You can't make this shit up. Really.

"Blueberries"

I've played with AI since it first became available a couple of years ago.

As a teacher, of course I'm always looking out for cheaters. A paper come in that looks too good to be true, and a little investigation reveals that the true author was someone named Claude (no last name), who is not in my class. It gives me evil pleasure co confront a miscreant with his mendacity. But I decided to dig deeper. I gave one these AI platforms the outline of one of my stories ("Skin," which first appeared in commuterlit.com) and asked it to write a story based on my description.

ChatGPT turned in about 1500 words in a matter of seconds, and boy, was it awful. I made two more attempts, and they were equally bad. Bad in different ways, but still bad.

To be fair, my original is about 2250 words, and you can do a lot more with a longer story. But that's not my point.

Recently, I've been inundated with offers to subscribe to some kind of AI writer's platform. They fall into a number of specific types.

First, there's the all-in-one. You've got a book that you know is a masterpiece but it's just sitting there on your hard drive. Primo Publishers will take your rough draft, edit it, format it, publish it on Amazon, coordinate your marketing campaign, design your banners, your ads, write your sales copy, and promise you that you'll sell one thousand copies, within the next three months. For a price of course: you've got to pay them up front.

Think it's too good to be true? Good thinking. And the cost? Thousands. I've seen places that expect you to shell out upwards of $5000. And the quality? Well, as far as banners and advertising copy goes, it may be suitable for Marvel comics, which I guess is fine if you've written a comic book. No, I don't mean a graphic novel, I mean what you read when you were ten or twelve.

A stop down from those are the firms that will help you peddle a book you've already published, presumable on some vanity press or maybe Amazon or Barnes & Noble. (Full disclosure: my volume of short stories can be purchased from B&N; I've shut down my Amazon KDP account.) It is similar to my first example in that they're all about marketing. I guess if you've got $2000 to spare, and your novel is a romance or horror or action-adventure thing, and you need to create a sensation, it might be okay. Again, I'm assuming you've got the money to burn and you're not too particular about style or taste.

But now I'm being beseiged with ads on my personal Facebook page (and my "business" page too, for that matter) with AI platforms that promise to do all the writing for you! Whole chapters at a time! I haven't tried it, I'm happy to announce, but I can imagine. My short story "Skin" is sensitive, nuanced, and somewhat edgy, but not sensationalistic. At least that's my opinion, and the opinion of people who've read it. Can AI recreate that kind of subtlty? My characters converse, but what they really mean is all in the subtext - remember that? How can AI reproduce that?

Well, it can't, of course. It couldn't do it with the short story outline I gave it, and it sure as hell wouldn't be able to produce a full-length book of any merit.

At least, I hope not.

What I've been working up to is that these AI tools are not about writing. They're about marketing. They appeal to the pathetic vanity of would-be authors, and to their greed. That's it. It matters not whether the writing is any good; the only question is whether or not it will sell. Will it reach your intended market. Will it generate rave reviews. (Of course, you can always count on AI to write those reviews for you; did I mention that?) Nobody in these AI "writing" companies actually reads what the author is written. And if you suggest that they do, so they can get a real feel for your creation, well, forget it. They'll tell you they haven't got time.

I guess I'm just old and fussy to get so worked up about this. I mean, if someone thinks they've written a good book, and can afford to pay someone to sell it for them, I shouldn't raise such a fuss.

But consider the term "bestseller." Note that there's no mention of quality. Wouldn't it be wonderful if books were read and judged on their merit?

By illustration, I've revisited a short story of mine, and made a couple of attempts to submit it for publication. But "Blueberries" is kind of long; close to 10,000 words or 34 pages, and most magazines don't want anything longer than about 5000 words. My style is pretty conventional. The subject is very realistic. The tone is often subdued. And the author is an elderly, White male of European descent. And straight. And most publishers aren't terribly interested in that sort of writing. It's not fashionable. It doesn't sell.

But I'm too stubborn to cut it down or spice it up, just for the sake of seeing it in print. The one book I have published contains only stories that have appeared somewhere else previously. Let someone recognize the story's qualities, and take a chance on it. There are some journals out there who make it their mission.

Good writing - real writing - isn't dead. Not by any means.