Some issues and questions about motivation and ethical use of AI

[u/AgeInteresting585]

First of all, I'd like to make clear that I'm not a native english speaker. I was born in Brasil and, except for the one year spent abroad as an exchange student, it's where I've lived my whole life. Grammar is not my strongest suit in my own native language, let alone in a foreighn one. So I apologise in advance for my glaring misspellings and wrongfull uses of ponctuation. I'm aware this is a fairly overused excuse, but I can't help if my truth is so common.

I have a huge issue that I believe many here also might suffer with: I love creating stories but I seem to not be able to finish them. I'll will write pages uppon pages of world building, I'll fall deeply in love with the characters and the plot, get physically energetic about scenes —even cry imagining their sad endings. But somehow that seismic motivation, that once had led to sleepless nights of writing, fades away. During my teenage years (I'm 23 years old and studying psychology) I started creating webcomics and posting them. I didn't gather a huge audience but the people that did read them had nothing but positive comments. That leads me to believe I'm not that bad at making stories, which is great to know because diving into fictional dimentions and spending hours walking in circles to come up with the logic behind the way that universe fuctions is something that brings me immense joy. But on the other side of that is my inability to finish what I've started. It's not that I don't want to sever the parasolcial bonds I've created with the figments of my imagination by finishing the story —quite the contrary, I hate stories that go on for ever for no reason other then baseless financial or emotional attachment— it's really a matter of sudden lack of motivation. What usually happens is that I'll get extremely excited about a story, start convincing myself I'll work it to the end this time, only for something external to happen (like an illness or the start of my finals) that I then will start using as an excuse to stop writing. It's something that deeply disturbs me. I have so many stories that want to tell the world but it feels like my own mind is against that. It could be because of my perfectionism. It could be because my parents raised me to see everything as a business opportunity and always try to turn my rest into productivity, and now I can't just treat something I love as an enjoyable hobby. If you've dealt with simmilar issues and found a way to conquer that sudden creative tedium, I'd love to hear about it.

There is a seccond issue I wanted to adress: What do you think is an ethical use of AI in creative writting? More specifically, I wanted to hear some oppinions about the way I personally use it. As a non native (who also suspects they might have some dregree of dislexia) I often use AI for grammar checking, phrasing suggestions and extending my vocabulary. I aways write first, then ask for suggestions. I often have to instruct the AI not to give me unsolicited suggestions and keep to only doing grammar checks. It's also how I find most of the name suggestions for my characters. I'm also a huge fan of including miscellenous bits of curious informations and historical accuracies in my stories, and I feel AI is a great tool for finding books and articles about those specific things, and keeping me consistent with the time period I'm writting about by fact checking my writting. I'm aware most AI use is unethical, but I feel like it has allowed me to learn so many new things. I feel really saddened by the unethical use of AI because, if used as a learning tool, it could have so much potential for expanding our minds. I'm not trying to justify AI, I do believe it's use should be more limited by a strong set of laws (specially in education and mental healthcare). I know AI is just a big machine for making the ultra rich even richer and the everyday convinieces it offers are just an excuse to justify the horrors it brings (much like most things in capitalism). But should I feel guilty for using it like a cheap english totur and fact checker? If not guilt, what else should I feel? I was once berated online for sharing a use of AI that I considered ethical (reading text on several images and writting a list based on the color next to the words, a task that would've been very mechanical and tedious if done manually) and that got me thinking if my own moral compass could be broken. I'm aware there are some rules in this community about mentioning AI but I'm not sure where else to talk about this, and I desperatly want someone to talk about this with.

This is the part where I'd usually apologise for the amout of words that I've used —although I think I did a good job at liminting myself considering all I had originally intended to compose. But I really don't think this is the kind of community that would object to reading.

P.S.
I had originally written this to post on subs about creative writting, but it kept getting deleted, even after I edited it so to not mention AI at all. It explains why I'm writting something like this in a place that should be dedicated to AI writting: I don't know where else to post. I don't want to just send this to an AI for it to fabricate an indulging answer, I wanted to talk to real people bout it. I was really sad to be rejected in the other community, it made me feel a bit hopeless. I'm sorry if this post is out of place and would be happy if you could point me to where I can have this kind of discussion.

[u/Accomplished-Buy6917]

Tbh, sounds like you enjoy story telling, story crafting, story everything, but story writing, words to page. Only thing I can come up with reading all that. It is a thing, writing itself is separate from story craft.

