Are you a robot? Certainly not. At least, not after I’ve had my coffee in the morning. But the annoying questions on those websites have taken on a new meaning recently. Are you a robot – or do you use robots, otherwise known as AI?
Some people are terrified of AI and warn it could destroy us all. Some are worried it’ll destroy our jobs. Others think it will bring huge benefits to humanity, while some think it will speed up boring tasks. Me? I’m somewhere in the middle, but I’m definitely curious.
Like many people in the creative industries, I experiment to see what these tools can do. It can be fun. I’ve generated images of characters in my books, based on my descriptions of them, using the image generator Midjourney. You can see a few below. Some work well and I’ve used them in advertising or promotions. Others are terrible (especially the hands – always check the hands).
And it can be useful. I’ve used Chat GPT to help create marketing copy for my books, one of my least favourite tasks. Like most authors, making claims about how marvellous my books are makes me cringe. AI doesn’t cringe. It speaks fluent marketing. I rarely use it word for word, but take a suggestion and tweak it. AI can also check my spelling and grammar, and make sure I haven’t used the word ‘spiffing’ three times in one page.
AI can help when I’m staring at a blank space on a page where a name should be. Imagine: you’ve been writing all morning, and you suddenly need the names of three French policemen. You ask your tired brain to supply them. Thierry Henry, it offers. Hercule Poirot. Jean-Paul Sartre. If I ask Chat GPT, it will return a list of ten perfectly usable French men’s names in seconds. I’ll pick three first names and three family names, mix them around and check none of them are real and famous. Then I’ll get on with writing the scene.
Here’s what I don’t use AI for: actually writing my books. I mean, why would I? I love writing. I’ve wanted to write since I was a small child, scribbling with crayon in scrap books. This is the fun bit. It would be like asking AI to go dancing for me, or go for a walk with my friends.
The reason I bring this up is because there is understandable confusion about what’s acceptable, what’s legal and what’s ethical in use of AI to create music, fiction, movies and more. I recently ran an advert on Facebook using an image I’d created from my prompts on Midjourney. It was a pretty picture of a woman in a garden (above), to promote my book Death At Chelsea. It got lots of likes and a surprisingly large number of people wanted to know the artist. I told them I made it using Midjourney, and people seemed happy. But one person asked if the book was AI-generated, as well as the imagery. Perhaps they had a point – there are rumours of a deluge of AI-generated nonsense being pumped out in book form to part people from their money. I wondered whether others might disapprove of me using AI imagery instead of commissioning a designer.
Here’s the thing: I commission a designer for my book covers (Donna Rogers), because she does a brilliant job. Those are lasting designs that will be on my books for years, and I want them to look fantastic. Advertising images will be used for a few weeks, then discarded for something new. I used to create them myself using stock photo images, but it was time-consuming and expensive. AI means I can create an attention-grabbing image, then move onto something fresh in a month. I’m not doing anyone out of a job – I’m saving myself some time.
So here’s my AI policy. I’ll update it if things change.
1: I will use AI tools to improve, enhance and polish my writing – but not to do my writing.
2: I will use human editors, beta readers and copyeditors to make my writing the best it can be.
3: I will use AI tools to generate advertising images and e-book ‘covers’ for short stories.
4: I will use human cover designers to create my novel covers.
I’m always interested to know what others think about this fast-changing field. Why not let me know?
