Here’s my problem whenever I try to play a game of chess against a computer.
Inevitably, I start up a game and plug along just fine until, at a certain point, I get a bit stuck and feel unsure of my next move. The “hint” feature beckons… And who am I to resist its siren call?
The first time I hit the hint button, the computer will often reveal a good move I might have arrived at with enough time, but hey, I got lazy. Now that the hint bottle has been satisfactorily uncorked, what do I do next? I hit the hint button again. And again. And again.
Pretty soon I’m not even playing chess anymore. I’m just watching a computer play chess against itself.
This, to me, is part of the reason why I’m so hesitant to engage A.I. for anything creative, whether that’s writing or even summarizing my novels. Even if A.I. does a passable job of some facets of the writing process, why put your whole brain on hold for something so important?
Practical reasons against A.I.
We’re far enough into the A.I. boom that I’m starting to get clients and readers who are wondering whether it might be acceptable to use A.I. in some parts of the writing and publishing process.
What about using it as a brainstorming partner? What about letting it take the first cut of a query letter? What about just feeding it the novel and telling it to write a dreaded synopsis?
Before I get to the main point of this post, I want to note that there are lots of practical reasons to steer clear of A.I. for creative work:
- Many literary agents and editors feel very strongly against A.I. for both ethical and practical reasons, and they may want nothing to do with projects where authors relied on A.I.
- Personally here, I’m not even anti-A.I. overall, but I would absolutely refuse to edit a manuscript or submission materials created primarily from A.I. There’s nothing interesting to me about shining robots’ shoes, metaphorically speaking.
- Lots of non-publishing types have deep qualms about, among other things, the environmental impact of A.I., the consolidation of the tech industry, lack of guardrails, and the potential for human displacement. You could be souring your future audience on your project.
- While the U.S. Copyright office released some guidance on utilizing A.I. for creative works, this is still a very underdeveloped and shifting area when it comes to legal precedent. You could potentially jeopardize your claims to your own work if you rely on A.I. excessively. (Please note: I’m not a publishing attorney and you should consult one if you are unsure here).
These are all well and valid, but it’s not the broader argument I want to make in this post.
For me the biggest issue with relying upon A.I. even with a synopsis is this:
Why would you want to outsource your life’s work to a digital parlor trick that can’t possibly capture your “secret sauce?”
The real reason not to use A.I.
It’s a well-established cliche that there’s nothing intelligent about artificial intelligence, but it’s really true. These programs are not intelligent.
No matter how uncannily they resemble human speech, large language models are not thinking. They’re not delivering insight. They are using backwards-looking information and immense computing power in order to deliver a response that sounds reasonable enough. And even OpenAI recently acknowledged that they will always hallucinate, even if they’ve only been trained on perfect data.
If you rely on A.I. to help you create, you might well get a “pretty decent” result. But there’s nothing about the publishing process that rewards “pretty decent.” You need to constantly be chasing excellence. Even the worst traditionally published book you can think of is better than what an A.I. program can currently output.
This doesn’t just go for writing the books themselves, I also think it goes for more mundane tasks you might want to outsource, like learning to effectively summarize your work.
Weave your own voice into your own pitch
Sure. Writing pitches, queries, synopses, and marketing copy can be very difficult and unpleasant.
So? And? You didn’t sign up for something easy when you started writing a book and decided to try to publish it!
If you’re seeking publication, it’s never been enough to simply write a book and let others take care of the rest. And one of the most important skills writers from time immemorial have needed to master is making their books sound awesome.
It’s crucial to not only learn to pitch your work effectively, but to sound like you’re excited about it too. You don’t have to be at Steve Ballmer pitching Microsoft in the ’80s levels of hype, but you need to sound like you’re standing behind your story with two feet.
A.I. is not going to weave your voice into your pitch in a way that conveys what makes your book really yours. It is not going to know the best parts to highlight, which word choices will make a paragraph sing. It’s not going to know which combination will send a shiver up a reader’s spine.
A.I. has its uses. Helping you write (and pitch) an awesome book is not yet one of them.
But even if it were good at it, why would you want to entrust your life’s work to ones and zeroes? At that point, you might as well just watch two computers play chess.
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Art: A Two Year-old Steel Works by Charles John Holmes
Personally, I don’t mind editing AI-written works, partially because I get paid to show someone, in detail, why humans are better writers than LLMs.
You’re a more patient person than me, I just get frustrated that’s not already self-evident.
Totally makes sense! I can’t say I don’t get frustrated at AI too, but getting paid to explain my frustration helps. 😉
I wouldn’t even know where to start if I wanted AI to write for me. Plus, like you said, it wouldn’t sound like me, like my writing, or the voice of any character I want to put my name to. But I have asked Gemini to research specific topics, like the KGB in the mid 80s. If something looks useful, I check the resource material to confirm. So for me, it’s more of an educational tool. What’s your opinion on that?
Yeah, for research and finding obscure sources I’ve found A.I. to be pretty helpful. Though of course you have to confirm what it’s saying is a real source because of how much it hallucinates…
Anything that ignites new insights or possible paths is a useful tool.
All I’m writing these days is memoir and no way will AI be included. It doesn’t know my past nor does it know the thought processes I went through at the various stages of my life I write about. Could it improve my writing when delineating my past, make it more interesting, exciting? Maybe, but I still don’t want someone or something second guessing me….with the exception of using a flesh and blood human edit or critique my writing style.
