AI Policy
I do not believe that AI should be used as a replacement for an author. That is the basis of my policy. But there are some nuances I want to address.
My daily work is in IT, an environment that has been significantly affected by AI. I use AI every day in much of my work, and I also use it heavily in many of my personal technical projects. It has made some forms of software development much faster and has opened new creative possibilities. But I draw a firm line around my fiction: AI does not write the books I publish.
AI does not generate the prose, scenes, dialogue, characters, or stories in my books.
It may analyse or criticise a draft, but I decide what to change and write the final text myself. AI is not the author, co-author, or ghostwriter of my fiction.
There is a movement right now in which the work of indie authors and artists is deconstructed and nit-picked in search of proof that AI was involved. I am very much against this. I have seen authors and artists publicly shamed on the basis of weak or simply wrong evidence. Saying no is treated as proof; refusing to feed the argument is also treated as proof. I have spoken to authors who now spend a significant amount of time trying to make sure their work bears no supposed marks of AI, often at the expense of their own voice and creative energy.
AI is getting better at producing plausible prose, and arguments about whether it can be detected will only get messier. Whatever it becomes capable of, I do not want it writing my books.
Writing and publishing
I use AI for:
- Spellchecking.
- Checking consistency across chapters, including whether a setup is eventually given a payoff.
- Acting as a brutal critic by pulling apart my writing and identifying weak, confusing, or unnecessary passages.
- Suggesting what I might cut from a draft. I decide whether to act on those suggestions and do the rewriting myself.
- Researching locations, historical figures, science, and other topics. AI is a starting point, not a source; factual information is checked against reliable sources.
- Identifying comparable books and whether ideas similar to mine have already been explored by other authors.
- Marketing support, including social media, book blurbs, Amazon sales trends, keyword research, and analysis of advertising performance.
- Developing websites, landing pages, and other technical parts of publishing.
I do not ask AI to imitate another author’s voice. I do not use it to manufacture reviews, endorsements, reader quotations, or interactions with readers.
Graphics and artwork
I am fortunate to have several professional graphic designers among my long-time friends from childhood. They have contributed work with permission while choosing not to be publicly credited. I respect that choice.
I use Canva, which includes tools that can generate, expand, and alter images. The only generative image function I have used so far is image expansion, when adapting existing cover artwork to the dimensions required by different formats. I have not used text-to-image tools to generate complete cover illustrations.
Those contributions, together with photographs I take myself and textures and lighting effects added in Photoshop and Canva, are what I use to create my finished artwork.
YouTube
I use AI more extensively in my YouTube workflow. I use it for:
- Feedback on draft scripts, including suggestions on structure, wording, and cuts.
- Brainstorming video ideas.
- Competitor analysis.
- Thumbnail concepts, which I then create using licensed Canva Pro templates and assets.
- Analysing viewer statistics.
AI may make suggestions, but I decide what survives in the final script and create the finished video and thumbnail.
Why not just pay someone to help?
The fact is that, as an indie author, I do not currently have a budget to hire professional help for my books. This does not mean that I have a small budget which I choose to prioritise elsewhere. It does not mean that I do not want to pay. It means that there is no budget. Nothing.
The fact also remains that, if you want to sell books, you need a good-looking cover, a professional layout, and honest feedback on the writing itself. Those jobs still have to be done. I do not believe that editors, artists, marketers, or other creative professionals owe me free work, and I will not ask people to work for “exposure.”
Eventually, I hope to be able to afford a talented editor, a great marketer, and an awesome artist. At the time of writing, before my first book has been published, that is simply not possible.
It is a catch-22. I need sales before I can hire the people who could help me create more sales. So, for now, some of the jobs I would prefer to pay someone to do must be done by me, with the help of AI and within the limits described on this page.
Why I am publishing this
I am publishing this before anyone has reason to ask, so my position and methods are clear. These are the facts of how I use AI. If my methods change, I will update this page.
I will not engage in massive online discussions in which every answer, or refusal to answer, is treated as further evidence. This policy is my answer.