the damage, the backend of \u201cAI\u201d and its various capabilities will still be around, either relabeled or as is, just demoted from being the center of the tech universe and people making such a big deal about it, scaled down and hopefully more efficient. I understand that the \u201cAI will probably persist\u201d position is not a popular one in the creative circles in which I exist, and that people hope it vaporizes entirely, like NFTs and blockchains. I do have to admit I wouldn\u2019t mind being wrong about this. But as a matter of capital investment and corporate integration, NFTs, etc are a blip compared to what\u2019s been invested in \u201cAI\u201d overall, and how deep its use has sunk into modern capitalism (more on that in a bit).<\/p>\n Another reason I think \u201cAI\u201d is likely to stick around in some form:<\/p>\n 6. \u201cAI\u201d is a marketing term, not a technical one, and encompasses different technologies. The version that the creative class gets (rightly) worked up about is generative \u201cAI,\u201d the most well-known versions of which were trained on vast databases of work, much of which was and is copyrighted and not compensated for. This is, however, only one subset of a larger group of computational systems which are also called \u201cAI,\u201d because it\u2019s a sexy term that even non-nerds have heard of before, and far less confusing than, say, \u201cneural networks\u201d or such. Not all \u201cAI\u201d is as ethically compromised as large-scale generative \u201cAI,\u201d and a lot of it existed and was being used non-controversially before generative \u201cAI\u201d blew up as the wide-scale rights disaster it turned out to be. <\/p>\n It\u2019s possible that \u201cAI\u201d as a term is going to be forever tainted as a moral hazard, disliked by the public and seen as a promotions drag by marketing departments. If and when that happens, a lot of things currently hustled under the \u201cAI\u201d umbrella will be quietly removed from it, either returning to previous, non-controversial labels or given new labels entirely. Lots of \u201cAI\u201d will still be around, just no one will call it that, and outside of obvious generative \u201cAI\u201d that presents rights issues, fewer people will care. <\/p>\n On the matter of generative \u201cAI,\u201d here\u2019s a thought:<\/p>\n 7. There were and are ethical ways to have trained generative \u201cAI\u201d but because they weren\u2019t done, the entire field is suspect. Generative \u201cAI\u201d could easily have been trained solely on material in the public domain and\/or on appropriately-licensed Creative Commons material, and an opt-in licensing gateway to acquire and pay for copyrighted work used in training, built and used jointly by the companies needing training data, could have happened. This was all a solvable problem! But OpenAI, Anthropic, et al decided to train first, ask forgiveness later, on the idea that would be cheaper simply to do it first and to litigate later. I\u2019m not entirely sure this will turn out to be true, but it is possible that at this late stage, some of the companies will go under before any settlements can be achieved, which will have the same effect.<\/p>\n There are companies who have chosen to train their generative models with compensation; I know of music software companies that make a point of showing how artists they worked were both paid for creating samples and other material, and get paid royalties when work generated from those samples, etc is made by people using the software. I think that\u2019s fine! As long as everyone involved is happy with the arrangement, no harm, and no foul. But absent of that sort of clear and unambiguous declaration of provenance and compensation regarding training data, one has to assume that any generative \u201cAI\u201d has used stolen work. It\u2019s so widely pervasive at this point that this has to be a foundational assumption. <\/p>\n And here is a complication:<\/p>\n 8. The various processes lumped into \u201cAI\u201d are likely to be integrated into programs and applications that are in business and creative workflows. One, because they already were prior to \u201cAI\u201d being the widely-used rubric, and two, because these companies need to justify their investments somehow. Some of these systems and processes aren\u2019t tainted by the issues of \u201cgenerative AI\u201d but many of them are, including some that weren\u2019t previously. When I erase a blotch in an image with Photoshop, the process may or may not use Generative AI and when it does, it may or may not use Adobe\u2019s Firefly model (which Adobe maintains, questionably, is trained only on material it has licensed).<\/p>\n Well, don\u2019t use Photoshop, I hear you say. Which, okay, but I have some bad news for you: Nearly every photoediting suite at this point incorporates \u201cAI\u201d at some point in its workflow, so it\u2019s six of one and half dozen of the other. And while I am a mere amateur when it comes to photos, lots of professional photographers use Adobe products in their workflow, either because they\u2019ve been using it for years and don\u2019t want to train on new software (which, again, probably has \u201cAI\u201d in its workflow), or they\u2019re required to use it by their clients because it\u2019s the \u201cindustry standard.