January 23, 2026 – I attended a virtual presentation on using AI in one’s writing. The presenter’s big selling points were knocking out a book in days instead of months and getting a higher-quality product. The approach was to train the AI to write in your voice, tell the AI the story, let it write the book, then tweak and revise as needed. He said the result would be considered your book, without needing to acknowledge the AI at all.
I have a few problems with this. Besides potential ethical and legal issues … I love to write! I don’t want to farm out the heavy lifting to an AI or anyone! If I just wanted the best book possible (and I had the financial resources), I’d simply hire a better author than me to write the book. But I want to write it! I want to create something myself. This AI approach seems like an athlete hiring someone to run the race for them and then taking the credit for the win.
The presenter felt that we’d better get with the program and start using AI in the writing process. Otherwise, as the quality of AI improves, we’ll soon be left so far behind that no one will bother reading our poor books. A depressing thought–I hope it’s not true. Meanwhile, I’m going to just keep slugging away with my old-school approach.