It’s a hot topic and I hesitate to jump in, but jump in I will. First things first. I have never used AI to write anything. I mean it. Not an email, not a social media post, not a paragraph of any one of my 12 books, not a line of any one of my screenplays. Never. Nothing. Nada! I don’t know how to use it, and I don’t want to learn. Honestly, I don’t even like auto correct and I usually turn it off if I’m reminded that it’s on. My latest work, Greg Scarpa, Legendary Evil, is the only one that I produced when AI tools were widely available, I believe. I made no use of them.

The whole AI in writing thing is a fairly recent phenomenon, so far as I’m aware, and I’d like to think that even if I were thirty years younger I would take the position stated above. But, of course, that would be a pompous, disingenuous, self-serving assertion. Who knows what I would do were I thirty years younger? I’ll not speculate.

I can say, however, that I just turned 68, and I’m not really facing any dilemma about writing with AI or any pressure to do so as writers junior to me may be facing. My advanced age means that I have it easy. I admit that. Which leads to my next point: my decision never to use AI to write is not meant as a judgment of those who do use it, nor is it a claim that I’m a better writer or person because I don’t use it. Writers who use AI do so for their own reasons and I wouldn’t presume to question those reasons. My primary motivation for making my position known is to let current and potential readers know that, for better or for worse, there is no element of AI in what I have written. Whatever is right or wrong with my writing is my responsibility and mine alone.

So there it is. A brief view of an aging writer’s orientation to AI.