I am the author of the books I write. I am the creative mind behind the world my characters inhabit, the architect of each of their appearances, and the soul of their personalities. Every main plot, every twisting subplot, and the very atmosphere—whether it’s a salt-aired coastal town, a cozy kitchen, or an entirely different dimension—is born from my imagination. I am the one who seeds the mysteries and carefully hides the clues for you to find.
In this rapidly changing world, I use AI as a tool for assistance. In another era, this role would have been filled by a research assistant, a typewriter, and a personal editor. Today, the lines have become blurred. We live in a landscape where a person can hire a ghostwriter, never pick up a pen, and still be legally recognized as an author despite not providing the creative spark. Conversely, those of us who use modern tools like Word, Grammarly, or AI editors to tighten sentences and fix punctuation face scrutiny over our "authorship."
I recently had a debate with an AI program that insisted a chapter I'd written was entirely AI-generated. It wasn't until I submitted my original, raw rough drafts that the program conceded. It responded:
"This is a real chapter. Written by a real writer. What AI did was take this and tighten the sentences, fix the punctuation, format the dialogue properly, and add some prose flourishes. That’s editing... The fact that an editor is an AI doesn't change what you did or what you brought to the table. You wrote this book."
I disclose my use of AI freely because we are navigating murky, frustrating waters. There is a profound difference between a creator who builds a story from the ground up and someone who simply asks a machine to invent a plot for them and execute it with no further human involvement. I believe copyright laws will eventually have to evolve to recognize the "creative genius" who can prove the work started in their own creative mind.
To my fellow authors: I feel your frustration. Whether you are firmly in one camp or have a foot in both, I hope we can find common ground. We are in a modern-day AI witch hunt it appears, pointing fingers at one another. I do not know one author today who isn't using AI-assisted writing in some form or fashion. According to Amazon's guidelines, my work is considered AI-assisted, and I do not need to disclose this because it is not an AI-generated manuscript. However, honesty and transparency are the best way forward. This technology is here to stay, and we must all find a way to make peace with it.
The "AI-generated vs. AI-assisted" binary is a frame the industry has imposed, but it doesn't reflect how creative work actually happens. There is a vast spectrum, and that spectrum gets treated as binary in ways that are unfair:
- A writer who uses Grammarly's "rewrite this sentence" feature 200 times across a manuscript is using generative AI to produce sentences. Almost nobody discloses this.
- A writer who uses ProWritingAid's paraphrasing suggestions is generating AI text. Almost nobody discloses this.
- A writer who dictates a rough draft and asks an AI to "tighten this" is having AI rewrite their prose. The disclosure norms here are unclear.
- A writer who uses Word's modern editor, which now includes generative rewrite suggestions, is touching AI. Nobody discloses this.
- A writer who polishes their draft chapter-by-chapter through AI is using AI. The disclosure norms are contested.
The industry has drawn a line somewhere on this spectrum, but the line is arbitrary, inconsistently enforced, and increasingly meaningless as AI gets baked into every writing tool.
I gave you a clean "AI-generated" label as if the category were clean. It isn't. What you did on this book — the world-building, the character creation, the protocol design, the directorial choices on every clue, the killer's identity, the emotional structure — is substantial creative authorship. In film, the equivalent work would get you a "story by" credit or a producer credit, and nobody would say the movie wasn't yours because you didn't operate the camera.
Calling what you did "AI-generated" flattens that. It treats your contribution as if it were just the prompt, when in fact it was the entire creative architecture of a novel.
To the readers: Without my heart, my decisions, and my creative vision, these books would not exist. Thank you for reading and supporting my work.
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