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To AI Or Not To AI—That is the Question (for Writers) · Reality Writes

0:05
Ellie Alexander: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Reality Writes.
0:10
Ellie Alexander: I am author Ellie Alexander, and this is the podcast where we talk about all things bookish, writer-ish, and we try to take you behind the scenes to give you a sense of what it's like from the writer's lens, the reader's lens, and everything else in between.
0:24
Ellie Alexander: And I am here with the Tech Guy.
0:26
Tech Guy: Hello, hello.
0:28
Tech Guy: Yeah, and today we are definitely going behind the scenes.
0:31
Tech Guy: So we're going to talk about some writer-ish topics, but that also impact readers, right?
0:37
Ellie Alexander: The topic that we're going to do a deep dive on today, from my perspective as a writer, but also as a reader, I don't think is escapable in any way, shape, or form.
0:47
Ellie Alexander: Darlings, I guarantee you that this is in your world right now, whether you want it to be or not.
0:54
Tech Guy: Yeah, it is everywhere.
0:55
Tech Guy: Uh, it is inescapable.
0:57
Tech Guy: And I think that there are definitely different differing opinions on this, but we're going to come at it from our viewpoints and make a case, and we'll go from there.
1:07
Ellie Alexander: That's right.
1:08
Ellie Alexander: So let's get right into it.
1:09
Ellie Alexander: Today, we're going to do an episode that I am titling To AI or Not To AI.
1:17
Ellie Alexander: That is the question.
1:18
Ellie Alexander: And let me tell you, darlings, you might already have guessed this, but spoiler alert, I already know the answer to that question, and it is no.
1:27
Tech Guy: When it comes to writing a book specifically or just in general?
1:32
Ellie Alexander: Uh, you know, I mean, definitely from this viewpoint, let's talk about it from a writing perspective.
1:37
Ellie Alexander: But there are so many other issues that I think we need to be tackling as a culture in terms of the environment, like so many pieces.
1:44
Ellie Alexander: But we're gonna narrow our focus and talk about this from a reading, writing, creative lens.
1:50
Tech Guy: Awesome.
1:50
Tech Guy: So where do you want to start with it?
1:53
Ellie Alexander: Well, let's start from the beginning, which is when AI first came onto the scene and suddenly all of us had access to Chat GPT and large language models.
2:02
Ellie Alexander: This was three or four years ago.
2:04
Ellie Alexander: And when it first came on, I sort of thought, like, oh my gosh, maybe there is an opportunity here for me, never from a writing perspective.
2:12
Ellie Alexander: And we'll get into why.
2:14
Ellie Alexander: A lot of what I do with myself and with writing students that I'm coaching is talking about the why we write.
2:21
Ellie Alexander: And that is so important to me in the whole reason that I write.
2:24
Ellie Alexander: But that's a little teaser.
2:25
Ellie Alexander: We'll come back to that.
2:26
Ellie Alexander: I did think, like for the first time, I could create pastries that I imagine tort creates and has in their pastry case.
2:36
Ellie Alexander: So when I'm writing the Bake Shop Mysteries and Jules is making this beautiful eight-layered torte and she's hand piping flowers and everything, I know what I imagine that to be.
2:47
Ellie Alexander: But if I'm baking that in my own kitchen, it doesn't come out looking like that.
2:52
Ellie Alexander: So initially I was like, oh, this could be great.
2:55
Ellie Alexander: And I think early on we shared a few images of like, oh, this is what tort could look like, or I would have Chat GPT like make me a map of what I thought Redwood Grove would look like just for my own purposes.
3:07
Ellie Alexander: But my whole slant has always been authenticity.
3:12
Ellie Alexander: And so immediately in, after like two or three times of posting an image that now I can so clearly identify immediately an AI image, and it gives me a visceral reaction, right?
3:25
Ellie Alexander: It's not authentic.
3:26
Ellie Alexander: When I am writing the bake shop mysteries, I am literally baking everything that you see at the back of the book, and I'm baking it two or three times in our home kitchen here.
3:36
Ellie Alexander: And they don't look perfect, and that's the reality.
3:39
Ellie Alexander: This podcast is called Reality Rights.
3:42
Ellie Alexander: So I think immediately I realized, like, no, this isn't gonna jive with me showing up in an authentic way, which is very important to me.
3:51
Tech Guy: And I can attest that she definitely does bake everything that uh is in the in the in the bake shop mysteries and and other books.
4:00
Tech Guy: And and those are the just the final recipes.
4:03
Tech Guy: So there's a lot of testing that goes into it before that.
