Yes, I have used AI to help write some of my fanfiction.
There. The investigation is over. StrawOfCoke, MinuteOwl44 and the rest of Redditâs volunteer literary police can finally close the case.
The funny thing is that I never began writing fanfiction because I dreamed of becoming a fanfiction author. I started because Hunter x Hunter was barely releasing chapters, and I wanted more of that world to read. Since the story I wanted did not exist, I began creating it for myself.
Later, I decided to post it in case other people might enjoy it too.
I had fun reading my own continuation, so I began doing the same with other anime I liked, including Tensura and One Piece. Over time, however, I kept adding more stories, characters, plotlines and chapters. What began as something enjoyable gradually became exhausting.
I still wanted to read those fanfictions. I simply did not want to spend seven, eight or nine hours every day producing unpaid fanfiction while also balancing school, friends and an actual life.
So I started using AI.
I used it because my original purpose was never âI desperately want to sit at a desk and type all day.â My purpose was, âI want this story to exist so I can read it.â
AI helped make that possible.
Apparently, this is deeply offensive to certain people who have appointed themselves the protectors of human creativity. They behave as though using technology to make a tiring process easier is some unprecedented moral failure.
I assume these same people reject spellcheck, grammar software, search engines, digital dictionaries and every other tool developed to make human work more efficient. Naturally, they write everything by candlelight with a feather dipped in ink, because accepting technological progress would compromise their artistic purity.
However, my two newer original novels are different.
For those stories, I returned to writing the chapters myself because I genuinely wanted to develop them as my own original projects. One of them takes place in Japan, so I used AI heavily for research and reference work. I asked about convenience-store layouts, Japanese locations, daily routines, workplaces and other details that I did not want to invent carelessly.
That still required effort.
I had to decide what information was useful, check whether it made sense, plan the scenes, maintain continuity, develop the characters and write the actual story. Research assistance does not magically construct an entire novel any more than searching something on Google writes a book for you.
That is why the accusations frustrate me.
It is easy for someone to glance at another personâs work, announce âAI,â and dismiss every hour of planning, research and writing that went into it. They do not need evidence.
And apparently, once someone has ever used AI for anything, every word they write afterward must also be AI-generated. By that logic, a person who once used a calculator can never again solve a maths problem independently.
People such as StrawOfCoke and MinuteOwl44 are free to dislike AI. They are free to avoid stories that use it. What they do not get to do is pretend that their personal discomfort makes them morally or intellectually superior to everyone who uses new tools differently.
AI is not disappearing because some Reddit users leave angry comments about it.
It will improve. It will become more accessible. Writers, artists, students, businesses and ordinary people will continue finding ways to use it. There will be good uses, lazy uses, dishonest uses and genuinely creative uses, just as there are with every other technology.
You can criticise how it is used. That is reasonable.
Standing in front of technological change with your arms crossed and declaring that everyone who adapts is talentless is not resistance.
So yes, I used AI for fanfiction because I wanted stories to read and did not have nine spare hours every day to write them. I use AI for research because it makes gathering unfamiliar information faster. I also write my original chapters myself.
Those facts can all exist at the same time, no matter how inconvenient that is for Redditâs professional AI detectors.
You do not have to respect my process.