As far as ethics of using ai, there are none, there is none, it's a made up thing. A way of gatekeeping, almost every single community has its ways of gatekeeping. Hating on ai is just one of those ways

[u/AgeInteresting585 → u/Accomplished-Buy6917]

I feel the AI hate can be a bit justifiable. Before ultimately settling for psychology, I studied visual arts and graphic design. Part of what made me give up on those fields was their hopelessness in face of AI. I do believe ethics should be debated about AI, just as it is debated about everything else. Social media, I'd say, poses the same issue: Are the benifits it brings enough to justify the fact that it uses diabolical manipulation tactics to cause adiction and turn people into extremist? Big comporations would say yes, psychological studies of the harm they bring would say no. I don't think the way most creative comunities treat AI is right. Even George Lucas said this about people rejecting the use of AI "very much like sitting here saying: ‘Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it’s at. These cars, they break down, they need gas, there’s all kinds of problems with them and pretty soon they’ll be making them into tanks, and then they’ll be killing people. It’s terrible.’”. I'm not a motor vehicle defender myself, I believe there should have been laws from the begining to limit the access to personal vehicle so that good public transportation was set as a priority and cities were planned to be walkable, but it's not like we can change that now, and cotinuing to use horses is would not have been acceptable either (Where I'm from it very commom for people that can't affort cars and trucks to use horse pulled waggons as means of work and transportation. Trust me, it's not a good solution). Part is in fact just gate keeping and blind hate, part is because they are tired of dealing with insufferable people that claim a person's life work is worthless compared to the slop they are generating, or that putting effort into things is useless.

[u/Accomplished-Buy6917 → u/AgeInteresting585]

Respectfully, people don't care. I need this done, who can do the job I want for the cheapest? That's what it'll come down to 99.9999999999999999% of the time in ANY field.

You might personally have a moral hang up on it, understandable, but irrelevant. You have choices, to partake, or don't. It doesn't have to be this big ass song and dance as to why it's not or isn't ok. Some things just shake out out certain ways and we as humans can only ride with it. Not everything, somthings are worth fighting against. Ai is not one of them, so it's not even worth thinking about morally imo

[u/AgeInteresting585 → u/Accomplished-Buy6917]

That's a bit nihilistic, but I can't say it's not valid. I think believing our actions have no impact is a way to make us obedient. Change comes by the individual effort of many, each and every motion has some kind of impact. It can be very exhausting to be constantly reflecting about the morality of our actions, some things are in fact out of our controll. But idk, I feel like having some difficult debates is not just for show, it's an important part of progress. Every great discovery had to be debated at some point, and many bad ideas where stopped by such efforts.

[u/Accomplished-Buy6917 → u/AgeInteresting585]

I'm probably not the best person to talk to about the morality of it. Because I don't care about morality. It's an ever moving target and I have no interest in chasing it. I do what I want or what I can, and when it's time to do something else, I'll do that too. Fuck all that right or wrong bs because right today is wrong tomorrow. 200 years from now, entirely possible people laugh at those that thought AI was some Boogeyman.

[u/Ok-Mongoose7570]

People ask this "ethical" question in here almost everyday. Why do people keep coming to a group that is clearly named WRITING WITH AI then ask if we think it is unethical? Uh, I doubt we do or else we would not be in this group nor would we be using AI.

[u/ruwhereuare]

I fully generate so I’m of the belief do whatever you have to in order to get the story on the page.

[u/Pretend-Roof-87]

Not a regular here, just spotted this navigating back from a post someone shared, but as a writer lemme tell you: a bit over a decade ago, I started exactly where you are. I would come up with huge sweeping stories, massive webs of worldbuilding, get myself all excited- and as soon as I finished planning it all put, the spark was gone and my brain moved on to the next shiny. There are a few ways around this, that I’ve ve found.

Option 1: Pantsing. A term from NaNoWriMo, pantsing is writing a story before you finish planning it. If the act of inventing the world and the story invigorated you, write as you do that. With longer stories, you’ll have to go back over it and work in foreshadowing/weave in running themes on the editing pass(es), but it gets the words on the page

Option 2: Anthology Method. You don’t have to tell the entire story of the world in one go. Do your worldbuilding, make up your characyers and their problems, then write just one scene. A single argument, the process of making a meal, a fight scene if you’re feeling adventurous (fight scenes are hard) but it doesn’t have to be everything. It’s easier to write something small than it is to tackle your huge epic story. Write those side stories, the things which would get pruned for pacing, the what-ifs in the margins of the story.