And that’s what it comes down to it. I’m human, my readers are human… (no, I won’t go there.) Let the AI composers find AI readers.
Unfortunately “Let AI composers find AI listeners” seems to be what’s happening on Spotify: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/14/an-ai-generated-band-got-1m-plays-on-spotify-now-music-insiders-say-listeners-should-be-warned
Piet Hein : “Writers who can’t write write for readers who can’t read.”
Couldn’t agree more.
Thank you. I asked a question along these lines in one of your office hours and I’m glad to see you’ve expanded upon it here. Nobody gets better at something if they are relying on a crutch. It’s so important for writers to know how to sell their own work, in their own words. Oh, I know too well the hint feature in chess. Are you on Chess.com? If you feel like a game, find me: my name is storycat, with the sea turtle icon. I may not be a good match as my rating is low, but I love to connect with other players.
Can you call yourself a writer if you outsource your writing to a computer program? Maybe you can call yourself a programmer, but not a writer. And why would I have the thing do my research for me if I have to double-check its sources anyway? I’ve seen google summary answers that quoted erroneous information. I know it’s wrong, but how many people just read that little recap at the top of the search and assume it’s true?
AI is not saving us any time or trouble, it’s only creating lawsuits and pollution.
While I totally agree with you on the writing part, I actually do find it helpful for research. Yes, you have to corroborate sources, but you’d have to do that if you were Googling anyway. I’ve found ChatGPT in particular pretty helpful for finding good, real information on very niche topics.
But to each their own!
I think that makes sense, like not necessarily using it to give the facts, but using it to tell you where to find them. Kind of like a reference librarian! 🙂
Anything that does your work for you is a crutch, and as we know a crutch will never run a four minute mile. Anything that helps the human mind be more creative is a tool.
I can relate to the point that using AI is like using zeros and ones to write your book. After 35 years in computers, I couldn’t wait to get away from the yes/no or on/off or any of those other instructions that are the bedrock of computers. Computers are machines. Writing is cerebral. They are two very distinct entities. I wouldn’t want a writer to build an airplane. Just like I don’t want a computer to write a book. They each have their own lanes.
I do use AI for ideas. But what it spits out is crap, But–it will give a germ of an idea that I take and run with. One sentence or suggestion. IIf you were to look at that sentence or suggestion from AI and then what I ended up writing, you’d wonder how I got there.
I know how my mind works and repeating the same thing is boring. So I’ll ask for something off the wall and see what I get. There is nothing I can use in what it spits out since it is all things that have been done before. But a simple idea/suggestion from it that sparks more ideas and takes me off onto a totally different track works for me. Think of it as bouncing ideas off a friend. You don’t use their ideas but they send you to an area that you will use.
That is about all I use it for since I don’t have writer friends to bounce ideas off of. So I use AI which has a few of my books it was trained on. I figure that I might as well get something back from them stealing my work without buying it.
If you need something off the wall for your writing, why not just sit and think for a minute?
Max Perkins Was Unavailable
I’m going to disagree with some of what you said, Nathan.
I spent a year working on my novella—took it as far as I could go on my own—and then gave it to a critique partner and a freelance editor. Their comments weren’t bad, just… not all that helpful. On a whim, I tried ChatGPT, and to my surprise, I found it *more* insightful. Not because it wrote anything for me—it didn’t—but because it became a springboard for deeper revisions.
It learned my lyrical, metaphor-rich style well enough to spot opportunities I’d missed—places where an emotional beat, gesture, or body sensation could land more powerfully. And it usually wasn’t wrong. Just like with human feedback, I didn’t blindly follow; I chose what resonated and reworked the rest. (Though ironically, the AI “understood” my emotional arc better than my human readers did.)
So—is that cheating?
I decided not. Most writers don’t publish in isolation. We use beta readers, editors, critique groups. AI, when used well, is just another feedback tool.
A few responses to your specific points:
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Using a Hint Isn’t the Same as Outsourcing Your Brain
The chess metaphor is evocative—but flawed. A hint in chess *replaces* your decision. AI feedback in writing, by contrast, prompts new decisions. It’s a brainstorming partner who remembers the whole scene and its emotional arc. (Well, sometimes it forgets, but I can remind it.) That’s not “outsourcing.” That’s *collaborative reflection*—something even experienced writers benefit from.
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AI Can’t Replicate Your Secret Sauce
True—and neither can your writing group, editor, or agent. But good tools *reveal* your secret sauce more clearly. I brought the vision, the voice, the emotional scaffolding. The AI helped me sharpen what I’d already built and bring out the story’s deeper structure with clarity.
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“Pretty Decent” vs. Deeply Human Excellence
I’m not looking for “pretty decent.” I’m chasing *resonance.* And sure, if I had a Max Perkins, I might not have turned to AI. But AI, used judiciously, can be an accelerator of insight, a risk-free revision partner, and occasionally, a sharper reader than the freelancer I paid $400 for.
I didn’t use AI to replace my brain. I used it to *amplify* the excellence I was already striving for.
My novella is intimate. Mythic. Philosophical. Metaphysically weird. Packed with synesthetic metaphor and grief. The AI didn’t create that. But it helped me realize it.
And if my Max Perkins was made of code and probability tables? Turns out that still worked.