There’s a lot of talk right now about using artificial intelligence (“AI”) to write books. Now, all I know about AI is that I could use it to write an article on AI. But I wouldn’t. Any more than I’d use it to write a book, although for different reasons.
I wouldn’t do the first because I don’t know anything about the subject (see above). Which means that there’s nothing I could add, and in fact my article would probably only be a copy of what someone else already wrote–or rather, someone else had his AI write. So what would be the point?
But for the second…now that’s a more sophisticated question, with different answers. First, I wouldn’t do it because I don’t believe most publishers would be interested. I can only imagine they’re already getting plenty of these (I know the magazines are), and they’re probably not that good. And there’s a good chance that a publisher would think very poorly of an “author” who would submit such work, an attitude that no aspiring author wants to encourage.
Second, there have got to be better ways to earn a few bucks. Anyone who goes into writing fiction for the money is headed for a cold shower. Even if you were to sell your book to a publisher, it would be two years before it hit print. And if you self-publish? Then you’d find that writing the book is only the beginning. Selling it is actually more work. So what have you saved yourself?
You’ve saved yourself the satisfaction of completing a project that many begin but few finish. You’ve saved yourself the joy of selling that project–whether to a publisher or directly to readers–because if you haven’t put in the work, your only reward is financial, and the real reward of selling a story or a book is much more than that. And you’ve saved yourself from ever having self-respect, because while you might call yourself an author, you’re really not, and you know it. (Funny thing, AI-written works can’t be copyrighted, so anyone else could take your work and call himself the author with just as much legitimacy.)
So by not writing the work yourself, you’ve robbed yourself of the greatest–and perhaps only–reward you’ll get from it. When I finished my first novel, my friends got together and threw me a surprise party, not because I had sold something (it never did), but because I had achieved something. They were celebrating my work, not my success. It is still one of the highlights of my writing career.
It was a heartfelt tribute; there was nothing artificial about it.