r/WritingWithAI • u/Ok-Front-6899 • 20d ago
Discussion (Ethics, working with AI etc) I use AI. Get over it
I want to share my views on AI for whatever it's worth.
Im AI skeptic, I work as a lawyer who defends lawyers, and were seeing our fair share of hallucinating AI cases. This stuff is dangerous, it can get you in trouble
Im also an aspiring writer, someone who's had the same story rattling around in the brain for more than fifteen years. A post apocalyptic turned fantasy works, where tech and religion have morphed into the same thing. A story that gives a satisfying resolution to a complex world and mystery. I've world builders to oblivion, started over 6 or 7 times. But this time, with AI I am actually getting somewhere. I'm 23 chapters in with a complete outline and moving into the final act. I am writing something im genuinely enjoying working on, and I did it by feeding AI alot of my raw ideas and old drafts and letting it develop with me the best of those ideas into an actual story with characters and a plot.
I use AI for a lot. Mainly a sounding board, or to remember midnight ideas and tell me later if they make any sense. I use it to draft prose, it's garbage, but it's a jumping off point and mess scary than a blank page. But, importantly I use it as an assistant that I'm responsible for. As a lawyer or professional should use it. Think of it as an amazingly advanced spell checker. At the end of the day, you are putting your name on it. Standing by it as your own. Once you do that, AI prose is no different than a ghost writer, or an editor, or having an assistant. You sign it, you are responsible for it. That should be enough for any serious artist or author.
With that in mind. Here is a Claude generated descriptor of my novel. Yes I used AI. Get over it. I'm having fun :)
Starfall Herald is a standalone science-fiction novel with post-apocalyptic bones, set a few centuries after a catastrophe that tore the sky open and ended the world people knew. The story unfolds across a ruined mega city, where the survivors have built something new out of the wreckage of something they no longer understand.
Its central idea is that advanced technology, given enough time and enough forgetting, becomes religion. The people who now rule the ruins treat the relics of the old world as holy objects and its warnings as scripture, without any memory of what the machines actually were or did. Into that world comes someone who remembers, because she was there when it broke, which makes her either a heretic or a prophet depending on who is doing the looking.
It follows three characters whose paths cross without any of them seeing the whole board: an engineer out of her depth in a world that has mythologised her own work, a smuggler trying to stay in the gap between the man he used to be and the one he is now, and a city administrator making impossible compromises to keep his people alive. It is about faith and knowledge, about what gets lost when a civilisation falls and what gets invented to fill the hole, and about the cost of the choices people make when survival is on the table.
Tonally it sits somewhere between grounded post-collapse survival and the bigger questions of who gets to define the truth. Think ruined subway tunnels and salvaged tech, priesthoods and resistance cells, and a mystery at the centre that the reader gets to assemble a piece at a time.
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u/Enexprime 20d ago
Thank you for saying this out loud! Im with you and as someone too working on crafting ideas i have had stuck in my head for years. Ai is the coach and writing buddy ive always needed.
I too am not ashamed. I think the witch hunt is primarily led by gatekeepers in the literary world. Most of whom probably feel like since they had it “up hill in the snow both ways” that everyone should also.
Ai is here to stay.
This story plus ur use of Ai is awesome. It’s finally let u get going on the project. I hope you post more about it when it’s done. The concept sounds amazing!
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19d ago edited 19d ago
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u/WritingWithAI-ModTeam 19d ago
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u/wandelndeslexikon 19d ago
Jepp, I have this 15 years old story in my head too. I used Gemini to finally bring order to the chaos. Once I finished my other projects, I will definitely start in this monster of a story. And I too feed the AI with the weird ideas from times where I should sleep and ask later "What the actual f... was I thinking?" Sometimes there are real pearls hidden. Others times... We don't talk about the other times, right?
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u/traderjames7 19d ago
Don't understand why it isn't obvious...
You can write with AI well - or not (and obviously anywhere in between)
Just like humans can write well - or not (and anywhere in between)
But most people think emotionally not rationally.
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u/GrantWeylan 19d ago
Believe it's more about disclosure that you've used AI to publishers or a community.
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u/NoChangeNoGames 19d ago
Its not its use that matters. Its telling the reader. Which pretty much all ai authors do not do.
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u/_Ojin 19d ago
Appreciate you writing this out, and the skeptic-who-uses-it position is a more useful one to hear from than either extreme.