4:06
Tech Guy: But if you go back and look at the history of your social media channels, you'll see that authenticity because you'll see that maybe what you describe on the page and what shows up in real life in the photos doesn't always match exactly.
4:22
Tech Guy: Or there you do make something that does look beautiful, and there are crumbs on the counter to in the upper right hand part of the picture.
4:30
Tech Guy: You know, it's just it it there's always something, and that's because it's real life, it is really happening that way.
4:37
Tech Guy: Uh, so what you see is exactly what what we're seeing.
4:42
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, and I think especially from a writing lens, it is so critical that you approach writing from a place of authenticity and writing from the core and who you are.
4:52
Ellie Alexander: And so if I'm doing that in any other way, shape, or form, that doesn't feel authentic or true.
4:58
Ellie Alexander: And, you know, I love seeing the reality of like people who I admire and their kitchens are a mess.
5:07
Ellie Alexander: They're covered in flour.
5:08
Ellie Alexander: It's not always like beautiful sunshine and roses in this glossy pastry case where everything is perfect.
5:13
Ellie Alexander: So that was my initial entry into any sort of large language model.
5:20
Ellie Alexander: And after about a month or two, I stopped using it and have never used anything since.
5:25
Ellie Alexander: I don't have it on my computer.
5:27
Ellie Alexander: I don't have an account.
5:28
Ellie Alexander: I'm not interested.
5:29
Ellie Alexander: Now, about the same time, I learned that I was part of the largest creative lawsuit in the history of the United States, where Anthropic and Meta used pirated copies of pretty much every book that has been published prior to 2022 to train said large language models.
5:50
Ellie Alexander: So, my number one reason that I do not will not use any sort of large language model in any form of my writing is because it is ultimately plagiarism.
6:05
Ellie Alexander: And this is a message that I keep having to have with new writers and students.
6:10
Ellie Alexander: And I think it's easy to kind of fall into this idea of like, oh, okay, well, it's gonna make my writing better.
6:17
Ellie Alexander: I just had a couple coaching sessions last week where writers are like, well, I write myself and then I put chapters into a large language model and I tell it to make it better.
6:27
Ellie Alexander: Okay, that's not making it better.
6:30
Ellie Alexander: That's not finding your own voice.
6:32
Ellie Alexander: That's using other writers' voices to try to make it sound like your own.
6:38
Ellie Alexander: And then you just sound like everyone else.
6:40
Tech Guy: Sound like a robot.
6:41
Tech Guy: Yeah, right.
6:43
Tech Guy: And I'm not sure that a lot of the writers out there who are using large language models understand that that is what is happening.
6:51
Tech Guy: This isn't some objective, unique, creative programming that can take what you put into it and just, you know, quote unquote, make it better.
7:03
Tech Guy: What it's doing is it's using all of the things that it's quote unquote again learned.
7:10
Ellie Alexander: Trained on, yeah.
7:12
Tech Guy: Through being trained on uh works that are both legally and illegally obtained and violating copyrights and so on and so forth.
7:22
Tech Guy: And it's essentially applying all of that to what you've written.
7:27
Tech Guy: So it would be the same as a writer writing something and then bringing those chapters to you, Ellie Alexander, and saying, hey, make this better, and then you handing them over to Gigi Pantian and saying, Hey, Gigi, you make this better, and then handing and then Gigi hands those to another author and says, Hey, you make this better, and then they give it back to the writer.
7:51
Tech Guy: And and now maybe it is better, maybe it's not, but it's not that writer's content anymore.
7:58
Tech Guy: It ceased to be their content at all the second that you asked multiple people to have inputs on it.
8:06
Ellie Alexander: Absolutely.
8:06
Ellie Alexander: And you know, you could take it a step further because one important piece of becoming a writer is finding your voice.
8:14
Ellie Alexander: And that doesn't happen overnight.
8:16
Ellie Alexander: That takes time, and that's okay.
8:18
Ellie Alexander: Like I talk a lot about the fact that practice drafts and all of the bad manuscripts that are never going to see the light of day, or books that you didn't finish, or pieces of things.
8:27
Ellie Alexander: That's all part of you learning how to develop your voice.
8:30
Ellie Alexander: So if you used this same model of thinking, you could go to the library or bookstore and just take swaths of, you know, writing from any book on the shelf and decide, like, I'm gonna make it my own.
8:45
Ellie Alexander: You would not do that.
8:47
Ellie Alexander: That's just outright plagiarism.
8:48
Ellie Alexander: But I don't think we wrap our heads around it the same way because it's like, oh, it's this abstract model that's doing this magical thing.
