100% RAGe (Real Author Guaranteed edition)
Everywhere you turn, “AI” crops up in the conversation. As a creative writer and freelance editor, I see a steady stream of bright ‘n’ shiny contract opportunities to carve out a cozy living by helping AI-bots replace writers and freelance editors.
On the other hand, I also hear reasonable voices inside the industry advocating for creatives to embrace AI as a writing/editing aide-de-campe.
So which is it? Is AI the dark and sinister precursor to a dystopian cyber-regime à la Skynet in The Terminator? Or is it simply an über-efficient 21st century tool whose moral value is a reflection of the end user, not the platform itself?
My facetious side wonders why everyone is freaking out in 2024, after eagerly embracing Siri, Alexa, and a plethora of “smart” devices, ranging from kitchen appliances, to Roomba and it’s lawn-mowing robot kin, Lawnba. Suddenly, “there’s an app for that” doesn’t sound as warm and cuddly as it once did.
Do you use the spellcheck feature in Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, or online tools such as Grammarly? Ahem (coughs politely into palm) …
The question for content creators — creative ranconteurs, in my case — can get a little fuzzy at times. My own thinking is set both in “hard no” concrete, and also “hmm … lemme think” flexibility:
- World-building — hard no
- Characters & back stories — hard no
- Developmental editing — hard no
- Copy / Line editing — medium hard no (spellcheck counts)
- Cover design & artwork — hard no
- Ads & advertising artwork — hmm …
- Author bio pix — hmm …
You have to draw the line somewhere. For me, the line is between using helpful writing tools, versus using AI for content creation. The “100% RAGe” manifesto is my simple way of saying, “Hello. My name is Deven Kane, and I write 100% of my own stories.”