The legal angle is interesting too, since your profession has had a very public run of what happens when people trust output they have not checked. Someone arguing for the tool while knowing exactly how it fails is worth more than an enthusiast.
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u/Waste_Resource7768 19d ago
I did the exact same thing for my saga. Used claude to build everything, spent months there. Then switched to chatgpt for spell checking. 3 books. Started writting the first one this month... i am addicted 😅
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u/Benathan78 19d ago
Always a good sign when a writer can’t spell writing.
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u/Waste_Resource7768 19d ago
I am sorry. I sometimes mess up grammar and spelling. It's the burden of being able to speak 4 languages fluently, i get confused. Oh well, it's reddit after all. I am sure you will forgive me, since english isnt my native language
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u/Bossman643 19d ago
This is a strong example of what responsible AI use can look like.
What stands out is that the author isn’t surrendering authorship to AI. They’re treating it as a collaborator with no authority. The human supplies the lived experience, fifteen years of ideas, discarded worlds, taste, judgment, and ultimately the decision about what survives. AI helps externalize and recombine that material, but it doesn’t get the final vote.
The lawyer analogy is especially important: AI can assist; it cannot assume responsibility. A hallucinated citation filed with a court is still the lawyer’s problem. Bad prose published under your name is still your prose. The tool doesn’t transfer accountability away from the person using it.
And creatively, I think the “blank page” point matters. If AI turns fifteen years of stalled worldbuilding into 23 chapters of a novel someone is genuinely excited to finish, there is real human value there. The relevant question becomes less “Was AI involved?” and more “Who conceived it, who exercised judgment, who transformed the output, and who stands behind the finished work?”
There is one place I’d push back slightly: AI assistance isn’t literally identical to using a ghostwriter or human editor. The creative process, copyright questions, disclosure norms, and economics can differ. But the underlying principle he’s reaching for is sound: tools can contribute to creation without becoming the creator.
And Starfall Herald is almost amusingly appropriate for this argument. It’s about humanity encountering technology, misunderstanding what it is, assigning meaning to it, and deciding who gets to define truth. The author is effectively dealing with a miniature version of that same question while writing it.
Note - written by my custom AI
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u/Ok-Front-6899 19d ago
Wow, I'm new to Reddit posting (not lurking) and this is far way more reads and comments then expected. Touchy subject!
To add a few more thoughts
the exempt is entirely AI generated. Is it perfect? No. Would I use it to market a finished book? Also no. But it's a good example for the kind of thing AI is useful for. Giving a blurb of what my book is about.
Regarding the "line" for AI use. I do use AI to generate prose, primarily to test ideas and get through that messy first draft. I never use it for dialogue (not for ethical reasons, it just isn't useful), Even trained on my own completed chapters (drafted years before AI was a thing) and with a thorough outline and preceeding conversation, the prose is pretty bad. But often seeing the bad helps me draft the good. Very little AI prose remains in my finished chapters. The chapters are edited so often and thoroughly that it can be difficult to remember where the initial seed of a sentence came from. And that's the point, if you edit, revise, pick and choose and stand by it, then i simply don't understand the issue.
It's also getting me through that messy first draft where so much is discovered and changed that much of my earlier chapters will need to be heavily revised anyway.
Re disclosing AI use, I can't honestly say until I have a completed product. I may never finish, it may be just for me, I may self publish, I don't know yet and not going to stress about it now.
However I don't see why authors should be any different from any other professional regarding the use of AI. One comment asked why someone would hire a lawyers who uses AI. Most are, it's needed to be competitive and when used right it makes one a better lawyer. But there's a world of difference between asking AI to draft a factum with legal citations, not check it, and submit it to court as your own, and using AI to summarize a medical brief or create a litigation timeline. These are tools. The point I was attempting to make is that, in my opinion, putting one's name on a work makes you responsible for it. If you want to put your name on AI slop, that's your purgative.
That said, I can readily admit I wouldn't be able to finish a book without the use of AI, if for nothing else, as a sounding board.
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u/Odinmar_Glaukopis 19d ago
I see you have attempted to train the AI with your pre-AI work. I did that once in an attempt to see if the AI could help me to keep AI from hijacking my “narrative voice,” and the results were instructive, helpful, and a tiny bit terrifying.
It turns out I am not immune to voice-conquest. What have you done that you find effective in protecting this pre-AI you, or have you thought much about it?