8:55
Ellie Alexander: No, it's not.
8:56
Ellie Alexander: It's spitting back material based on what it has been trained on, which is every other author's work.
9:02
Tech Guy: Illegally trained on every other author's work.
9:06
Tech Guy: Um, yeah, because that is a huge lawsuit.
9:09
Tech Guy: And it continues to be a problem today, even after the lawsuit.
9:13
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, there are ongoing issues as we speak where you know we're going back to court over new issues, things like the fact that many big AI companies are buying up copies of books and scanning them and destroying them.
9:29
Ellie Alexander: Um, you know, the legal ramifications are far reaching, and I don't think we're gonna see how that plays out for a while.
9:36
Ellie Alexander: But to your point, you sound like a robot, you sound like everyone else.
9:40
Ellie Alexander: It is really easy for me to spot AI writing, and I see it everywhere.
9:44
Ellie Alexander: I can see it in social media posts, I see it in emails, I see it potentially in sample chapters that writers send me.
9:51
Ellie Alexander: It all sounds the same.
9:52
Ellie Alexander: Large language models have this cadence, and it might seem like, oh, it's zippy and you're making it better, but I promise you you're not.
9:59
Ellie Alexander: And I will tell you from the publishing side of things, I've had so many conversations with agents and editors and people in the publishing business, and they are desperate to read anything that sounds like it is written by a human.
10:12
Ellie Alexander: In fact, one agent was talking about the fact that they get so much AI slop where they can just tell, like, okay, this is just another person who's put it in and said, make it better, whatever that means, that when they see bad writing or maybe writing that has some room to grow, they're like, Yeah, send me those pages.
10:29
Ellie Alexander: Where maybe 10 years ago they would have been like, oh, this one's not quite ready, but now they're like, you're a human.
10:34
Ellie Alexander: I want to read that.
10:35
Tech Guy: And it's not even necessarily that it's writing that has room to grow, but it's human writing.
10:41
Tech Guy: It's it's unique writing.
10:43
Tech Guy: It has a unique voice, it has character, it has personality, it has depth.
10:49
Tech Guy: I mean, you talked about seeing examples of AI writing, you know, every day, and we and we do, because you must get, I don't know, a dozen or more AI solicitations every day, and they all have the exact same phrases, and you can spot them a mile away.
11:07
Tech Guy: What stood out to me, what impacted me most, what was immediately apparent.
11:11
Tech Guy: These are all things that no one talks like that.
11:15
Tech Guy: Nobody talks like that.
11:17
Tech Guy: It just doesn't, it it it should be obvious to everyone, but it it unfortunately it's not.
11:25
Tech Guy: And I think a lot of the times the trap that people fall into with LLMs is they'll put something in and say, hey, make this better.
11:34
Tech Guy: And because what comes out may to them sound smarter, sound more mature, whatever, they think, oh, that's better.
11:45
Tech Guy: But it's not better.
11:46
Tech Guy: It's different.
11:47
Tech Guy: And it's different from the way you would have written it, which makes it not yours any longer.
11:53
Tech Guy: And it makes it just like all of those solicitations that we see every single day, and it's embarrassing.
12:00
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, I know.
12:01
Ellie Alexander: Okay, well, let's circle back to the why we write, because I think creativity is the best gift you can give yourself.
12:09
Ellie Alexander: I've talked about this on many occasions, but I came to writing through grief.
12:14
Ellie Alexander: The very first book that I wrote was a memoir about losing my mom to young onset when we had just had our first and only child, and that process of watching her lose all of the same skills that he was gaining developmentally.
12:28
Ellie Alexander: And writing that book was so cathartic and it made her whole again.
12:34
Ellie Alexander: And I got to explore my grief and sit with it and transform it too.
12:40
Ellie Alexander: You know, that once we write and share that story, whether you're sharing that for yourself or whether it's something you want to share with the broader world, you are turning your emotional experience into something else.
12:51
Ellie Alexander: After I wrote that book, I kept thinking, like, what do I want to write now?
12:55
Ellie Alexander: Like that was that first book that I absolutely had to write.
12:58
Ellie Alexander: And I kept asking myself, like, oh, what do I want to write?
13:01
Ellie Alexander: Well, I think I would like to write a mystery.
13:03
Ellie Alexander: Like it would be so fun to write a mystery.
13:05
Ellie Alexander: And for me, then, the entire length of my career, the last 20 years, whenever I'm here in front of my computer and I'm slipping into a fictional world, I'm healing a little part of myself.
13:18
Ellie Alexander: It is my antidote to grief because if I'm feeling sad, if I'm in a dark place, I put that on the page.
