TL;DR: I don’t and won’t use generative AI to write any of my books. I try to make sure it isn’t used by anyone I work with.
I don’t use genAI because:
This has become a complicated, layered discussion as people bring in issues of fair use, plagiarism, water and energy consumption. The waters around these issues are muddied because of how AI works but also, I suspect, as a deliberate attempt to make the issues confusing for the layperson.
But it’s actually super simple. Because Large Language Models have been built on pirated books i.e. theft.
Sam Altman of OpenAI has opined that it’s “impossible” to create a generative AI model without using copyrighted materials.
Meta has been revealed to have actively sought a repository of stolen books to train it’s AI model.
Anthropic paid $1.5 billion to settle a class action lawsuit after it pirated over 7 million books.
Forget all the other issues. If the only way to build your technology was to steal millions of books, it’s unethical.
On 20th May 2025, I listened to Laurence Knopf give a talk about AI in The Bradfield Centre in Cambridge. And he accidentally gave me the quote that crystallised my biggest problem with generative AI.
Don’t worry about the legwork. You don’t need to do it anymore.
— LAURENCE KNOPF
“Don’t worry about the legwork. You don’t need to do it anymore.”
Laurence Knopf
Trouble is, I like the legwork.
I write because I enjoy it. The flashes of inspiration. The grappling with a difficult phrase, paragraph, chapter. The chaotic first draft. The honing, editing, rewriting, watching the piece emerge from the effort.
And I enjoy the work that goes into a book before the first word is written. The research, the interviews, the reading, the sheer learning and, as the knowledge grows, the evolution of the plan until the idea reaches critical mass and just has to be written.
Which part of this is legwork? The research? The reading? The first draft? The rewrites or the edits?
Which part of my craft am I supposed to surrender in the name of efficiency?
Someone once asked me, “What if people don’t care if something’s written by AI?”
I replied, “I’ll keep writing for the people who do.”
Hopefully, you’re one of those people.
Feel free to talk to me. Trust is vital when working with people like designers, illustrators, editors and so on. Sometimes that trust may have been misplaced. So please draw my attention to any concerns.
But please don’t feed my books into AI detectors. For a start, they’re no good anyway. But you’re also just letting the genAI model train itself on my hard work. Letting it steal more words it’s not entitled to.
Just talk to me instead.
He stared up at the tapestries, supposedly from the time of King Emyr. They were frayed and tattered, though the images they depicted were energetic and vibrant. “Time decides how old we are.”
