Iconoclast er død

As a child, I wrote fan fiction inspired by my favorite bands and movies, and won my 5th grade DARE essay contest. I wrote and illustrated two comic series (“00” and “Super Laek”) between 6th-8th grade while dreaming of one day being a songwriter.

I got straight-As and was often the teacher’s pet throughout my high school English/Comp classes while simultaneously dabbling in poetry.

In college, I earned a full-ride scholarship after having an essay chosen by the ETSU Honors Society, and had a poem, an essay, and a piece of short fiction published in various collegiate magazines. I wrote a horror serial titled “Makes You Do Crazy Things” that was then adapted into a screenplay and turned into a short film called “I Love You.”

I have blogged consistently for more than two decades, covering everything from horror culture and food trends to humorist essays and fitness. I won a prize in a horror screenplay contest (that earned me a call-out in Rue Morgue magazine) and had a piece of fiction published in a British horror magazine.

I also once wrote complete smut under a pen name for Cosmopolitan Magazine.

In the last couple of years, I’ve launched Iconoclast, written another full-length screenplay, and self-published a book.

I’ve been a writer my whole life. I love it.

I have grown increasingly frustrated, however, with the absolute avalanche of garbage that has been dumped on the world in the form of AI-generated content.

Bloggers, journalists, and essayists are increasingly using AI either as a full-on ghostwriter or as a copyeditor.

They may not believe it, but writers can tell.

The would-be writer loses their voice, opting instead to be content with the repeated patterns of the passionate, trained writers who came before them.

Apparently sometimes the AI slop even takes credit for itself.

It was brought to my attention recently that my writing was used, not only to train AI, but plagiarized in one piece, and cited as a reference on two others. All three were fully written by an AI agent complete with phony byline and generative headshot.

One had even credited an editor that was also an AI.

“Artificial Intelligence” is a misnomer because there is no legitimate intelligence at work. Rather, a farm of computers wreak havoc on our environment as they respond to asinine prompts, generate tacky images, and provide unholy advice by searching for repeatable patterns online.

AI is a fine concept (all but the environmental aspect, of course) if one wants to automate a repetitive task in their lives: generating reports, organizing thoughts, creating to-do lists, etc.

But not actions of the heart. Not creativity. Not projects fueled by passion. Not intellect.

It seems so incredibly obvious to me, but I’m beginning to feel as though humanity at large has grown indifferent.

Need a quick response to a question? AI to the rescue.

A workout program? A retirement plan? Got a weird rash on the back of your leg? Dr. Claude, PhD has you covered.

Why bother learning anything? Why feel, express, or create anything? Why put one’s heart into anything when they can just ask ChatGPT to do it for them?

Worse yet, why share your creativity — your vulnerability — with the world when virtually every platform is designed to give it to the gods of pattern seeking?

As someone who values authenticity, it’s maddening.

It’s gotten even worse after seeing my work – my craft – lifted.

I’ve deleted my public Instagram accounts, made my personal account private, flipped a switch in my LinkedIn account that claims to make me invisible to AI, supposedly shut off scraping on Substack, and attempted to do the same on Wordpress, a spot where I have spilled my guts for nearly 20 years, though I’m not certain how effective it was.

Apparently all too late now, of course.

It seems the best way to prevent a heartless, soulless, passionless entity from learning from and repeating my work is to get further and further offline.

You can say I’ll get left behind, but maintaining my integrity and creative ethic are more important to me than being hip with the times.

Stay in touch if you know how.

-jtf