I can’t really claim that I haven’t embraced LLM and AI. I use an AI-powered program to generate a Daily Blogroll, every day. I often generate images with AI. I use AI assistance for coding at work — where it is required. But I also use it at home, where it is not
So when my blog was rejected for a new blogging web ring because of AI use, I couldn’t really say, “no, what, me? No!”. While I don’t use AI in my writing, I definitely use it in a lot of other ways. And to be absolutely honest, I’d probably use it for writing if it were any good. But it’s not. It’s terrible. So I don’t use it.
I’ve stopped correcting and proofreading what I write, because I feel the imperfections feel human. So, yeah, this crappy writing is all mine, and not AI.
I imagine artists feel AI-generated imagery taints everything near it by association. And so if I have an AI generated image on my blog (and my logo was initially created by a logo generator, before being touched up in GIMP by me), my whole blog is tainted. Everything I might write is, “well, this cannot be worth reading, because there is an AI-generated image.”
But the question I have to ask at this point, is, how does one pay penance for this sin? How does one become born again into the new world of no AI use?
So, let’s decide what is an AI sin. There are levels.
Using an AI chatbot and keeping the conversation to yourself and not using anything resulting from that conversation in your life. This might be something like doing a search for something in Chrome and perhaps following up in the AI prompt they add onto everything now.
AI purists will claim that any AI interaction is draining a reservoir somewhere, but that clearly is overreacting. Certainly searching for something and then interacting with the chatbot afterward has to count as the most minor of sins.
Sharing that chat result with someone else would be a level beyond that. You have now come out as an AI user, and people can say of you, “well, you used AI for that.” From now on, other people will all have the doubt — was that your own thought, or AI?
So this is where I am at, at the moment. I use AI to generate images and to assist in writing code. I also use a chatbot for spit-balling ideas — it’s always available, and even if the reactions aren’t helpful, just chatting about it helps me focus my thoughts.
Following the penitent’s path to absolution seems a little much. I don’t make any money doing this (and in fact it costs me money), I am not a celebrity or an influencer, and mostly, I doubt many people honestly care what I do or do not do with AI.
Except when it’s blogger groups. I’ve been blocked — instantly blocked — on social media sites, presumably because of AI use. I wanted to be part of a blogger web ring; this isn’t going to happen because of AI use. There’s an even chance I won’t be allowed to participate in Blaugust this year because of the taint of AI.
Or rather, for the taint of admitting to using AI.
Look, I’m a gamer, I like playing games, I like writing about games. I also like making weird pictures with AI. If my writing (and by association, myself) is not acceptable in web rings, then I feel really bad about that. I think and believe that my writing on this blog over 21 years has proven my bone fides. I even think that my writing is enjoyable and informative (but I admit that I am biased). I am proud to be a game blogger. If the reaction is, “but you have used AI, so you cannot be counted as one of us,” then I really have no control over that. I’m not going to delete the blog and my social media and wear a hair shirt.
If any admitted AI use in a blog is enough to damn the entire thing, then what those groups are doing are making their blogging pool smaller and smaller and ever smaller.
Purity tests are bad, mmmkay? Reject my blog because you don’t like how I write, sure. Rejecting it because I had ChatGPT make a cartoon of my Malifaux minis? Well, you know, I really enjoyed making that picture, and the others like them, and I felt that they help explain the game to people who aren’t very familiar with tabletop skirmish gaming.
So it is what it is.
I still want to be on that web ring. I feel I would contribute and fit in well. But I understand the objection.
I just don’t agree with it.
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