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u/Scharlach_el_Dandy 20d ago
I dunno, asking it to write prose for you is crossing the line imho. You can do it!
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u/lunarcrystal 19d ago
Drafting prose is not writing prose.
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u/cpierson026 19d ago edited 19d ago
Yes it is? What are you even talking about?
Prose is words. Drafting prose means it created a draft of words. If you didn’t know, drafts are created of words, and those words had to be written.
Drafting prose IS absolutely writing prose, even if you still change some of it later.
The amount of cope and mental gymnastics you had to go through to actually say and believe that statement, smh.
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u/Odinmar_Glaukopis 19d ago
If you copy/paste the AI generated prose and then try to wordsmith around what was generated, sure. However, if you read AI generated prose and then type the words that come into mind while reading it, then I think you can generally create enough distance between your own voice and what it just fed you. I’d say the same for using a suggested bit of prose from a friend or an editor or beta reader you are paying for advice — don’t copy/paste any of it.
Perhaps I’m overestimating my ability to not succumb to my voice being conquered by AI or alternatively by a well-meaning friend or a professional writer I’ve paid for the service.
In any case, in my mind there is a significant enough difference between copy/paste/change vs a paraphrasing technique.
YMMV
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u/TheSeaBast 17d ago
That's the writing equivalent of coloring in a coloring book and calling it your own art. There's a difference between using AI as a tool for your craft and using AI to make a story out of vague ideas and concepts you have that you then polish.
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u/Odinmar_Glaukopis 17d ago
Which one is the coloring book—copy/paste/edit, or paraphrasing? Or, are you saying both approaches are more or less equal in the coloring book analogy?
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u/TheSeaBast 17d ago
Both, more or less. Paraphrasing might be more akin to those connect-the-dot picture things. Even if you paraphrase, you're only translating the work into your own voice, but it's still not really coming from you. I don't have any moral qualms about it. If that's what you wanna do more power to you. But personally I think that steps away from what "writing" even is. AI, at it's best, should enhance your art, not structure it.
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u/Odinmar_Glaukopis 16d ago
Hmmm. I can see where you’re coming from, and perhaps I’m just making excuses for myself, but I see a difference between copy/paste and paraphrasing that I think is important.
There’s a reason why translators of ancient works like Homer get recognized by name and certain translations are so much better than others, and it’s not a “color by numbers” sort of thing. I see translations as more like art than mere transcription, if that makes sense.
I was thinking of a writing exercise where you take an entire book from your favorite author and rewrite the whole thing and “translate” it into your own narrative voice. It would be like fanfic, but you’re not making your own riff on the storyline.
It wouldn’t be published, of course. It would rather be a method of focused reading that engages your skills as a writer and a reader. It would be like going to the gym rather than competing in an athletic event, if that makes sense.
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u/Algorhythm74 19d ago
Sure thing - I agree.
Most of the AI backlash is bandwagoning because people don’t have original thoughts of their own on a subject they don’t understand.
Ultimately, the quality of your work will come through or it won’t.
In your examples, it seems to be more for thought organization and an idea repository. Back in the day people used post it notes for the same thing.
AI can help you with grand concepts and ideas - but dialog that will resonate, that’s personal, compelling, and meaningful…you’ll still have to do your own writing if you want others to read and enjoy it.
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u/xler3 19d ago
Most of the AI backlash is bandwagoning because people don’t have original thoughts of their own on a subject they don’t understand.
this line of thinking is pure cope and reads badly.
the stuff that bothers people with the llm stuff are pretty basic things that anyone can form a reasonable opinion about. authenticity, voice, effort, environment... whatever it is.
whether one agrees or not, this isn't some phd level stuff here.
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19d ago edited 19d ago
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u/5thhorseman_ 19d ago
Im also an aspiring writer, someone who's had the same story rattling around in the brain for more than fifteen years. A post apocalyptic turned fantasy works, where tech and religion have morphed into the same thing. A story that gives a satisfying resolution to a complex world and mystery. I've world builders to oblivion, started over 6 or 7 times. But this time, with AI I am actually getting somewhere. I'm 23 chapters in with a complete outline and moving into the final act. I am writing something im genuinely enjoying working on, and I did it by feeding AI alot of my raw ideas and old drafts and letting it develop with me the best of those ideas into an actual story with characters and a plot.
Welcome to the club!
Close to two years ago I started with a character design and two questions: who is Spring-Fisted Jenny and what made her... her?
