AI: Innovation or Devil in Disguise

Book signing for an AI robot

Last Updated on September 30, 2024 by Tom Kane

Once upon a time, there was a writer in the early 20th century, who wanted to write a novel. He had paper and he had a pencil. It was all he had to write his novel. So he wrote, and he wrote, all 90,000 words, in long hand.
To publish his novel our poor writer had to hawk his work around and find someone who could type up his manuscript. This could be someone who worked in a typing pool and did a little night work on the sly. Or, someone who was enterprising and saw a market for working from home and owned one of those new fangled typewriters. Either way, there was a price to pay and our writer would have to find the money from somewhere to have his manuscript typed up and accepted by a publisher.
Off course, with all inventions, there was always someone who was going to go one better and it wasn’t long before the sit-up-and-beg typewriter of the late 19th century had a little cousin, the portable typewriter.
Our writer suddenly had a choice. Pay to have his manuscript typed up professionally, or save some money and do it him or herself. Not surprisingly, sales of portable typewriters soared. Not all were destined to be used by writers, but a good proportion were. That obviously had an impact on those who had invested in the larger and more costly cousin and I’m sure a lot of self-employed typists lost work because of the portable typewriter.
Our writer had another problem after he had managed to type his manuscript. He needed someone to proof and edit his work and as a self published writer (even Charles Dickens self published) he still had a long way to go to get his work published.
A few years down the line, in the 1980s, our poor writer was long deceased, but if he had still been around he would have been aware of something called the PC on the market.
As with the old sit-up-and-beg typewriter, the Personal Computer would once more revolutionise the way people in offices worked. And when word processing software was developed, that saw the decline of not only the self-employed typist, but also sales of typewriters in general. Suddenly a writer could own a PC and software developed for that PC would eventually enable writers to write novels and spell check the manuscript without the help of anyone else. Add to that a laser printer and our writer could easily write, edit, proof and print his work and get it in the post to an agent of publisher.
Progress has made the modern writer’s life so much easier. Today we can write novels, proof it with software, edit it with software, format it for publishing on Amazon kdp with software and publish it to Amazon’s digital store and hope to sell the book to a waiting audience. Except, we still had to get a professional artist to create the front cover. Even a digital book needs a good, eye catching, front cover. And that, as with so many other things in life, will cost money. Money most indie authors don’t have.
Well, innovation has popped it’s head up once more. Now indie writers have the chance to create their own front cover with AI. So, what’s stopping him? It’s a progression in technology that once again puts the writer in a commanding position. But it may mean lost business to some people. However, was that not the same case with the invention of the typewriter, the PC, printers, word processors and all the other things we writers now take for granted.
There are some in the indie writing world who feel AI should not be used when we write our stories. On that basis, I entirely agree. Any sort of writing should be the sole work of the human writer, not a piece of software. I for one will never and have never used AI to write any of my books or stories. The writing is all mine. But I do use AI to create images for advertising my books on social media and, sometimes, to create my front covers. Is that use of AI so bad? Isn’t it the same as our writer buying his first portable typewriter and cutting out the so-called middle man?
I’ve already been blocked on social media for believing using AI for artwork is not wrong. So be it. If I lose friends, relatives and fellow authors for such a stance, then that is the price I pay for embracing progress.
And yes, I did buy portable typewriter and yes, somebody did lose work because of my purchase. It’s called progress.
Copyright © Tom Kane 2024

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I write historical fiction novels. I have published five novels with six more planned in the Midnight Series. For more information on my books, why not join my newsletter.

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