I’ve published a new essay at The Living Dark titled “Can a Serious Writer Use AI Without Losing His Soul?” It’s an attempt to think through the question of whether writers can use artificial intelligence without surrendering the deeper source of their work.
The essay begins with my recent foreword to Youri Hermes’s The Art of Unwriting, then moves through the questions of unwriting, the daemon muse, creative flow, AI as a machine-muse, and the difference between assistance and abdication. It also touches on my own changing relationship to AI, including the way my thinking has been shaped by writing, teaching, and my current work in higher education.
My provisional answer is yes: a serious writer can use AI without losing his soul. But only if AI assists the work instead of becoming the source of the work.
The essay isn’t a manifesto against AI, and it’s certainly not an endorsement of the flood of machine-generated slop now filling the internet. It’s an attempt to think carefully about the line between using AI as a tool and allowing it to replace the living inward act by which real writing happens.
You can read the full essay at The Living Dark here: