The opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the views of Her Campus.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at MSU chapter.
A few weeks ago, while waiting around for a meeting related to creative writing, I overheard a surprising comment about artificial intelligence.
Several nearby students had been discussing writer’s block. I was mildly eavesdropping when one student (loudly!) chimed in with, “I usually just get ChatGPT to fill in the rest because I’m lazy.”
I like to think I’m not completely naive — I’m aware that many students use ChatGPT to write essays, answer questions, and whatever else AI does for schoolwork. While I don’t necessarily approve of the practice, I do understand why students may rely on AI to assist in completing their homework. Many AI software quickens the process of confusing and boring tasks, which is the main selling point.
But this stranger’s comment baffled me for days after the meeting. Even when ignoring AI generators’ harm to the environment and work theft, I wondered why anyone would want to feed their ideas and imagination into a bot. Soon after this incident, I researched and learned that AI has divided the writing community for almost two years, ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022.
On Sept. 1, 2024, National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo, posted answers to several questions, including a controversial (and now deleted) statement on their website about AI. “We also want to be clear in our belief that the categorical condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and ableist undertones and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege,” the statement read.
Many writers openly opposed this statement, with some deactivating their NaNoWriMo accounts. Others quickly connected that NaNoWriMo is sponsored by ProWritingAid, a writing software that recently added generative AI called AI Sparks. Maybe NaNoWriMo’s AI “neutral” statement stemmed not from ethical concerns, but from appeasing the sponsors.
This isn’t the first time a well-known online writing space has acknowledged AI, whether positively or negatively. In February 2023, just three months after ChatGPT began, the online fantasy and science fiction publication Clarkesworld Magazine temporarily paused writing submissions due to an overwhelming influx of AI-generated content. Clarkesworld’s editor-in-chief Neil Clarke theorized these AI submissions stemmed from “hustlers” seeking a quick buck out of the magazine’s payment system.
In my opinion, trying to pass off AI writing as one’s work for money is extremely anti-art, but it may answer my initial question of why some people rely on ChatGPT to write. I soon had other questions about AI concerning writing, some of which the internet couldn’t definitively answer. So, I turned to other writers for their opinions.
Creative writing professor Tim Conrad teaches classes at MSU about prose, writing history, editing & publishing, and more. In his History and Theory of Creative Writing class, he recently taught an activity called “Bot or Not?” Students read several poems and decide on their authors: humans, or AI software. However, students typically guess incorrectly.
“Our preconceived ideas about what bot-generated prose or poetry looks like [differs from] what it actually looks like,” Conrad said. “What is it that makes us think it could only be human? Is it the surprise? Is it the unlikely use of certain things? The sophistication of language or allusion?”
Conrad said that, ideally, writers should delve deeper into their own imagination and creativity, writing art that a machine could never meaningfully replicate.
“It’s a real not-starter to … seriously entertain AI as making art,” he said. “If you have the same short story written by a person, just imagine for a moment that a bot has written the exact same story — it matters to us if that story … has a narrative of a human creating it.”
Not every writer believes all AI usage equates to minimizing their own work. Human biology (pre-veterinary track) senior Gwen Pratt minors in fiction writing at MSU. Having minorly used both ChatGPT and Character.ai, Pratt said they occasionally use AI generators, similar to how one may search for writing prompts on Google.
“(ChatGPT) helps refine the prompts I’d get from a search engine, and even with writing prompts, the primary thing is your imagination and how your characters interact,” they said. “Character.ai is a little more wobbly because it’s giving me examples, but I think it’s still okay, as it feels similar to explaining a character and showing off scenes of them to a friend.”
Pratt said that writers should stick to AI’s main benefits: quickly generating information and grammar checking. They also believe readers should be aware that AI is a “broad topic.”
“There’s a lot of things that can be good, but when people use it to speed up [the work process] or do less, in terms of quality, things can go poorly,” Pratt said. “Otherwise, I do recommend checking it out, because it can be useful to see what you can do to help your world, work, and stories along.”
Personally, I won’t be using AI — or NaNoWriMo — anytime soon. I still believe writers should avoid using AI, even if I may be shouting into the wind. But I did learn a lot about the intersection between AI and writing, all because of a comment I once overheard.