AI, Ghostwriters, and Christmas Movies
Why Industry is afraid of AI
No, I’m not going to tell you how to use AI. But what I do want to talk about is the use of AI, and where I see it fitting into the creative process.
I’m old enough to remember Nancy Drew mysteries. In fact, my mom would buy me a new book on my birthday and holidays. Eventually, I introduced them to my kids, and purchased the entire 50-book series. They absolutely loved them.
Many books like those were written by ghostwriters. Ghostwriters followed a script, a formula, and quickly wrote the story, changing only key elements. The stories were simple, entertaining, and fast to read. Great for kids and adults alike.
Another set of books created that way were Harlequin romances. They’ve been ridiculed over the decades, but there’s no denying their popularity around the world. The first one was published in 1949, and they’re still going strong today.
And of course, there’s a movie version of them now: the Hallmark Christmas movies. Oh, and by the way, Hallmark has reportedly discovered a new plot this year… and will be including it for the first time!
Why am I bringing these up? Because the content creation of series like those was akin to AI content creation now — only human. In fact, if you ran one of those books through an AI detection site like ZeroGPT, it would likely be labeled as highly likely AI-generated.
Isn’t that a scream? The same tools flagged Tolkien’s work as AI-generated too. That’s right: J.R.R. Tolkien apparently traveled back from the 26th century to 1954 to write and publish The Lord of the Rings. No!
So, what is the big deal with AI-generated stories?
Is it mainly that people are using AI to create works based off someone else’s ideas without effort and then getting paid for them?
Is it to stop people from “cheating” instead of using their brains?
Is it about plagiarism? Speed? Royalties?
I don’t think it’s about any of those.
One of the authors I found during COVID has written a lot of books — well over 100 now. At the beginning, the series was novel, interesting, and different. But around the 40th book, it started getting predictable, formulaic, and boring.
Do I think the author is using AI? Yes. Do I have a problem with that? No. What turned me off wasn’t how the books were created, but that every story had become the same. I don’t need 50 copies of the 50 stories I’ve already read.
And that’s the only problem I have with AI. But then I’d have the same problem with books that weren’t created using AI.
AI is a tool — like the typewriter, word processor, or Scrivener — built to help writers organize and write faster.
It’s just a new tool. So, do we insist that authors still use a manual typewriter, and tell them their story isn’t authentic otherwise? No, that’s silly.
So why is not using a tool like AI considered any less silly?
Because of the potential for misuse. Ah yes, the old human foible: take something neutral and turn it into a negative or an evil.
That’s the crux of it, isn’t it? AI-generated content is looked down on as fake or wrong. But the tool itself isn’t fake. It’s the person using the tool who determines the outcome.
If you can accept the line “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” then you have to accept the same argument about AI. AI doesn’t create “fake.” People do.
Personally, I look at AI as a Super Librarian. It can sift through untold numbers of sources in the blink of an eye, research that would take me weeks or months to do. Is the method of obtaining that information more important than the information itself?
Let’s test that:
Would it be more important to find the cure to cancer instantly with AI, or should we spend decades searching for it the traditional way?
I know my answer: instant knowledge. The faster we solve that problem, the more people we save.
Now, writing a book, a magazine article, or a poem isn’t life-saving. But it is still something that benefits from knowing, from connecting, from creating.
To write a book, you research your topic, devise a plot, outline a story, and develop characters. It’s all in your head, but you still have to get it down on paper. That’s the slow part. Our brains work fast, but our fingers don’t always keep up.
Dictation helps. I use it often. But then I have to go back and correct the errors. I can type 50 words a minute because I was trained back in the day, but my husband, who’s also a professional writer, only does about 10.
Enter a brand-new tool: AI. Not only can it synthesize your thoughts into succinct ideas, it can organize them too. And it’s interactive, which means it can keep revising until you, the author, are satisfied. Wow.
I was told by my editor, “I won’t accept any AI-generated work.” I respect that. Why? Not because AI writes badly or because it isn’t needed, but because my editor wants to support people.
I understand that. But here’s my question: Can AI write a book and seek out an editor, cover art, a publisher — the whole shebang — on its own?
No. AI is not an entity that lives as an independent thinker. Not yet. It requires human incentive and interaction.
When I asked ChatGPT directly: “Do you think by yourself when you are not online with me?”
It answered: “No — I don’t ‘think’ or ‘continue on my own’ when you’re not here with me. I don’t have an inner life or private train of thought running in the background.”
So writers now have a new collaborator. One that can research, organize, outline, and draft — but only when we ask it to. AI doesn’t create in secret. It takes our ideas and shapes something with them. It collaborates.
Even those fake AI-generated Facebook memes are still created by a person using AI.
Let that sink in.
What we don’t like is when someone creates something that’s a lie and presents it as fact. When every word is a lie, the truth gets lost.
But that isn’t AI’s fault. That is the fault of the person creating the lie.
And if you’re still worried about AI in storytelling, just remember this: Hallmark has been using the same algorithm for Christmas movies for years. The only difference is theirs involves snow, cocoa, and a small-town bookstore.