AI is a tricky subject with a lot of complexities. I don't pretend to know everything about it, but I believe in stories told by humans for humans. Every story you read from me is 100% written by me, and always will be written by me. That said, AI is an emerging tool with emerging use cases, and I'm always experimenting with new ways to leverage that tool.

So for the sake of transparency, here are some of the ways I've used AI in my creative process:

Research

I don't think you can actually get away from using AI for research, now that Google has stuck Gemini into every single thing. In any case, I have made ample use of LLMs to do research for my books. Everything from linguistics to physics to history. Now, that doesn't mean I blindly trust what AI tells me. I typically will use AI a lot like wikipedia: as a starting point for deeper searches. Often, an LLM works as a better search engine than Google. And by often, I mean always. It's literally impossible to google anything useful anymore.

Editing

I have experimented with using LLM's for editing purposes. So far, the only story I've written to receive the AI editing treatment is Deadmen Dungeoneers. Specifically, AI has filled the role of an... admittedly amateur line editor. Additionally, I have tracked every single change made by AI, and I can easily reverse those changes if I decide I no longer want them. If and when the time comes to move Deadmen Dungeoneers to a platform like Amazon, I may end up doing exactly that so a human editor can take a crack at it instead. I am still uncertain of how heavily I want to incorporate AI into my editing routine, but for now, I'm leaning on the side of caution. When in doubt, choose the human.

Covers

You may have noticed that some of my cover art incorporates AI. First, let me make something clear: the entirety of Benregesh's cover was created by a human. Yep. Check the publishing date. Midjourney was literally incapable of drawing something as unique and awesome as Rael at the time. But with that said, yeah. Deadmen Dungeoneers and Glitched Grimm both include AI-generated art on the covers. For D.D., I chose to use AI art because I am offering the story for free on a webnovel platform. If and when I move it to a paid platform, I'll get cover art created by a human. For Glitched Grimm, the cover art was the publisher's decision. I was just one author of 10 in that anthology.

Also, I feel I should mention that I'm not entirely ruling out a future where I use AI generation in my covers. For now, though, unless I'm offering something for free or the choice is out of my hands, I'm choosing the human.

Art

You may notice that Benregesh features art. A whoooole lot of it. Here's my commitment: if I ever include interior art as part of a paid book, I guarantee that I will use human-drawn art. Obviously, I can't always control if an artist lies to me, but I'll take every reasonable step to verify artists I work with. With that said, I'm not going to rule out the possibility of using AI art for the purposes of marketing, or just posting on social media. And you know what? Sometimes I just want to have a cute drawing of a love interest accompany the chapter of the web serial that I'm posting for free. But if the art is going in a paid product, it's going to be by a human.

Marketing, Web Design, Drudgery, Etc.

Fun fact: this website was coded by an AI. Claude, in fact. Say hi, Claude!

Anyway, I used to be a professional programmer. And you know what I realized? Hot damn, but I like AI coding things for me a hell of a lot more than coding it myself. Sue me. Computer code is a means to an end. It is not an art in itself. Same thing goes for marketing copy and other drudge work.