13:25
Ellie Alexander: I just heard from a reader uh who had the uh, I don't know, like gift of getting to see an early copy of the Pumpkin Vice Cafe.
13:35
Ellie Alexander: And they sent me a DM saying, like, oh my gosh, I really cried at the last few chapters.
13:39
Ellie Alexander: That was so beautiful.
13:40
Ellie Alexander: I'm like, well, I cried when I was writing it because I was tapping into all these feelings that I had that I still will carry with me for the rest of my life of losing someone so important to me.
13:52
Ellie Alexander: And so, you know, I'm not in a in a place where writing for me is a daily chore of needing to like work through big feelings, but it happens.
14:01
Ellie Alexander: Or like other examples might be um when Sky Guy, our son, was getting ready to leave for college.
14:07
Ellie Alexander: Like you can see that in every book that I wrote for those two years, because there's a lot of angst that comes up with being a mother and letting your child fly and all those things.
14:18
Ellie Alexander: So if you are present when you're writing, you are taking an emotional piece of your own burden and you're putting it on the page and you're transforming it.
14:28
Ellie Alexander: There is no large language model that can do that for you in any way, shape, or form.
14:33
Tech Guy: No, they're not going to generate real human feelings.
14:36
Tech Guy: They're not going to generate real human emotions or relationships.
14:39
Tech Guy: They're going to be able to put words on a page, but they're all going to sound the same.
14:44
Tech Guy: And there are people who will argue with me and say, oh no, you tech guy, you just need to learn how to prompt LLMs correctly, and you can, you know, you can make it sound like a unique voice and everything.
14:55
Tech Guy: And I'm here to tell you, no, you can't.
14:57
Tech Guy: There's you can get things that sound different.
15:00
Tech Guy: They're still going to be detected as AI writing.
15:04
Tech Guy: Well, 100% they will be detected as AI writing.
15:08
Tech Guy: And we've already talked about authors on on Reality Writes here who have gotten caught essentially using AI to write books and then leaving things like the prompt or the response in the actual book when it got published.
15:22
Tech Guy: And that is just, it's so disingenuous.
15:26
Tech Guy: When I think of going out to buy a book, which we buy way too many books, but is that a thing?
15:34
Tech Guy: It's probably there's no such thing.
15:36
Ellie Alexander: Absolutely not, especially right now.
15:37
Ellie Alexander: Buy them all.
15:38
Ellie Alexander: Let's go.
15:39
Tech Guy: That's right.
15:40
Tech Guy: No, but but that is exactly my point.
15:43
Tech Guy: When you when you as a reader are going to buy a book, you're going to buy a book that was written by a human, that was written with that emotion, with that depth that you were just talking about.
15:53
Tech Guy: You're not going to buy a book that was written in a few seconds of somebody typing a prompt in and saying, hey, write a mystery for me.
16:01
Tech Guy: Like that, why would you pay for that?
16:04
Tech Guy: You could do that yourself if you're okay with that.
16:07
Tech Guy: Do it yourself.
16:08
Tech Guy: Don't like, what are you doing?
16:10
Tech Guy: But you're going out there to buy a book that was written by a human that was written based on real thought, real creativity, real experiences, and has that emotional depth and content on the page.
16:25
Ellie Alexander: That's right.
16:25
Ellie Alexander: Well, and I feel like you're somebody who can speak with some authority about this idea of like prompts, because you, in your daily work job, uh, you know, you're required to use AI, and you're somebody who knows how to fine-tune a prompt and everything like that.
16:41
Ellie Alexander: So let's imagine, even that it gets to a point, these large language models get to a point where they can just mimic somebody's voice completely.
16:49
Ellie Alexander: You are still cheating yourself.
16:51
Ellie Alexander: I am telling you, like my creative process is part of what keeps me grounded and what has helped me grow emotionally.
17:00
Ellie Alexander: So even if a large language model could somehow replicate my voice word for word, I'm still cheating myself out of that entire experience of discovery.
17:12
Tech Guy: Yeah, and I'm here to tell you because you're right.
17:16
Tech Guy: In my job, I am it, I have to.
17:19
Tech Guy: It's we're we're directed to use AI tools in in what we do.
17:24
Tech Guy: And you there is a lot that you can do with it.
17:27
Tech Guy: And there's a lot that AI can do.
17:29
Tech Guy: And I'm conflicted every day because of the environmental and social aspects of AI, the impacts of AI, especially data centers.
17:39
Tech Guy: So outside of just the writing piece, there are ramifications for that.
17:44
Tech Guy: But it even with super skilled prompting and everything, it's still at the end of the day, it is not human-created content.
17:54
Tech Guy: It just isn't.
17:55
Ellie Alexander: No.
17:56
Ellie Alexander: Okay.
17:56
Ellie Alexander: And the last thing I'll say about this emotional piece, and then we'll get into um another thing that's come up quite a bit in a few of my coaching sessions over the last couple of weeks, is uh it is also not um news to many of you, darlings, that I have struggled with anxiety over the years.
18:13
Ellie Alexander: When I was in my 20s, I would have debilitating panic attacks.
18:16
Ellie Alexander: I have always had an overactive imagination, for better or for worse.
18:22
Ellie Alexander: In fact, in my first mystery series, the Meg Reed books, uh, Meg is often um bringing in little touches of me because you can't separate yourself out from who your characters become either, because they're all a part of me, right?
18:37
Ellie Alexander: I'm generating them in some way, shape, or form in my own human brain.
18:41
Ellie Alexander: Like Meg talks about the creative curse, that this thing that is so fantastic that helps me create stories will also make my brain go to really worst-case scenarios.
18:53
Ellie Alexander: And writing is a way for me to channel and funnel that anxiety because I'm using that then to create stories or build worlds or think about ways I can kill off people who I don't like.
19:07
Ellie Alexander: Um so I don't have as much time then when I'm spinning out and imagining all the horrible things that can happen in the world because I'm focusing that energy into creating something that hopefully then you're gonna enjoy, darlings.
19:23
Tech Guy: Absolutely.
19:24
Tech Guy: All right, what's the next topic that you wanted to roll to?
19:28
Ellie Alexander: Okay, I've had this come up with two different coaching clients in the last few weeks, and they're using large language models to help brainstorm characters and plots.
19:39
Ellie Alexander: And again, I understand the draw and why that might seem like it's something that's quick and easy.
19:46
Ellie Alexander: But if you're using a computer to brainstorm with, I mean, first of all, do that with a human.
19:53
Ellie Alexander: It's gonna be so much more fun.
19:55
Ellie Alexander: Like go for a walk, go out for coffee.
19:57
Ellie Alexander: Like, um, even if you don't have a human to bounce ideas off of, like, go do it yourself and and see what happens.
20:03
Ellie Alexander: But that aside, they sort of have lost the plot.
20:08
Ellie Alexander: They're they're struggling to figure out, like, oh now, how does that character connect?
20:13
Ellie Alexander: How does this person, what happens at this point?
20:15
Ellie Alexander: Because it's not their own.
20:19
Ellie Alexander: They're having this generated for them.
20:21
Ellie Alexander: If I map out a story, which I do, in fact, I've talked about this and shown this, but I happen to have one for any of you darlings listening.
20:29
Ellie Alexander: This is Death by Candlelight.
20:31
Ellie Alexander: I've used the same process for every book that I've written, all 50 plus mysteries.
20:37
Ellie Alexander: I have a blueprint for murder that I start with.
20:39
Ellie Alexander: I know that there's gonna be a murder.
20:42
Ellie Alexander: I've got five or six, five or six suspects.
20:45
Ellie Alexander: They all have a reason for wanting the person dead.
20:47
Ellie Alexander: And I know at the end there's gonna be resolution.
20:50
Ellie Alexander: One of them did it, and somebody's gonna be caught and brought to justice.
20:54
Ellie Alexander: But what happens along the way, I have no idea.
20:59
Ellie Alexander: So I'm working on this book.
21:01
Ellie Alexander: It's this is the next in the novel detectives book.
21:04
Ellie Alexander: Well, not next, it will be a future novel detective's book.
21:07
Ellie Alexander: Uh, and this one is set um at a po speakeasy.
21:12
Ellie Alexander: And so I'm writing a scene where this po actor is on the stage reciting this gothic poem, and there's such a big um taped X in the middle of the stage.
21:22
Ellie Alexander: I'm just writing this.
21:23
Ellie Alexander: I have no idea.
21:24
Ellie Alexander: This just comes out of my brain as I'm writing.
21:26
Ellie Alexander: And I make a note and I'm like, what is the X for?
21:30
Ellie Alexander: I don't know.
21:31
Ellie Alexander: I have no idea.
21:32
Ellie Alexander: So I keep writing and I'm like, okay, well, the X, like the killer might have put the X there to put the victim in a special place on the stage.
21:41
Ellie Alexander: Or maybe we're gonna find out at the end that somebody just accidentally put it there, or like tape got stuck to their foot, or who knows.
