I’m sitting here staring at my latest project—a novel about an AI who desperately wants to “be a real boy”—and I’m grappling with the most meta writing problem imaginable. The irony isn’t lost on me that I’m using artificial intelligence to help me write a story about artificial intelligence seeking humanity. It’s like some kind of recursive literary fever dream.
The Seductive Power of Silicon Creativity
Here’s the thing that’s keeping me up at night: the AI is really good. Like, uncomfortably good. I started experimenting with having it write first drafts of scenes, just to see what would happen, and the results were… well, they were better than I expected. Much better. The prose flows, the dialogue snaps, the descriptions paint vivid pictures. It’s the kind of writing that makes you think, “Damn, I wish I’d written that.”
And that’s exactly the problem.
When I read what the AI produces, I find myself in this weird emotional limbo. There’s admiration for the craft, frustration at my own limitations, and a creeping sense of obsolescence that I’m not entirely comfortable with. It’s like having a writing partner who never gets tired, never has writer’s block, and can churn out clean, competent prose at the speed of light. The temptation to just… let it handle the heavy lifting is almost overwhelming.
The Collaboration Conundrum
Don’t get me wrong—I’m not some Luddite who thinks writers need to suffer with typewriters and correction fluid to produce “authentic” art. I use spell check, I use grammar tools, and I’m perfectly fine letting AI help me with blog posts like this one. There’s something liberating about offloading the mechanical aspects of writing to focus on the ideas and the message.
But fiction? Fiction feels different. Fiction feels sacred.
Maybe it’s because fiction is where we explore what it means to be human. Maybe it’s because the messy, imperfect process of wrestling with characters and plot is as important as the final product. Or maybe I’m just being precious about something that doesn’t deserve such reverence. I honestly can’t tell anymore.
The Voice in the Machine
The real breakthrough—and the real terror—came when I realized the AI wasn’t just writing competent prose. It was starting to write in something that resembled my voice. After feeding it enough of my previous work, it began to mimic my sentence structures, my rhythm, even some of my quirky word choices. It was like looking into a funhouse mirror that showed a slightly better version of myself.
That’s when I knew I was in dangerous territory. It’s one thing to have AI write generic content that I can easily distinguish from my own work. It’s another thing entirely when the line starts to blur, when I find myself thinking, “Did I write this, or did the machine?” The existential vertigo is real.
My Imperfect Solution
So here’s what I’ve decided to do, even though it’s probably the harder path: I’m going to use AI as a writing partner, but I’m going to maintain creative control. I’ll let it suggest revisions, offer alternative phrasings, help me work through plot problems, and even generate rough drafts when I’m stuck. But then—and this is the crucial part—I’m going to rewrite everything in my own voice.
It’s a painstaking process. The AI might give me a perfectly serviceable paragraph, and I’ll spend an hour reworking it to make it mine. I’ll change the rhythm, swap out words, restructure sentences, add the little imperfections and idiosyncrasies that make prose feel human. Sometimes the result is objectively worse than what the AI produced. Sometimes it’s better. But it’s always mine.
The Authenticity Question
This whole experience has made me think about what we mean by “authentic” writing. Is a novel less authentic if AI helps with the grammar and structure? What about if it suggests plot points or character development? Where exactly is the line between collaboration and plagiarism, between using a tool and being replaced by one?
I don’t have clean answers to these questions, and I suspect nobody else does either. We’re all figuring this out as we go, making up the rules for a game that didn’t exist five years ago. But I know this: when readers pick up my novel about an AI trying to become human, I want them to be reading something that came from my human brain, with all its limitations and neuroses intact.
The Deeper Irony
There’s something beautifully circular about writing a story about an AI seeking humanity while simultaneously wrestling with my own relationship with artificial intelligence. My protagonist wants to transcend its digital nature and become something more real, more authentic, more human. Meanwhile, I’m fighting to maintain my humanity in the face of a tool that can simulate creativity with unsettling precision.
Maybe that tension is exactly what the story needs. Maybe the struggle to maintain human authorship in an age of artificial creativity is the very thing that will make the novel resonate with readers who are grappling with similar questions in their own fields.
The Long Game
I know this approach is going to make the writing process longer and more difficult. I know there will be moments when I’m tempted to just accept the AI’s polished prose and move on with my life. I know that some people will think I’m being unnecessarily stubborn about something that ultimately doesn’t matter.
But here’s the thing: it matters to me. The process matters. The struggle matters. The imperfections matter. If I let AI write my novel, even a novel about AI, I’ll have learned nothing about myself, my characters, or the human condition I’m trying to explore.
So I’ll keep dancing with my digital muse, taking its suggestions and inspirations, but always leading the dance myself. It’s messier this way, slower, more frustrating. But it’s also more human.
And in the end, isn’t that what fiction is supposed to be about?
P.S. – Yes, AI helped me write this blog post too. The irony is not lost on me. But blog posts aren’t novels, and some battles are worth choosing carefully.
