As a creator of text- and photo-based work, I am exposed to two kinds of risk. One kind concerns being replaced by AI. The other concerns being accused of using AI to cut corners in my own work, or even of producing work that no longer qualifies as my own. Those are two good reasons to have an opinion on the matter, so I hereby submit my affidavit.
In terms of using AI as a writer’s tool, there was never a dilemma for me—to this day I haven’t deliberately turned to AI to create any of my writing. (I cannot say I don’t use AI at all because I don’t always opt out when running web searches or looking up translations.) Importantly, I’ve never been to the Chat GPT website. As a matter of fact, I don’t even know if it’s a website or an app. I’ve hard of the competitor Claude (a name I remember) and others (with names I don’t). My attitude when someone insists I get answers from a model (usually answer I assumed the insister might have) is like Picasso’s when they asked him about the moon landing. Why? I love the work! Even the boring hard stuff like some government office drama email that needs writing, I’m a dog with a bone, I love what my mind gets to do as I’m solving the puzzle. Injecting efficiency into this system would be like outsourcing the cooking—a trangression against everything I love and believe in.
Of course I’m no Picasso when it comes to my feelings about the way satisfying creative work is being assigned to machines, especially given the way this spells death by data center, ecologically speaking. But I’m learning to manifest acceptance. Yes, I used to have a gift for writing few people had at their disposal. Yes, now there exists automation that can almost do what I used to do. But don’t I still have my gift? And am I not simply being nudged to start exploring new ways of applying it? And how lucky I am that this turn of events isn’t threatening my livelihood! I feel grief when I think of all those who aren’t so lucky, my sisters and brothers of the em dash and the curly quotes and knowing when it really needed to be “you and me.” Increasingly, I notice all the ways my writing had to be something it wasn’t to satisfy client needs. Maybe with the clients busy typing at Claude I’ll have an easier time figuring out what it is I actually want to type. Or should I go full-Luddite and write it by hand?
In the past, I have found false accusations of AI use unfair and worrying, but I’ve developed an observer’s curiosity in this regard. After all, whoever assumes I am using AI (a) cannot fathom the attention I give to the task of writing and (b) probably doesn’t take the “from scratch” approach to many other things. Either way—they’re demonstrating values that clash with those I cherish. I’ve even discovered an unexpected benefit to this Orwellian nightmare, since I used to dislike the infrequent errors I let through in my writing, whereas these days I feel they finally serve a purpose as a kind of “certificate of authenticity.” On my first ever resumé I listed “uncanny ability to catch typos” as one of my skills. Now look what’s uncanny.
As for photos, I’ve always retouched mine cautiously, aspiring to be whisper-subtle about any improvements yet vigilant to redact anything someone might not wish to have captured in a photo. Thus, I oppose both the outright removal of flaws and the inclusion of them without first softening the edges. AI functionality has made all this faster but not really different in terms of the outcome. However, what AI has enabled that wasn’t possible before is the removal of distracting background details—electrical outlets, parts of parked cars, other clutter. Over the past couple of years I’ve often deployed the magic wand of Lightroom’s AI tool to tidy up. It felt right at the time, but it also feels important to admit this and issue this disclaimer. Recently I’ve been on a break from photography. I have an archive of fifteen thousand photos I’d like to cull to around a third of that size. I feel it’s wise to wait until after I’ve cleaned things up before I add new work. I don’t yet know what my choices will be when it comes to doctoring images with the help of AI going forward. What’s certain is that I’ll be considering the ethics of it as I go—and staying transparent on the matter in perpetuity.
But fuck those data centers. Be the change, you know?
