The National Novel Writing Month organization recently made a statement which they attempted to clarify their statement on the use of generative AI in creative writing. Throughout their statement, they repeatedly stated that they supported the use of AI writing tools because of the assistance it provides to poor and disabled authors. The question that immediately comes to mind is "What the fuck are you talking about?" followed swiftly by "Have you lost your goddamned mind?".
I really wanted to approach this discussion in good faith, as I have tried to do in my day to day life when ever the use of AI writing tools comes up. I am a college student currently pursing a degree in Secondary Education with an English focus, and both the College of Education and the English department at my university have very strict policies about AI so it is a matter of discussion at the beginning of every semester. In trying to approach this statement in good faith, I had hoped to understand their point and push past my initial shock at their statement and then provide a response. I am a disabled writer who has orbited the NaNoWriMo movement for most of my life, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I speak for all disabled people. My disabilities do make writing more difficult at times, especially when trying to take on the herculean task of writing a 50,000 word novel in a month or less. My wrists are swelling at the mere thought of the endeavor. But I can sit down and type for long stretches of time if I prepare appropriately. So I wanted to try and see the benefit in their stance, assuming they were approaching the idea in good faith as well.
Then I found out that one of their principle sponsors was the AI writing tool ProWritingAid. So needless to say the gloves are coming off. Still, I don't think this should be the end of NaNoWriMo. They have legitimately done a lot of good in the writing community and brought together a lot of people who may never have met, creating lasting friendships and partnerships. Their other sponsors seem admirable. Noirepack and Bookshop for example are two companies who I have at least at time of writing this never heard even the slightest bad thing about and who seem truly dedicated to their missions. Instead, I hope that the current backlash causes them to reconsider this issue and to grow past it in the way they have worked to grow past other controversies in the past.
We'll try and address this in chunks. Their initial statement is actually proving very hard to track down, as it seems they have heavily edited the original page, but there are two main arguments being made. First, that AI writing tools give disabled creators the ability to participate. Second, AI writing tools give poor creators access to an easy to use editing tool that frees them from having to seek down someone to edit their work that they may potentially have to pay. Both of these seem weird just on their face, don't they? They seem more familiar as arguments made by Techbros supporting their new AI writing tool than by actual disabled or poor creators trying to defend their use of AI. If I was more cynical than I already am, I might think that this was actually written by the team at the AI writing company and not actually by someone at NaNoWriMo. I'm not quite that cynical yet, though I am cynical enough to say that maybe they got the prompt from someone else and they put out the most bland and generic response they could. Just to stay consistent with their new mission, y'know.
Let' start with the comment about trying to help disabled creators. I want to repeat that I don't speak for the entire disabled community, or even the entire disabled writer community, or even the entire community of writers with the specific disabilities I have. I am one singular person with a few specific disabilities which do tend to effect my ability to write though. Therefore, I think that I am one of the people NaNoWriMo claims would benefit from AI tools and I simply want to share my perspective. So what difficulties do I have with writing? Well, first and most limiting is my chronic pain. If I try and sit down and write an entire 50,000 word novel in 30 days, my body would probably try and shut down due to the amount of pain I would be in. Hell, my body struggles to write more than a few thousand words a week sometimes. My body struggles to get out of bed sometimes. I also have pretty severe ADHD, which limits my ability to focus on writing unless I hyperfixate on it which is not as fun or easy as it might sound. I would probably start my novel on November 4th when I remembered that I was trying to do the challenge this year, write about 15,000 words within a day or so, and then drop it until January. And this is while being actively medicated with a medication that works for me. If I was unmedicated, I probably wouldn't get past the blank page on my screen. So would AI writing tools help me to achieve my goal of writing a 50,000 word novel? In the simplest terms possible, no. What it would do is give me 50,000 words that I would have to spend days going through to make sure it's actually good and vaguely readable, expending infinitely more spoons than actually writing the damn thing would have. I have a few 15,000 word writing projects that have been sitting on my hard drive basically written and that just need final edits, but that part is excruciating because it's not new. There's no dopamine being released when I'm just reading the same thing over and over again. So maybe I look into an editor. Send it off to someone to handle the edits for me and then I sign on the final version before it gets released. But if an AI has written the entire thing, and then I send it to someone else to edit the whole thing.... what have I actually written?
