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The use of AI in ‘Fake Creativity’

    I want the message of this novel to come across in the way I intended, but I know some will still likely have issues with my use of AI tools in the creation of this book. For that reason, I want to be as transparent and honest about the issue as I can be. I have created this page to hopefully do that. There are thousands upon thousands of books, images, and other media that are being portrayed as genuine when they are not. I do not want ‘Fake Creativity’ to be built upon any distrust with my readers.

    Why did I choose to use AI?

    If you made it to the end of ‘Fake Creativity’, you learned that I personally felt like AI had made me obsolete when advances in technology decimated my blog. The website had been doing better than ever and then updates rolled out, and my traffic and readership dropped to zero. There’s no denying the technology updates were, and are, extremely useful and efficient, but when it’s taking more than it’s giving, from the content creators who are responsible for its usefulness, it’s hard to support such advancements.

    I had spent years writing on my blog, reigniting my love for the craft, only for it to feel pointless in the end. After months of waiting (so many people had said the effects of the updates would be temporary) and struggling with depression from the setback, I finally realized it wasn’t the website that had filled a hole in my life, it was the writing. Something that I used to do even as a child, but somehow had lost the passion for it somewhere along this messy thing we call life.

    Then one day at work, the idea for ‘Fake Creativity’ came to me. People were constantly saying how it will be a long time until AI replaces us, especially things like writing, or creativity, but yet here I was feeling like AI had done just that to me. Thus, the idea of an author being perfectly replicated, being made obsolete, was born.

    How exactly was AI used?

    I wrote almost the entire outline for the story that day during breaks between work, and it wasn’t far off from what ‘Fake Creativity’ is today. Once I had the premise down, I went to do my research. I wanted to see how realistic of a concept this was, how far AI had actually come. I asked it to pretend to be the world’s bestselling romance author, and give me their upcoming novel. It wasn’t good. I asked it again… and again… and again until, with a little more guidance, it gave me something that worked with the story I was trying to tell. To be fair, it was still terrible.

    I swear to you, it took weeks of tedious tinkering to get even close to the excerpt from Cooper Owen’s fictional ‘Fake Creativity’ that you see at the beginning of the book. Even once the AI had almost gotten the fictional story where I wanted it, it still took a lot of editing and manipulating on my part to fit my book and actually be readable. I could’ve almost written another novel in the time it took to wrangle what I wanted from the AI, but I needed it to be authentic. It was essential for the book to speak for itself and show readers the implications of where we are heading with this technology. Yes, we aren’t there yet, but things are changing so very fast.

    Like I said before, I want to be entirely transparent with this novel. So, to be perfectly clear, the portions where AI was used ,as you probably already assumed, pertained strictly to passages from the fictional book ‘Fake Creativity’ by Cooper Owens. This means the first few pages of chapter 1 and the epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter. Again, I want to reiterate that even though AI was used for these, it was no easy task, and it honestly took an embarrassing amount of time to get the passages of text even close to how I wanted them for the book. The epigraphs, which were usually only a couple of sentences, often took multiple days of mind numbing conversations with AI. Repeatedly asking it to change something, add a word, remove a word, focus more on a particular theme, or a thousand other similar type of prompts. All this for a sentence or two.

    Hopefully, it worked…

    This was a tremendous risk to take on my debut novel, and even now I still question if it was the right decision. I hope it helped convey the message, amplified the story, and made readers think about the topic. Just like Cooper did in the book, I hope I used AI (the very thing that almost destroyed me), turned it against itself, and implemented it in a positive and meaningful way.

    If Fake Creativity ever starts flying off the shelves, I hope to donate a portion of the sales to foundations working to make AI safer and more regulated. It can be difficult to know where donations will have the greatest impact, so if you have suggestions for nonprofits focused on AI safety, stronger regulations, or personal data advocacy, please share them in the comments below.

    Cooper probably still won’t ever forgive me for using AI to write even a single sentence in Fake Creativity (and some of you might not either), but I hope my choice creates a net positive, starts the conversations we need to have, and maybe one day meaningfully contributes to the problems at hand.

    These are the following non-profits I have been able to find so far for those interested:

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