The AI Curse
Writing using generative AI is not real writing
AI is a plague.
Artificial intelligence truly qualifies as an intellectual pandemic. It is replacing individual thought and creating a generation of idiots who beg ChatGPT, Grok, or Gemini for answers to every single question rather than acquiring knowledge through their own study and experience. Why shed your own blood, sweat, and tears to gain knowledge when you can let an algorithm do all the heavy lifting for your brain?
We are seeing AI infiltrate every aspect of life in real time. From erasing jobs to creating unhealthy relationships, AI is leaving sticky fingerprints on an impending digital apocalypse.
One of the most alarming trends is the rise of AI-written fiction.
Fake Authors and Stolen Stories
Books written using generative AI programs have permeated every fiction genre here in the mid-2020s. Amazon is awash with AI slop designed to bury stories written by real authors in a deep pit no sunlight can reach. The people behind AI-written stories want to make a cash grab while stealing the fruits of an actual author’s labors.
If a person uses ChatGPT or another generative AI program to write a story, it’s safe to assume that person can’t think for themselves. Self-styled authors who choose to travel this route are lazy theives. No imagination is required.
Employing AI to write a story short circuits the entire story development proccess. The AI program churns out generic characters and recycled plots based on multiple prompts. It accomplishes this task through scouring available literature on the internet and gathering all information relevant to a prompt with the indiscriminate voracity of a starving person loading their plate at a buffet.
One aspect of being an author that I love is learning how to craft your own stories. You discover what goes into being an effective storyteller through your own experience. Structuring a scene, composing dialogue, pacing, weaving in backstory, foreshadowing all require countless hours of practice to refine. An athlete can’t learn their playbook without practicing plays. The same principle is true for a writer.
Using AI as a lazy shortcut denies you an opportunity to learn. We all can identify telltale signs associated with an AI-written story. Do you really want to associate your name with that garbage?
Before some pro-AI advocate stumbles on this short essay and starts hitting me over the head with some ableist nonsense, I’ll share a secret about me as an author. I deal with a specific disability that directly impacts how I write.
My left hand was partially severed in a freak accident when I was only one year old. Pediatric orthopedic surgeons were able to save my hand and surgically reattach it. The accident left me with a prominent scar extending over my entire left palm. It also left me with permanent nerve and tendon damage. For this reason, I had to learn how to type differently than the home row method taught in schools. But I taught myself through sheer force of will.
A two-decade career as a professional journalist and my six full-length published novels (soon to be seven later in 2026) attest to my success in overcoming what could have been a crippling disability. I would have never experienced the same thrill of accomplishment and found joy in storytelling if I simply fed a bunch of prompts to an AI program and claimed whatever it vomited out as my own.
Rebelling against AI
While an AI takeover seems inevitable in many areas of life, it does not have to play out this way. We can fight back. We can build a sturdy wall and force AI stay on the other side when it comes to literature.
How do we accomplish this goal?
Support authors who write their own stories without using AI. Buy and read their books. Share their stories with friends and family. Leave positive reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, Bookbub, and elsewhere to help those authors gain more visibility and better traction with other readers.
This is the best way to fight back against a tidal wave of AI-written stories inundating modern literature.
All stories I write are 100% human written. Furthermore, Samak Press will never knowingly accept AI-written stories for as long as I am the owner and publisher.
I encourage you to read at least one story from Samak Press today. An extensive catalog of novels and short fiction is available at the offical Samak Press website, the Samak Press store on Bookshop.org, on my Amazon author page, and at all other major booksellers worlwide.
If you read and enjoy any stories published through Samak Press, please tell others about those stories. Help other readers find and enjoy quality tales completely written by a living, breathing human being.
Absolutely right on the money. I could not agree more.
It's always kind of shocking to me that people want to use AI to replace the fun stuff and not the tedious stuff. Also John, I like your nonfiction style!