Behind the Quill: The Controversy of Using AI
- Erin H
- Aug 17
- 8 min read
Negative Opinions
These days, there's a lot of controversy about the use of AI in writing, illustrating, etc., and it's understandable to a certain extent. But AI, like any other new tool—including speech-to-text, or even just computers versus typewriters, and typewriters versus ball pens, and ball pens versus quill pens—is part of the natural progression of technological advancement. We've been improving our tools since the beginning of time.
These days, there are several authors who write in the index pages of their novels something to the effect of, “The author didn’t use AI in any way, shape, or form for the writing of this story.” Good for them—but it’s also kind of sad, because AI can be useful in a lot of ways. However, if an author doesn't put such a disclaimer, they are hounded and accused of letting AI do all the work. It's rather ridiculous.
Now, I’m not saying you need to have AI write your story. Some people do, and if you’ve read their work, you know when it’s written by AI—because it’s absolutely terrible. Not because AI is terrible at writing, but because AI has limited memory. Due to this memory limit, it’s not going to remember all the past events in the story, the character connections, background details—sometimes it even changes characters’ names.
What you end up with is a really disjointed collection of words and scenes happening in the same world, usually with the same characters—but they often go by different names, look completely different, are different ages, or have entirely different relationships. Everything’s constantly shifting. That’s because the AI forgets all the previous information after a certain point unless you’re constantly reminding it.
So, having AI write your entire story for you is, indeed, a terrible idea—but it’s also very obvious when someone does it. That’s why I don’t think people should be so quick to assume that using AI at all means the author had AI do everything and is just claiming the work as their own. That’s not how it works—and when it does happen, it’s usually painfully obvious.
So, you don’t need to shame everyone who uses AI.
Positive Functions of AI for Writing
I want to talk about some of the acceptable and practical reasons to use AI. These are the reasons why I use it, and I think it’s perfectly normal and acceptable. Honestly, since it’s been so helpful to me, I think it could be really helpful to a lot of other writers as well.
1. The Sounding Board
First off, I use AI as a sounding board. I live in Korea, and it’s not easy to meet with other foreigners, especially living in a small countryside area as an introvert. And even when I do meet foreigners, that doesn’t mean I’m going to get along with them just because we’re both foreigners and may speak the same language. Also, finding other English speakers who like Jane Austen and are willing to listen to me talk about , or properly discuss, Jane Austen, psychology, and my Jane Austen fan fiction? That’s about a one-in-a-gazillion opportunity.
Plus, my friends and family get tired of me calling and talking to them about it. So I really needed a kind of sounding board to discuss my ideas and get feedback. That’s why I turned to AI in the first place—to have a conversation partner who could listen and respond to my story ideas. It helps me a lot, because by talking through it, I often notice things that were right in front of me before but that I hadn’t seen. 2. Outlining
Using AI for outlining is very, very helpful. After all, sometimes it can be difficult to figure out how to properly outline. For example, if you know the kinds of events you want but you're not sure what order they should go in—or you just don’t have enough time to type up the outline—or you have a lot of ideas you want to get down before you forget them (and if you’re typing, maybe you’re a little slow, like me), then using AI for that can be very helpful.
Also, AI is very good at organizing lists, charts, etc. so it’s useful for that too.
3. Dictation
Even with outlining, I tend to use dictation. But it’s not just for that—I also use the conversation function. We brainstorm ideas together, and then once we’ve gathered everything, I have it turn those ideas into an outline. This is the same as talking it out with another person.
So if someone says, “Oh, the AI is doing it,”—not exactly. That would be like saying, “I talked about my story with a friend, they gave me some feedback and ideas, and then I made an outline based on what we discussed.” Do I have to credit my friend with writing my entire story just because I bounced ideas off them? No.
Of course, it’s nice to give credit and say, “This person listened to me and helped me think things through” which is what the dedication page is for. And yes, I have every intention of giving credit to the AI—which is part of the reason I’m writing this post in the first place. AI has been helpful in brainstorming, making outlines, and giving feedback when I had no one else willing to do so.
I also use AI for dictation. In fact, I’ve been dictating these Behind the Quill blog posts because I wanted to post updates for you all, but just didn’t have the time to sit and type everything.
What does that mean for my blogs?
Sometimes you may notice that my blog voice sounds a little strange. There’s a reason for that. When using AI for dictation, you have to be careful. You need to be very specific about what you want. Like I said before, AI has a habit of forgetting things over time, so it’s important to keep repeating your directions.
For example, I tell the AI not to take creative license, not to interpret, and not to rewrite things in its own voice. I just want it to copy what I’ve said—but clean up the grammar, remove repetition, improve sentence clarity, and format it properly. That’s all. I have a habit of stuttering, rambling, and repeating myself, so I use AI to fix that, nothing more.
