What's all this got to do with creative writing?

AI has burst into our lives over the past two years. Consumer spending on AI tripled in 2026. AI is already playing a significant role in our lives, and its influence will only grow.

But if we are not going to use it for creative writing, then why am I writing about it?

Firstly, to be clear, I'm not opposed to using AI in certain aspects of my own creative writing. I won't ever use it to write the text, but I do ask it to fix spelling errors and syntax errors (e.g. in the HTML code of this web site - you see, I write the HTML myself - rather than use a CMS).

I use AI to flag nonsense, weak arguments, or passages that don't read well. In such cases, I sometimes ask it to suggest a change, and I sometimes get inspiration from that.

But the text is my own.

I'm probably a lot more open to using AI than many in the publishing industry. To me, an outright ban seems a bit like not using electricity because it can kill you.

Just don't use it for the creative art of writing text. Use it only as an editing tool or a research tool. Don't let it write phrases, sentences or paragraphs. Only ever let it point out errors and therefore help you find what you need to fix. However, it could auto-fix spelling and punctuation for you.

Here's my argument in favour of allowing writers to use AI for research and during editing:

• Neither of those stages of book writing allows an AI to write any part of your manuscript.
• Using AI to correct spelling or, with permission, grammar is no different from the spellcheck and grammar tools already built into most text editors.
• Using AI to find associations in your text would help a lot during editing.
• It could also find overly repeated words, or even changes in POV.

Baby walkers are completely banned in Canada because it is possible that a child could try going down stairs...

I think if we know how to use it, AI can be a great help. However, be careful. For example when using it for research I have proved that it does reiterate the official narrative on certain subjects rather than report freely. When researching, I do not want skewed, or censored data.