Getting an editor to look over your work does bring us nicely into the other point NaNoWriMo made. AI tools make it easier for poor writers to get an editor. My thought on this is basically have they forgotten who they are and what they do every year? Are they assuming that everyone who does editing work only does it if they're getting paid? I have done editing work for friends before, extensive editing work for large writing projects, for the simple joy of helping a friend achieve a writing goal. I'm not alone in this, and NaNoWriMo themselves should know this. They have set up events specifically built around this concept. They have worked to build a community that you can go to specifically for this. People who not only know exactly what you are trying to achieve, but are trying to achieve it themselves so they truly understand the emotional stakes. Would a professional editor do this for free? Maybe not. But that's not really the kind of thing NaNoWriMo is aimed at anyways. It is specifically there for hobbyist writers. If it wasn't Stephen King or James Patterson's ghost writers could enter every year and win every damn time. The editing an AI tool provides won't even be that good anyways. AI essentially takes a writing piece and undergoes a process of Normalization. There is a bell curve of writing quality, and AI pulls writing to the middle of that curve no matter which side it originally fell on. Maybe if you are a particularly poor writer it will make your writing seem passable. But it will never make it Good. If you're writing is amazing, all AI is going to do is make that writing worse. It will take the beautifully painted imagery and symbolism and dull the colors to make it more normal. For a look at this process, I recommend this video by the YouTuber Crow Caller where they show the results of feeding their work to an AI writing tool. They are also, for what it's worth, a disabled creator who feels that NaNoWriMo is misrepresenting their real reasoning to support AI writing tools and just using disabled people as a shield against criticism.
There is so much more than could be discussed when it came to a discussion over the ethics of using AI for your NaNoWriMo submission. We could talk about the ways in which AI just scrapes the open web and feeds its algorithm without the knowledge or consent of the original author. We could talk about the environmental concerns, the amount of water being used while there are people in this world who can't even get enough water to survive. Hell, I would probably be less mad at NaNoWriMo if they just said "Yeah, use AI tools if you want. That's your choice". But the fact that they tried to hide behind disabled and poor creators, that they essentially tried to use us as a shield so that they could make the statement their sponsor wanted without catching heat online, I think that's what most upsets me. I feel almost used. They have since gone through and amended their statement. Essentially they walked it all back and said that they "Neither support nor condemn use of AI writing tools", in which case they could have just not released a statement about. If you release a statement about something, you can't then try and claim to not have an opinion either way. That's not neutrality, that's cowardice. Funnily enough, they also claimed that the reason for the confusion about their position was due to poor wording. If only they had an editor around that could have helped them out with that. They can't seem to stop digging though. To quote from them directly,
"Taking a position of neutrality was not an abandonment of writers’ legitimate concerns about AI. It was an acknowledgment that NaNoWriMo can’t maintain a civil, inclusive community if we allow selective intolerance. We absolutely believe that AI must be discussed and that its ethical use must be advocated-for."
Selective intolerance? Really, that's what you're going with? Just take the fucking L at this point. You could have opened a dialogue through your forums if that was your goal, you could have raised points that supported AI and points that opposed AI if that was your goal. But you don't make a statement if you don't have a position to take. Members of your community are selectively intolerant of AI because we don't want our writing stolen form us. Members of your community are selectively intolerant of AI because we don't want the world to burn down around us so the guy sitting next to us can get a C on his essay in US History. Members of your community are selectively intolerant because we want AI to do our dishes so that we have more time to create art, not have AI create art so we have more time to do the dishes.