This process is also helpful for sudden inspiration. When I have an idea for a scene, I’ll pull up the AI and talk it out. Then I ask the AI to clean up the grammar—again, with no additions, no changes, and no creative license. Just a straight clean-up. Since I’m a very slow typist, this helps me get ideas down quickly before I lose them—especially when it’s a good piece of dialogue.
I also use dictation when I’m doing chores around the house. When my cats want to play but I’m in a writing mood, I use dictation to keep my hands free. I can still write while cat-fishing or throwing the ball for my dog-cat who likes to play fetch. I’ve dictated while doing dishes, sweeping the floor, cleaning the bathroom, folding laundry, making the bed, etc.—hands-free writing has been a lifesaver.
People don’t seem to have a problem with other hands-free tools, so I don’t see why they should have a problem with hands-free writing—as long as you remind the AI not to take creative license when interpreting your words.
4. Research
AI can be used for research, but as many people have pointed out, you can’t just trust what AI says. Mind you, ChatGPT has actually started sourcing things, but it doesn’t always provide sources—sometimes because it can’t. It also has a habit of repeating back things you say to it. So if you ask, “Was it like this in that time period?” sometimes it’ll just tell you it was. And if you ask for sources, well, it doesn’t have any. Probably because ChatGPT was mainly created by men, it tends to lie to you rather than simply stating that it doesn't know!
Now, whether it’s lying on purpose or just programmed to flatter the customer is debatable.
However, sometimes it is actually good for research. The oddest thing I’ve found is that I’ve occasionally asked something and it didn’t have any information—and then, another time, I asked the same thing and it suddenly did have information: sometimes correct, sometimes incorrect. Honestly, more often it was incorrect. Occasionally, though, it would actually have correct information about something I couldn’t even find, and it gave me sources I hadn’t discovered during my own research. What made it interesting was that when I later brought up the same subject, it could no longer find those sources. So I’m guessing that maybe those sites were later blocked from AI access. But it does mean that sometimes it can give you factual information, and sometimes it just makes things up.
So if you’re using it for research, I recommend only doing so when you’re desperate and check, check, double-check anything important.
Also, Ai is very bad at math—which I find very odd, considering we use electronics, calculators, computers, and phones to do math. Somehow, basic math is not a concept the AI can reliably follow.
The thing is: it can be used for research, but you’ll usually end up doing more work than if you just researched it yourself—unless you’re really struggling to find information. In that case, it can be helpful for generating search ideas or pointing out what types of sources to look for.
5. Editing
Some people have noticed that a few of my chapters or blog posts seem a little off. And I do have to apologize—especially with Refined and Returned, Volume One—because I challenged myself to write a chapter per day. I didn’t always have time to go through and edit each chapter properly myself. Sometimes I was finishing chapters at two or three o’clock in the morning—or even later—after having stayed up for over 24 hours, or sometimes even 48 hours. There were times when I simply didn’t have the mental capacity to edit, and so I turned to AI rather than miss the deadline.
Because of that, there are some strange chapters—or more often, strange sections of chapters—where readers have commented that something felt off or that the language suddenly changed. There were a lot more contractions. I want to apologize for that. Those are usually the parts I had written, but then fed into AI and asked it to edit for me. Sometimes, it even changed characters’ names, but, if I was too tired to check it, I just inserted the corrections without thinking.
So yes, I’ve had problems due to that. I promise not to do it again going forward. I realize now that it’s better to hold off and post every other day—or just not challenge myself so strictly in the first place—than risk messing up the chapters. And of course, since I was so tired at the time, I didn’t think to check what the AI had actually changed before pasting it into the final version. Because of that, I lost a lot of my original work—something that will probably haunt me to the end of my days… or at least until I forget about The Watsons, Volume One.
If you do want to use AI for editing, you need to be very specific. Again, I recommend telling it not to take creative license. Just ask it to clean up grammar and improve sentence clarity. Don’t let it make additions or major changes. And yes, you should do that with every section you feed it. Keep it to grammar-only edits. But don't just trust the edits, you need to double-check them. It might not always be necessary, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t always that safe—and I’m very, very sorry. Not just to my readers, but to myself, because I worked hard on those scenes. And the fact that I allowed AI to mess them up—without realizing it—because I was too tired to double-check what had been replaced… well, that’s something I regret deeply.
Of course, as I said, it’s kind of hit or miss—but that doesn’t mean using AI is a terrible thing, or that people who use AI are somehow bad, blah blah blah. There are proper uses for it that don’t hurt anybody and still allow you to keep your own voice and prove your own abilities. So I recommend people consider that before they judge others for using AI services. Thank you.
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