AI Writers Think You’re a Mark

I shutter to call anyone who uses AI to cobble together something vaguely book-shaped writers, but with a title, one must get to the point. On Sunday, an article dropped from the New York Times that talks about a woman who is churning out AI written romance novels. The article expounds upon the fact that she makes six figures and has published hundreds of novels this year under a bunch of pen names. As you get farther along in the article, the real point appears: she is selling a course to teach people how to make money from making AI books, and she’s also selling some sort of proprietary AI for hundreds of dollars a month to write said book. With all other AI shills, it is a giant grift. She’s stealing from published authors in numerous ways, she wants to sell the dream of fame and fortune with a grift that looks suspiciously like a multilevel marketing scheme, and most egregiously, she obviously thinks readers are fools.

There’s a reason this woman picked romance as the genre to set up slop, I mean, shop. The article poses it as romance being the most fast-paced, voracious genre, but let’s be real, this woman (like many other writers) thinks romance readers are indiscriminate, mindless fools who will read anything as long as it meets a checklist of tropes, fits in a subgenre, and has a HEA. She, like all other AI writers, disrespects her audience. AI writers assume that their audience can’t tell the difference between something a machine cobbled together against something a human wrote. It’s quantity over quality because readers will just keep eating the slop if they put it in front of their faces. This mindset is probably what angers me most about AI writers.

On a fundamental level, authors owe their readers respect and trust. Writing becomes a business when you start selling your stories online, and once you exchange money, trust is established. Readers pay for your book assuming that you have done your best to put out a product that they will enjoy that will be as error free as possible. There’s also the implicit promise that you actually wrote it. If you’ve been part of the book community for any length of time, you know that readers and authors take plagiarism very seriously. So why are AI writers fine with using the plagiarism slot machine to vomit out something resembling a book that is made of millions of books that have been chopped up against the authors’ will and reused to create these works? Because they assume their readers will be too foolish to notice or that they are do indiscriminate that they won’t care.

Romance readers don’t care as long as it’s spicy.

They’ll read anything as long as it’s in Kindle Unlimited.

It doesn’t matter if they don’t like it because they already read it, and I got paid.

This is the mindset of AI writers. They’ve targeted romance because they think it’s formulaic enough that the plagiarism machine can’t go too off the rails and that the readers are women who are too busy being hot and bothered to care if the book absolutely sucks or doesn’t make any sense or is soulless. What they don’t understand is that romance is about human connection, and interpersonal relationships aren’t something a machine has the brains to figure out. Hell, a good chunk of human authors can’t write a satisfying romance because they can’t get the relationship dynamic right. Romance is a genre that spans all genders and sexualities, but the misogyny behind looking down upon romance readers remains. Take note in the article that while this author is proud to use AI, she still hides that she does and switches and retires pen names repeatedly. I can only assume this is because romance readers are discriminate and do dump authors who write slop that isn’t up to snuff, and she hides that she uses AI because people don’t want to read it. Am I surprised? No.

While the author states that she makes six figures off her AI drivel, I’m willing to bet that the six figures are before she subtracts the money spent on ads. This is a common tactic in author grifter circles, and if you’ve been around long enough, you know the type. She’s selling a lifestyle. If you use AI, you can also be a six figure author with a beautiful life who barely works or writes or even knows what they publish. A hands-off side hustle. Sound familiar? If you’re into anti-MLM/pyramid scheme content, this is the usual M.O. The people higher up the pyramid sell a lifestyle that involves making someone or something else do the work for you while you rake in the money and barely lift a finger. All you have to do is divest yourself of your integrity, self-respect, and creativity in favor of the machine. AI is the ultimate tool of group-think. It’s a homogeneity machine that spits out the most expected answer whether it’s correct or not. There is no innovation to be had with AI. It’s literally impossible. But much like MLMs, there is profit to be had from selling courses and supposedly proprietary AI. AI writers are trying to profit off the desperation of other authors. They post about their luxurious lives of leisure while selling you the course that will make you a bestseller or the program that will write a book for you in 48 hours. These people hope you are foolish enough and desperate enough to fall for their schemes because that is how they truly make money, not through books but through courses and selling a dream.

What I think gets lost in the sauce with AI evangelists is that they aren’t doing it because it’s suddenly made their lives truly better. It’s because they can sell you all something. They can sell readers subpar books while selling desperate authors programs and courses while lying about how they make the bulk of their money. AI is a ponzi scheme that is about to crash in on itself, and anyone telling you its the way of the future stands to profit from it.