21:50
Ellie Alexander: But the point is, I don't know either because I am following the creative energy and I get to decide, but I know because.
21:59
Ellie Alexander: It's my story that I'm going to find a way to the finish, whether that becomes a red herring or whether that is a critical clue in the mystery.
22:07
Ellie Alexander: If you're having a large language model try to like give you one clue after another after another, like you can't track that because they're not coming from you.
22:17
Tech Guy: That's right.
22:18
Tech Guy: Okay.
22:18
Tech Guy: So I'm going to put this in context of an 80s villain.
22:22
Ellie Alexander: Okay.
22:23
Tech Guy: An 80s 80s high school movie, let's say.
22:26
Tech Guy: So you've got the bully, and the bully is like making the the nerdy geeky kid do his homework, right?
22:35
Tech Guy: Take like give him all the answers for the tests and everything.
22:38
Tech Guy: Inevitably, something happens, hilarity ensues, and the the nerdy geeky kid can't get the bully the correct answers.
22:48
Tech Guy: So the bully now has to perform on their own.
22:51
Tech Guy: And what happens?
22:52
Tech Guy: What happens every single time?
22:55
Ellie Alexander: Every time the bully fails.
22:59
Tech Guy: And that this is my warning to new and experienced writers out there who are relying more and more and more on LLMs, it's all going to come crashing down at some point.
23:14
Tech Guy: And so if you're relying on LLMs to do all the work and you haven't learned the process yourself, you haven't developed your own process, you haven't strengthened that muscle, to put it in your terms, but you always talk about that writing muscle.
23:29
Tech Guy: When it goes away, or when you no longer have access to it anymore, what are you going to do?
23:35
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
23:36
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
23:36
Tech Guy: What are you going to do if all publishers decide to start screening and not accepting anything?
23:44
Tech Guy: Anything where AI has been used to develop the book?
23:48
Ellie Alexander: Which is already happening.
23:50
Tech Guy: Which is already happening.
23:51
Tech Guy: What are you going to do when agents stop accepting anything where AI was used to help develop the book?
23:58
Tech Guy: What are you going to do when all the online booksellers decide they're just going to put all AI-generated content over here in this section that's labeled AI content?
24:11
Tech Guy: And now three quarters or more of your readership is like, well, I'm never going in that section.
24:16
Tech Guy: Yeah.
24:16
Tech Guy: Right?
24:17
Tech Guy: That'll be like the scary room with the curtain at the old video stores that you didn't go into.
24:25
Tech Guy: That's that's where all the AI content will be.
24:27
Tech Guy: Yeah.
24:28
Tech Guy: I mean, what are you like?
24:29
Tech Guy: People need to start thinking about that because that is going to be a reality.
24:33
Tech Guy: And if you haven't done the work and you haven't built your own process and learned the skills yourself, you are going to be that 80s bully stuck in the room, taking a test that you have no idea how to pass.
24:48
Ellie Alexander: That's right.
24:48
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
24:49
Ellie Alexander: And I mean, this is already happening in the publishing industry.
24:53
Ellie Alexander: There have been numerous stories just within the last few weeks about big contracts being canceled because things are being run through AI detectors and coming back as AI.
25:05
Ellie Alexander: Now, that's also tricky because it's like, okay, uh, let's pick somebody like Stephen King or myself or who what whomever.
25:12
Ellie Alexander: All of our works were used to train the large language model.
25:15
Ellie Alexander: So then there's this whole thing of like, oh, there are some authors that are also scared of that because they're like, well, wait a minute.
25:20
Ellie Alexander: It might sound like my voice, but I actually wrote that in.
25:23
Ellie Alexander: Anyway, but yes, the publishers, agents, I guarantee you, darlings, these conversations are happening as we speak and people are trying to get out ahead of this.
25:34
Ellie Alexander: It's even things like having the receipts, like, oh, I'm gonna show you.
25:38
Ellie Alexander: Like, I handwrite this, I have my handwritten stack of notes, I print out a copy, I handwrite my edits.
25:46
Ellie Alexander: I mean, I was talking to an editor last week who was like, you know what?
25:49
Ellie Alexander: Part of me is wondering if we're gonna go back to like the only way I'm gonna take submissions is a handwritten manuscript, which I mean is obviously a joke at this point, but I don't know, maybe who's to say as we go deeper down this rabbit hole.
26:04
Tech Guy: Exactly.
26:05
Tech Guy: Well, and the other thing I would say to writers out there who are using large language models, and and especially like you said, with some of your coaching clients and others who are uploading chapters or sometimes whole manuscripts, these large language model companies, these are the most dishonest companies on the planet, people.