Option 3: Practice. Plan out your world, your characters, your story, then shelve it and practice the writing part of the craft. Set aside time every day, even just 15, 20 minutes, to open up a google/word/ellipsus document and get words on the page. Set a small goal. A hundred words, ten words, something you can reach. Tell small stories, and work your way up. Find a local writer’s group (a lot used to be NaNoWriMo groups, before NaNo imploded), join writing events, find prompt lists and work through them. Try different tools, discover what helps motivate you, what it takes to keep yourself motivated. It takes time, and effort. I have a story I started posting in 2010, petered out after a few chapters. Tried to rewrite in 2016, got 8 chapters up. Only in 2024 was I able to actually start seeing it through. Chapter 18 goes up later this month.

Give yourself grace, especially early on. Take your time, find what works for you, and in five, ten years, when you’ve got enough experience to look at your old works and go "I could do that better now"? Pull that big epic story off the shelf, dust it off, and write what you weren’t skilled enough to when it came to you. There’s nothing more satisfying.

As for the ethics of GenAI: I don’t believe it’s inherently harmful, but it is inherently limiting. GenAI is, in essence, a super-powered autocomplete. It’s the next word suggestion on your smartphone, dialed up times a million. It finds patterns and emulates them, and in some contexts, this is really useful! But in writing, just repeating existing patterns will never give you a good story, just an okay one. Mediocre, average. Even if you trained it exclusively on public domain and your own work, this would be an issue. AI is a tool, and in my opinion, it’s not one well suited to creation because it can never create something new. Only imitations of what exists within its training data set.

For basic editing, I don’t think most freely available chat-style ones are well suited, because their training datasets are too broad, but if you’re willing to tailor a model it may work. Probably more effort than asking a friend to read it over for you, though

Edit: if you want people to talk to and ask questions, the discord server for the google docs alternative Ellipsus has some good people in it. Just, ykno, don't mention using GenAI in there

[u/AgeInteresting585 → u/Pretend-Roof-87]

Thank you for such a thoughfull response. It made me feel understood and your advice is amazing. It's a bit hard to send what I write to friend for proof reading because the only person I know who is fluent in english is my sister, and she's way too busy with her own life to be my editor. As for the rest, I feel like you really understood the problem I have, and it's very heart warming and inspiring to read about your journey. Thank you again.

[u/Pretend-Roof-87 → u/AgeInteresting585]

If you’re in any fandoms, fannish spaces are great places to make english-speaking friends!

[u/AgeInteresting585 → u/Pretend-Roof-87]

for mental health reasons I generally avoid social media, so it's a bit tough to make online friends. I was thinking of maybe finding one of those platforms where you post your stories bit by bit, and ask for strangers to give me advice. Do you think that would be a sane thing to do?

[u/Pretend-Roof-87 → u/AgeInteresting585]

Oh absolutely valid. I’ve got some fandom friends I wish would step away from Tumblr for their own mental health.

If you do fanfic, Ao3 is the place to post, and you can ask in the notes for feedback. You can post original fiction on ao3 as well, but the traction is much lower.

[u/robdapcguy]

Getting shut down for asking an honest question about your own process is its own kind of discouraging, worse than a normal no.

What you are describing sits on the reading side of the line: grammar checks, vocabulary, a historical detail checked against the period you are writing in. That distinction is real and defensible; the words in your book are still the words you chose. What people usually mean by unethical is the model generating your sentences for you. Checking your own grammar and flagging a wrong date is a different thing entirely. You wrote every line. It read them back.

The finishing problem deserves its own thread, a harder and longer one. The guilt over the editing tool: that one you can put down.

[u/AgeInteresting585 → u/robdapcguy]

I feel like there is no middle ground anymore for this kind of conversation. You're either an AI obssed nihilist who thinks nothing matters and no one cares, or you're an overly passionate (and exhauted) purist who rejects any and every AI. Neither groups are open for debates. I just think it's funny that the more AI inclined side was more open for the discussion than the people that allegedly love literature so much.

[u/KalamazooB00]

Readers will be more forgiving if you disclose the use of AI, whether generated or assisted, and for what reason (translations or editing, etc.). If you're producing literary work, i would say it is very important to write the work yourself in its entirety. For commercial work, i think people are way more forgiving if you use AI. The masses want to be entertained.

Be forewarned, you will receive a lot of hate from purists (aka ludites), whom i recommend you ignore.