\u201d A program being the \u201cindustry standard\u201d is one reason I use Microsoft Word, and now that program is riddled with \u201cAI.\u201d At a certain point, if you are using 21st century computer-based tools, you are using \u201cAI\u201d of some sort, whether you want to or not. Some of it you can turn off or opt out of. Some of it you can\u2019t.<\/p>\n (Let\u2019s not even talk about my Google Pixel Phone, which is now so entirely festooned with \u201cAI\u201d that it\u2019s probably best to think of it as an \u201cAI\u201d computer with a phone app, than the other way around.)<\/p>\n This is why earlier in this piece, I talk about the \u201cfinal product\u201d being \u201cAI\u201d-free \u2014 because it\u2019s almost impossible at this point to avoid \u201cAI\u201d in computer-based tools, even if one wants to. Also, given the fact that \u201cAI\u201d is a marketing rather than a technical term, what the definition of \u201cAI\u201d is, and what is an acceptable level of use, will change from one person to another. Is Word\u2019s spellcheck \u201cAI\u201d? Is Photoshop\u2019s Spot Healing brush tool? Is Logic Pro\u2019s session drummer? At what point does a creative tool become inimical to creation? <\/p>\n (On a much larger industrial scale, this will be an extremely interesting question when it comes to animation, CGI and VFX. \u201cAI\u201d is already here in video games with DLSS, which upscales and adds frames to games; if similar tech isn\u2019t already being used for inbetweening in animation, it\u2019s probably not going to be long until it is.)<\/p>\n Again, I\u2019m not interested in being, nor have the time to be, the \u201cAI\u201d police. I choose to focus on the final product and the human element in that, because that is honestly the only part of the process that I, and most people, can see. I\u2019m certainly not going to penalize a creative person because Adobe or Microsoft or whomever incorporated \u201cAI\u201d into a tool they need to use in order to do their work. I would be living in a glass house if I threw that particular stone.<\/p>\n 9. It\u2019s all right to be informed about the state of the art when it comes to \u201cAI.\u201d Do I use \u201cAI\u201d in my text? No. Do I think it makes sense to have an understanding of where \u201cAI\u201d is at, to know how the companies who make it create a business case for it, and to keep tabs on how it\u2019s actually being used in the real word? Yes. So I check out latest iterations of ChatGPT\/Claude\/Gemini\/Copilot, etc (I typically steer clear of Grok if only because I\u2019m not on the former Twitter anymore) and the various services and capabilities they offer. <\/p>\n The landscape of \u201cAI\u201d is still changing rapidly, and if you\u2019re still at the \u201clol \u2018AI\u2019 can\u2019t draw hands\u201d level of thinking about the tech, you\u2019re putting yourself at a disadvantage, particularly if you\u2019re a creative person. Know your enemy, or at least, know the tools your enemies are making. Again, I\u2019m not worried about \u201cAI\u201d replacing me as a novelist. But it doesn\u2019t have to be at that level of ability to wreak profound and even damaging changes to creative fields. We see that already.<\/p>\n One final, possibly heretical thought:<\/p>\n 10. Some people are being made to use \u201cAI\u201d as a condition of their jobs. Maybe don\u2019t give them too much shit for it. I know at least a couple of people who were recently hired for work, who were told they needed to be fluent in computer systems that had \u201cAI\u201d as part of their workflow. Did they want or need to use those systems to do the actual job they were hired for? Almost certainly not! Did that matter? Nope! Was it okay that their need to eat and pay rent outweighed their ethical annoyance\/revulsion with \u201cAI\u201d and the fact it was adding more work, not less, onto their plate? I mean (waves at the world), you tell me. Personally speaking, I\u2019m not the one to tell a friend that they and their kid and cat should live in a Toyota parked at a Wal-Mart rather than accept a corporate directive made by a mid-level manager with more jargon in their brain than good sense. I may be a softie.<\/p>\n Be that as it may, to the extent you can avoid \u201cAI,\u201d do so, especially if you have a creative job, where it\u2019s almost always just going to get in your way. Your fans, the ones that exist and the ones you have yet to make, will appreciate that what they get from you is from you. That\u2019s what people mostly want from art: Entertainment and connection. You will always be able to do that better than \u201cAI.\u201d There is no statistical model that can create what is uniquely you.<\/p>\n \u2014 JS<\/p>\n Like this:<\/p>\n Like Loading…<\/p>\n