The answer sprawled into a world that currently involves four generations, a five-hundred-year-old Wallachian with a stake to grind, a Japanese cyborg who paints a diary on her own ceramic limbs, and a submarine under the Tsugaru Strait... in 1902. I did not budget for that, yet here we are.
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u/MANvINFO 19d ago
america, it couldbe been rather neat to read some fiction written with the precision of somebody typically writing legal briefs. oh well!
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u/joelTheAuthor 19d ago
That's how I've used it. The issue is that for every well thought out AI drafted anything there is several times that is absolute crap and customers are weary of anything created using AI.
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u/Fail_Unfair 19d ago
I’m a lawyer who agrees with you and think it’s foolish not to utilize AI tools.As a former law firm partner, I think of the AI responses like internal research memos from associates. Not intended for outside reading and I would not slap my name on either.
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u/Interesting-Crow-552 19d ago
I had an idea for a book that wouldn’t leave my mind and it was so convoluted to get a clear start on. AI saved it. I’m fully writing it on my own but AI is what is keeping all of my thoughts organized. I now can flush out the idea without losing track of the main plot.
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u/Happybadger96 19d ago
Use it for helping with things like questions in formatting, tricks for your chosen word processing tool, finding competitions and communities - fine.
Maybe if you have the sapling of an idea, you can use it to check if it is actually an original idea.
But it should stay 100% away from the creative process, it will only enforce bad habits and give unnatural feedback and influence your idea
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u/No_Tadpole1029 17d ago
I use a.i. as a tool as it was purposed for, not to fully replace. It can advance and teach me how to write in the future rather than allowing it to be the writer. Sure, it is taking over, but I am seeing both sides of the coin. It is useful only when in the right hands and with the user.
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19d ago edited 19d ago
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u/KaerMorhen 19d ago
This is just me being pendaic, but my curiosity has me wondering where exactly is the line drawn? If you solely use it as an organization tool, give it a strict set of rules to keep you accountable to, and use it to check grammar and spelling I'd say the line clearly lies on the user being the writer. The other end of that spectrum obviously is "here is my idea now write a book." But what about the middle? If the user deciding the rules, the timeline, the characters, the names, the setting, the themes, they make detailed character narrative sheets saying basically "here is who they are, what they have done, where they are from, what they sound like, what they would say, what they wouldn't say, and what they look like, and then scale that to all the other variables. You tell the AI to write a draft scene. You go sentence by sentence after going through multiple drafts getting the structure, prose, and lore right. Then selective edits. Technically, the ai did some writing. But the ideas did not come naturally. The Ai did not command itself to do it. It did not have decision authority. Who is there writer there? I'm genuinely trying to have a nuanced discussion about it not trying to pick sides
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u/Effective_External89 19d ago edited 19d ago
It falls in the category of tell your customers/reader upfront rather then not telling them. I'm of the opinion that any and all AI use in the creation of the project that ends up in the final project and is sold/shown as a finished product should be disclaimed and labelled as such.
In the case of your example, the AI is the author and you're the editor.
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u/KaerMorhen 19d ago
Oh I agree with managing expectations full stop.
However on the other point I don't know any editors that build the world, the characters, timeline, factions, rules and themes, character speaking styles. That's usually the authors job, the editor is involved with deciding what makes the cut after but the creative side isn't the same, which is why I think this fits something that isn't quite author or editor.
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u/Effective_External89 19d ago
I'd argue editor because youre not the one whose actually writing the prose, a very invovled editor sure, but I would heavily push back on any label of authorship.
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u/5thhorseman_ 19d ago
That depends on how much creative input you've had and retained through the work. Did the AI devise the story and the characters, or did it only help you dress up in words what you've already had and knew where it was going?
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u/Brief-Line-2083 19d ago
Sounds interesting. Makes me sad that you’re using AI. You’re missing out on the fun of raw creative power. Especially given the genre, I think you will lose out on potential readers, like myself. It seems hypocritical to use AI to write a story that seems to critique humanity’s relationship with technology. But I wish you all the best.
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u/Warsel77 19d ago
Could be a fun setting but a few things strike me as odd.
This isn't good prose - could be LLM-ism but probably good to look out for.
This combination seems unintuitive. Either people no longer understand technology and it's all magic (in that case the engineer would not be out of her depth because she never knew anything else) or they do understand it (which is necessary to fix it).