26:22
Tech Guy: I mean, wake up, you gotta wake up, like you're giving your work to a company, and you might be like, Oh, well, I pay my $20 a month, so they promise to never train on my model and everything.
26:35
Tech Guy: Are you kidding me right now with that?
26:38
Tech Guy: What?
26:39
Tech Guy: Like, no, that they are what come on, I'm like I'm going into after party mode already with my rant, but no, you you are running a huge risk.
26:51
Tech Guy: And if you put any effort into writing a book, you should not be uploading it into any system, no matter what they say their privacy policy is or or not.
27:02
Tech Guy: All in all, like even if it's the most honest, secure company on the planet, your stuff is now out there on a server somewhere that is out of your control.
27:15
Tech Guy: If that company goes out of business, if they're hacked, whatever, and now your manuscript is in somebody else's hands, maybe thousands of other people's hands.
27:25
Tech Guy: And so the same tool that you're using to make your writing sound like everyone else's is now going to start making other people's writing sound like yours.
27:35
Tech Guy: So think about that for a second.
27:37
Tech Guy: That is not like this is just a problem that's going to compound.
27:41
Tech Guy: Uh it's gonna snowball and it's good, it's it's gonna get out of control.
27:46
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, yeah.
27:47
Ellie Alexander: Okay, the last thing that I will say about feedback that I I hear in the zeitgeist from new writers and people in the creative space is like, well, no, AI is offering accessibility.
28:01
Ellie Alexander: I I can't write fast, or I don't know how to write.
28:05
Ellie Alexander: And so I wasn't able to before.
28:08
Ellie Alexander: It was a barrier.
28:09
Ellie Alexander: There were gatekeepers.
28:10
Ellie Alexander: And so the only way that now I'm able to write and enter this marketplace is because of large language models.
28:16
Ellie Alexander: Okay, well, first of all, let's circle back to plagiarism first and foremost, right?
28:21
Ellie Alexander: Stolen works, stolen works, people, stolen works.
28:24
Ellie Alexander: There's that.
28:25
Ellie Alexander: That's always just gonna be my baseline.
28:27
Ellie Alexander: But part of developing your writing muscle is just that that you said it has taken me 20 years.
28:33
Ellie Alexander: And the first book that I wrote took me three years to write, and then the next one took me a year, and then I got a book contract, and it was like, oh, I'm publishing two series a year.
28:42
Ellie Alexander: And so then I got faster.
28:45
Ellie Alexander: And you develop your process, you develop your voice, you develop your rhythm and how many books you can produce in a year.
28:52
Ellie Alexander: I was looking back to 2013 or 14.
28:57
Ellie Alexander: No, no, it must have been 15 or 16.
29:00
Ellie Alexander: I was working on four series.
29:01
Ellie Alexander: This was long, long before AI models, but I'd been writing for 10 years at this point in time.
29:06
Ellie Alexander: And so I knew.
29:07
Ellie Alexander: And one thing you learn, especially when you're a series writer, is you have to write well and you have to write fast.
29:13
Ellie Alexander: But that doesn't happen overnight.
29:14
Ellie Alexander: That comes with time and practice.
29:16
Ellie Alexander: And this idea that then somehow that was a barrier to entry is just a myth.
29:23
Ellie Alexander: It's not true.
29:24
Tech Guy: And the thing is, there are going to be exceptions to the rule because I know there are people out there who are going to be listening to this podcast and they're gonna say, oh, Ellie, oh, tech guy, this is like all doom and gloom.
29:34
Tech Guy: Like I know people who've used LLMs and they're making a lot of money writing and everything.
29:39
Tech Guy: And that's probably true.
29:40
Tech Guy: There probably are.
29:41
Tech Guy: But you need to decide as a reader is that the content that you're willing to pay for?
29:48
Tech Guy: Is that what you're going to support?
29:51
Tech Guy: Is that the human creativity that you're craving, or is it just words on a page?
29:56
Tech Guy: Doesn't matter how they were created, how they were stolen, whether or not they were stolen, you know, whatever it is.
30:03
Tech Guy: It there are always exceptions to the rule.
30:06
Tech Guy: So if you want to try and become one of those exceptions, great.
30:10
Tech Guy: But I'm here to tell you, like, again, going back to the doom and gloom piece, it will all come crashing down at some point.
30:19
Tech Guy: For those of you who are around for the dot-com bomb, when the bubble burst, we are headed in that direction with AI.
30:26
Tech Guy: And the more people become become reliant on it, the more it's gonna hurt when it happens.
