The idea of AI-assisted writing is absolutely terrifying to me, not because I’m worried about the future of writing as a career – that has been slowly dying for decades anyway - but because writing is the process of figuring out what you actually think, and that is a skill that is slowly dying.

I found 1984 to be an extremely disturbing novel, because the premise involved slowly limiting the types of thoughts the populace was able to have by limiting their language. I can’t help but worry that we’re headed on a different, more insidious path to the same end result.

You know what the missing piece of the puzzle was? It was that AI art isn’t for artists.

Like, it can be. But for the most part it isn’t.

Here’s a “thread” I wrote back in October, in the pre-ChatGPT era, right when everyone was freaking out about AI art, and I’m pulling it out again to add some commentary on which of my thoughts have shifted and which I still think are relevant.

You know what the missing piece of the puzzle was? It was that AI art isn’t for artists.

Like, it can be. But for the most part it isn’t.

Like, when you think about it, if you need a bowl, you can commission a ceramic artist to make a beautiful one for you, right? Or you can make one yourself, which will give you varying results depending on how skilled of a potter you are. Or you can just go buy a bowl at Dollarama, because you need a bowl, don’t have (or don’t want to spend) a shit ton of money, and Dollarama gives you enough choice that it’s not really worth dealing with a potter or becoming one. It’s just a bowl, for god’s sake. Who cares?