I have more of an AI philosophy than a formal policy.
My philosophy when it comes to AI is simple – if an AI gives me more time to do the things I am passionate about, I’ll use it.
One of the things I’m passionate about is writing. In this area, AI is totally off limits. I have distilled this philosophy into a single, core personal directive:
AI does not make the page.
Creativity is a uniquely human thing, that is unique to every individual. Robots can never take that away from us, no matter what the tech billionaires tell you. Whatever stuff and nonsense you read on these pages, it’s 100% my brain doing the creating.
In my creative business, however, I use AI extensively. Most of my AI use is a set of custom tools I have built to support my business and free time for the stuff that matters – creative output. I don’t use ChatGPT or Claude at all, nor do I subscribe to popular generative AI apps.
I have used an AI generated background image for the first edition of Drunk and Disorderly. This was a pragmatic decision that I agonised over for months, to be honest. I have the capability and desire to paint my own cover images, but not the time. Cover designers in my current budget are all either photo bashing or using genAI themselves anyway, so I let the bot generate the image. The cover design itself is mine.
For the things I am not passionate about – marketing and advertising copy, synopses and summaries, feature images for articles and social media – I’m happy to use the bots when I don’t have the time or the motivation to create something myself.