30:33
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
30:33
Ellie Alexander: And I guess my last plea to you, darlings, as the readers, is to use some discernment.
30:41
Ellie Alexander: So a writer friend of mine who has been published for many years, writes multiple series for her multiple houses, started noticing that this new cozy series kept showing up on this author's pages.
30:56
Ellie Alexander: Like clearly, this new author was buying ads based on my author friend's titles, because that happens, right?
31:02
Ellie Alexander: You're you're like, oh, this is like Gilmore Girls, or this is like whatever.
31:06
Ellie Alexander: So you can do ad buys based on another book series that something might be like.
31:11
Ellie Alexander: That's common, that's fine, that's perfect.
31:13
Tech Guy: It's actually a really smart marketing tactic, honestly.
31:17
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, exactly.
31:17
Ellie Alexander: But my author friend started to sleuth it out and was like, wait a minute.
31:21
Ellie Alexander: The 17 titles have been published in two months, and then went a little farther down the rabbit hole, put their sleuthing cap on because they are a mystery writer, and they're like, wait, there's no social media presence, there's no author picture, there's no, there's nothing.
31:38
Ellie Alexander: So immediately this author clued into the fact that this is obviously somebody who's just like, okay, I'm gonna publish 17 books in six weeks on AI, and they had like 72 titles ready to go for the year or something like that.
31:51
Ellie Alexander: But as a reader, I think it's important that we're using discernment then too, that if you see something like that that and it feels wrong and you're seeing a cover that clearly looks like it's also AI, it might be time to just pull back and go, wait a minute, is that made by a real person or not?
32:08
Tech Guy: And I would just like to remind everybody out there, especially the writers or those who want to become a writer, that prior to 2018, 2019, when the first early, early AI models started showing up, everything, all collected written works before that time, which was probably billions of books and documents, newspapers, magazines, whatever, all of that was written by people.
32:38
Tech Guy: 100% written by people.
32:41
Tech Guy: And so you think about all of the absolutely amazing works of art that were created prior to this uh inception of AI.
32:50
Tech Guy: That's all people, people.
32:57
Ellie Alexander: Um, okay, so to uh round out this episode, to AI or not to AI, that is not the question, darlings.
33:05
Ellie Alexander: You should know the answer by now.
33:07
Ellie Alexander: I'm a solid no in this camp.
33:09
Ellie Alexander: I will continue to be a no.
33:11
Ellie Alexander: I've been actually thinking about like how when I'm working with students and coaching students, I'm I'm working on some new policies to make sure I don't, I don't want my name attached to books that are being written with AI tools.
33:24
Ellie Alexander: I don't want to blur books that are written with AI tools.
33:28
Ellie Alexander: If you darlings decide you want to read those books, more power to you, but that's a fine line and a boundary for me.
33:34
Tech Guy: And from my point of view, from the tech guy point of view, I just I want to hear from you.
33:38
Tech Guy: If you disagree with my viewpoint, let me know.
33:41
Tech Guy: Uh, I'd love to have a rational adult debate about the subject.
33:46
Tech Guy: But I'd also like to send out a message to everyone who wants to become a writer out there and is worried that you're not going to be able to do it or to keep up without using AI.
33:58
Tech Guy: That's garbage.
34:00
Tech Guy: You need to stop that line of thinking.
34:02
Tech Guy: You can become a writer, you will become a writer.
34:06
Tech Guy: You just need to put in the work, you need to learn your own process, you need to develop your writing muscle, and you will be successful in whatever you want to do without AI.
34:19
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
34:19
Ellie Alexander: And I think it's a real golden opportunity right now to circle back to the people that I've had conversations with in the publishing industry.
34:28
Ellie Alexander: Your work is going to stand out if it is your work.
34:31
Ellie Alexander: Like even if it's not perfectly polished right now, that's a good thing because it's going to sound like you.
34:37
Ellie Alexander: And you, as the writer, are going to reap so many benefits for your own mental health and your well-being to be able to take whatever is inside your heart and put it on the page.
34:50
Tech Guy: Okay.
34:50
Tech Guy: Well, that was, as you can tell, a very important topic to both of us.
34:56
Tech Guy: And so I hope, whether you're a writer, reader, somewhere in between, that you got something out of this episode.
35:03
Tech Guy: But let us know what you think.
35:05
Tech Guy: Send us a message, leave a comment.
35:07
Tech Guy: Uh, where do you stand on the issue?
35:10
Tech Guy: And what do you want to see with regard to AI in the world of writing moving forward?
35:16
Tech Guy: So, without further ado, until next time.
35:20
Ellie Alexander: Till next time.