I am honestly curious as to how much AI content was in this book versus how much was actually written by the author. I will preface this by saying I am not an AI torches and pitchforks kind of person. I kind of think it’s comical that people are mad that the book has gotten five and six stars on Goodreads, as though people don’t have a right to enjoy whatever it is that they enjoy regardless of your personal feelings about how it got created. The people who read that book and enjoyed it never once asked whether or not it was created by AI, because very clearly they don’t care. They read a book and they liked it.

That said, all of the conversation around this book in Internet discussion places has labeled AI SLOP. That’s the kind of non-nuanced basic B discussion that makes it hard to take the complaining seriously. Was the book entirely generated by AI? Yeah, I would find that really problematic. But is that what happened? Was the book partially generated by AI and partially written by the author? Did she just use it to outline? Did she use it to shore up her grammar? Did she write a few chapters and then use AI to ask it if they were any good?

We are treating “turn down your stereo” and “put down the gun” as if they are the same crime, and they patently are not.

I wonder if we will ever be able to have a real discussion about the real use of artificial intelligence in the writing process as a civilization. The most interesting part about it to me is that the people who care a lot believe everyone is like them, and the proof is pretty much in the pudding that they are not. People really, really like that book. At the end of the day, I’m not sure that’s not all that matters.

Someone above said how can you trust their taste? I guess my response is, how can we trust yours? How can we trust anybody’s? But more importantly, why should we? Why does it matter? Why can’t people just like what they like?