I recently saw a Threads post by well-known author and purveyor of writing advice Chuck Wendig (a zombie post resurrected from late 2023—not that it matters) in which he trashes people using AI and finishes with: “AI in creativity is for the people who have no skill, no work, no effort, no ethic. They just want to push a button.”
The reason I saw said post was because a Facebook acquaintance—someone who creates both writing and visual art—was extremely offended by said statement, going on to outline how they use AI “ethically” in their creative process. I put ethically in quotes, not as sarcasm, but because I don’t think they used the word. I’m simply paraphrasing their argument that AI can be used as a productivity tool to boost the creative process.
So who’s right? As with most topics, this isn’t a black and white affair. There’s nuance, which people usually avoid when limited to 280 characters or whatnot, but I tend to think Chuck is more right than wrong, and here’s why.
Let’s start by outlining what I consider to be the five types of generative AI users. These groups apply to people using any kind of generative AI: writing, visual art, music, video, whatever. The groups are the same. They are:
1) The Dabblers: These are folks who stumble across generative AI and think, “Ooh! That’s cool.” They generate a few images, or a 500 word short story, or a song, but they don’t do anything with it. They’re just interested in what the technology can do. They’re not there to monetize it or take credit for the result. It’s just a cool toy, one which gets old fast. (Full disclosure: I fell into this group at first, in December of 2022, for about a month or so. You can scroll through my Facebook feed and find the posts.)
2) The Workflow Gurus: These are creatives who see AI as a way to streamline whatever it is they do, whether it be writers who get stuck during the outlining stage, artists who need help with posing or proportions, musicians who use AI to create catchy baselines and then add their own instrumental or vocal tracks on top. These are folks who have accepted that AI is here to stay and are trying to make the best of it, or folks who legitimately love that they can do more with less. And they don’t really think of the AI portion of the contribution as “not theirs.” They treat it like a Creative Commons license. They added and remixed on top of the AI contribution, creating something entirely new and unique as a result.
3) The Hustle Culture Bros: These are the people who see AI as a way to make a quick buck. If there’s a way to exploit a loophole in the system and commoditize art, they’re going to take advantage of it and run that revenue stream into the ground. These are people who spam Amazon’s kindle store with incomprehensible books full of garbage and then use click farms to make money off Kindle Unlimited. These are the people selling tens of thousands of AI generated images to stock photo sites. The people uploading AI generated images of log cabins and fake fitness influencers and Shrimp Jesus (for some god-forsaken reason) to Facebook, all in the hopes of generating clicks and video views to generate ad revenue. This stuff is 100% garbage, and it’s pervasive.
4) The Pyramid Schemers: You could probably lump people in with the Hustle Culture Bros if you wanted to, but these folks are going one step further: Selling courses to teach you how with seven simple steps, you too could be making $24,000 per month selling AI bullshit. Are they pushing AI garbage directly? Maybe not. But they’re selling the secrets to unlocking untold wealth with AI, and thereby vastly increasing the amount of AI bullshit online. If your Facebook feed is anything like mine, these people are EVERYWHERE. To be fair, the scammy course sellers aren’t limited to AI, but as with crypto, there’s a lot of overlap between them and AI in the Venn Diagram of scam bullshit.
5) The Institutional Users: These are folks who are being paid by corporations to generate whatever AI garbage they need: artwork for ads or websites, blog content, recipes, sports articles, you name it. These are the mythical PROMPT ENGINEERS, a term which has supplanted Sanitation Engineer as the most insulting fake work title. (At least with janitors, Sanitation Engineer was mostly a joke, but companies want you to believe that Prompt Engineers are a real thing and not just “guy who types thing into ChatGPT”). These are jobs that have replaced real artists and creatives, wholesale at some companies. Many companies have already cut their entire creative teams and replaced them with one or two minimum wage Prompt Engineers.
There may be some groups I missed, but these are the main ones. I don’t claim to know how many people are in each group, but for the sake of argument let’s say each group contains similar numbers of users (which I doubt, but let’s roll with it). Does that mean 3/5 of all AI generated content, that from the latter three groups, is trash? Of course not. Because the Hustle Culture Bros and Institutional Users are creating ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more trash then the other two groups. They are flooding every medium possible with garbage, because that’s their business model. As Chuck Wendig writes, these are people with “no skill, no work, no effort, no ethic. They just want to push a button.” (Well, they actually do put in work, but not in regards to creating. Just to squeezing every last dime from the fractured system around us).
At this point, if you’re one of the Workflow Gurus, you might be thinking, so what? I’m doing things the “right way.” What does it concern me if these other scammy lowlifes are abusing the technology that I’m using to facilitate my process? Well for starters, all those scammers and hustlers are making it much, MUCH harder to monetize your work, or even get any eyeballs on it. If every online medium has been flooded with a sea of raw AI sewage, do you think anyone is going to notice your nice creative tart floating in the frothy morass? Not likely. And depending on what you’re selling, many potential buyers are already out of the market, having switched from purchasers of creative goods to generators of mediocre crap. Do they know it’s crap? Yes. Do they care? No. Because we live in a capitalist society, and as long as that mediocre crap is substantially cheaper than the quality creative stuff that came before it, the crap will win.
So yes, I was a dabbler in AI, and when the image generators came around, I did think they were cool for a few weeks. But I quickly realized the harm they were doing, and I think Chuck is (mostly) right. AI does WAY more harm than good, and the little good it does is made practically irrelevant by the harm.
One last point, for my author friends: Even if you’re part of the Workflow Gurus, or someone who uses AI to improve their craft and tries to use AI in a positive, beneficial way, if you’re using generative AI in ANY way other than to replace work you yourself did, you’re hurting your fellow creatives. If you used to buy covers from artists and now use AI, you’re hurting artists. If you used to hire an editor and now use AI, you’re hurting editors. If you used to hire a translator and now you use AI, you’re hurting translators. Regardless of how you feel about AI, it’s putting people out of business. So don’t be surprised when someone who otherwise might’ve come to you to buy something decides to go to AI instead…