My AI Policy

I’m aware the use of AI is a hugely controversial topic. I know some people find it very upsetting. I won’t get into arguments with people about it – everyone has their own valid views and stance on this. I only ask that you respect mine. 

I’m late to the party. I didn’t use AI for the first time for anything (that I’m aware of) until 2024.

I’m a member of the Alliance of Independent Authors. I’ve listened to many of their podcasts on the subject, as well as doing my own research. I am largely taking my lead from their stance on this, which has been well thought through and researched.

After much consideration, I’m of the view that AI is here to stay, and we must find ways of making our peace with it without letting it ruin what we love most about creative industries.

History has shown us that holding out against new technology rarely works. If you boycott indie authors who use AI in their marketing, do you also boycott big companies who do the same (and most of them do now)?

In the next few years, AI will transform medical science. Will you decline medical treatment where generative AI has been used? 

Where do you draw the line on AI tools? I personally can’t get along with programmes like Grammarly and Pro Writing Aid, finding them intrusive and unhelpful, but they both offer substantive text changes based on generated AI text, and authors commonly use both. They might be small changes, but you won’t even be aware you’re reading generative AI.

If you read Amazon reviews, you’ll be reading an AI generated summary of those reviews. Are you boycotting Amazon because of that? If not, why are you boycotting authors who use AI in their marketing but not the company that sells the books? Why are you singling out indie authors for your ire and expecting them to work to a different ethic than bigger businesses with far bigger budgets?

AI presents us all with big, ethical questions to grapple with, but to single out indie authors who often barely break even in their work, seems perverse to me when big companies with far bigger budgets are using AI in their marketing every day.

Here is my current policy on AI:

For anything where I would normally have used a human, I still use a human.

My book covers are designed by humans. I use a professional studio, Damonza, to produce my book covers.

My marketing assistant is my best friend, Emma. She’s human too. I’m so proud of how she’s taught herself to use Capcut and Adobe in order to help me market my books. She’s very talented. Her job wouldn’t exist without AI because I’d be limited to just posting my book cover and blurb everywhere. With AI, she can unleash her amazing creativity to produce all sorts of graphics for my marketing material.

My PA is human – her name is Acel.

My copy editor is a lovely human lady called Tessa. She’s been helping me with Dark Water for some years, well before the advent of AI.

My proof-reader is a human called Toby. He’s real too – and awesome!

My website manager is called Jacci – she’s been managing my xanthe.org website since about 2011, and designed my professional website too. 

My beta readers and audiencers are all human and most of them have also been with me for many years. 

I do use AI to help me with research, not for my novels, but for how to be an author in today’s world. EG: how to set my prices for an international market, how ARCs work, how to automate my mailing list welcome sequence etc. 

I will also use generative AI in marketing materials – but only for material that if I weren’t using AI, I wouldn’t have used anyone else, either, so I’m not depriving an artist or copywriter of a job. I’d either do it myself or not do it at all. I will generate images for use in artwork and videos, and occasionally request assistance with marketing copy. 

That’s my stance. I know there’s a broader issue of the images and words that AI has been trained on (my own included as they were on a pirated site that was used to train on AI engine). That is a matter for copyright law, and cases are currently going through the courts and various parliaments to establish what that law will look like. I do think the creative industries deserve special consideration in this respect, but bigger brains than mine will have to hash out what that looks like.

All my published books and fanfiction stories are my own work. I haven’t used generative AI in them. The writing part is what I enjoy the most, and I’ve been doing it for decades. 

Obviously, this tech is evolving all the time, and my stance will have to evolve with it, so I may well update this policy at a later date, but for now, that’s where I’m at with it.