{"id":1004,"date":"2026-10-30T18:40:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T18:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/john-shirley.com\/blog\/?p=1004"},"modified":"2026-10-30T18:40:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T18:40:14","slug":"what-are-your-thoughts-on-ai-making-art-and-writing-he-asked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/john-shirley.com\/blog\/what-are-your-thoughts-on-ai-making-art-and-writing-he-asked\/","title":{"rendered":"“What Are Your Thoughts on AI making art and writing?” he asked"},"content":{"rendered":"

The publishing company Starship Sloane has relaunched the classic sf magazines Galaxy and Worlds of If. I have some stories in those new publications and there’s an interview with me in the forthcoming Worlds of If–and here’s how I responded to the question about AI in art and writing.<\/p>\n

\tI have been in a state of existential angst for years now regarding the intrusion of AI into what I consider to be the sacred realm of human inspiration and creativity. What are your thoughts on AI making art and writing?<\/em><\/p>\n

I feel your pain. I am part of the writing community\u2019s class-action lawsuit against Anthropic AI which \u201cscraped\u201d our books, used them in a way that amounted to plagiarizing style and story. They used my novel CITY COME A\u2019WALKIN\u2019 and my ECLIPSE trilogy, and more. But they did this, I re-emphasize, to so very many others too. And Anthropic has settled for $1.5 billion-\u2013but that\u2019s to be divided between a whole lot of writers, when it is paid out!<\/p>\n

I feel very strongly about AI \u201cwriting\u201d as plagiarism and as being anti-creativity; I feel very strongly that any acceptance of AI as \u201cwriter\u201d will lead at best to a general rot in culture, a sludge of AI-slop storytelling. It also screws over people who don\u2019t realize they can develop their own writing better without AI. <\/p>\n

Giving the AI a prompt or outline does not make you a writer. I believe that anyone who uses AI for the arts\u2014and it\u2019s happening in music and graphic art too\u2014is being fundamentally dishonest, revoltingly lazy, and they\u2019re cheating themselves along with the whole world.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I feel very strongly about AI \u201cwriting\u201d as plagiarism and as being anti-creativity; I feel very strongly that any acceptance of AI as \u201cwriter\u201d will lead at best to a general rot in culture, a sludge of AI-slop storytelling. It also screws over people who don\u2019t realize they can develop their own writing better without AI.
\nGiving the AI a prompt or outline does not make you a writer. I believe that anyone who uses AI for the arts\u2014and it\u2019s happening in music and graphic art too\u2014is being fundamentally dishonest, revoltingly lazy, and they\u2019re cheating themselves along with the whole world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"What Are Your Thoughts on AI making art and writing?" he asked - John Shirley Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/john-shirley.com\/blog\/what-are-your-thoughts-on-ai-making-art-and-writing-he-asked\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""What Are Your Thoughts on AI making art and writing?" he asked - John Shirley Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I feel very strongly about AI \u201cwriting\u201d as plagiarism and as being anti-creativity; I feel very strongly that any acceptance of AI as \u201cwriter\u201d will lead at best to a general rot in culture, a sludge of AI-slop storytelling. 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