Their points about why they won't condemn AI use are incoherent at best.
Classism - Not all writers have the financial ability to hire humans to help at certain phases of their writing. For some writers, the decision to use AI is a practical, not an ideological, one. The financial ability to engage a human for feedback and review assumes a level of privilege that not all community members possess.
The 'help' AI gives is bad. Anyone that has written in Googledocs in the last year will be able to tell you how bad it is. AI can't be trusted for spelling or grammar; you need to use your own brain. The idea that you have to hire a human editor, however, is nuts. Writing, and especially things like NaNo, are community based. You can always find a beta, or a nitpicker, for free, just by reaching out to the community around you. And sure, if you're writing on your own in isolation, or just starting out, that can be intimidating and more difficult, but that is exactly what things like NaNoWriMo should exist to facilitate. Helping put people in contact with each other so you know where to turn for someone to Britpick, or lend a different cultural perspective, or help you with coherence. AI is not a substitute for this, and only attempts to be due to being a Plagiarism Meat Grinder.
Ableism - Not all brains have same abilities and not all writers function at the same level of education or proficiency in the language in which they are writing. Some brains and ability levels require outside help or accommodations to achieve certain goals. The notion that all writers “should“ be able to perform certain functions independently or is a position that we disagree with wholeheartedly. There is a wealth of reasons why individuals can't "see" the issues in their writing without help.
This is true, not all brains do have the same abilities. But I was under the impression that the aim of NaNo was about having fun and learning and enjoying the process of creation, and less focused on the quality of the end product. Writing, as with all creative endeavours, is something you improve at with practice. Slamming prompts in an AI generator is not practice, and will not help you improve. And the notion that people with learning difficulties/disabilities require AI help when, as previously stated, AI is really bad at helping, is kind of offensive. Many of us have been doing this for years without the aid of AI. This is something else that community can help you with. Having betas and knowing fellow writers will do this job a thousand times better than AI ever could.
Because AI sure as shit can't "see" the issues in your writing either. AI can't think. AI can't understand themes, or metaphors, or character arcs, AI can't even be trusted to grammar check your work. It can't be trusted to spellcheck your work; even using a basic spell checker requires you to supervise the damn thing to stop it doing something stupid, especially with non-English words. However poor you think your proficiency at writing may be in a given language, I promise you AI is worse.
I understand that when your brain is something you have to work against instead of with that you can miss things. I do it plenty. The best way to find out you've errored, or accidentally a worded (or occasionally accidentally an entire half paragraphed) is to post the wretched thing for public consumption. So we proof read, we paste into a different format, we proof read again, and then we still find errors later, and that is not something AI can fucking prevent. It can, in actual fact, actively make it worse.
General Access Issues - All of these considerations exist within a larger system in which writers don't always have equal access to resources along the chain. For example, underrepresented minorities are less likely to be offered traditional publishing contracts, which places some, by default, into the indie author space, which inequitably creates upfront cost burdens that authors who do not suffer from systemic discrimination may have to incur.
Ohhh, this is the bit where they're trying to defend using AI to create cover art.
Yeah, no. It's a plagiarism machine. Everything AI spits out was once an artist's hard work and talent, mangled and mashed into a vaguely recognisable glob. Those artists are not compensated or credited. We do not, as writers, get to rip food out of artists mouths just because we're underprivileged ourselves. The artists worst effected by AI being used instead of people paying for art are also more likely to be members of underrepresented minorities, including non-heterosexual and disabled. Where indie writers and cover art creators are concerned, we are, and should be, a single community, and encouraging this is only going to drive a wedge between us all.
Because AI steals from us all. And especially from minority communities, who are even less likely to be offered support and recognition. AI is not a great leveler, it will not only take publishing contracts away from abled straight white creators, it will leave us with a world where only the big name or safe bet creators are supported. Everything else can apparently be done by AI these days, and it's cheaper than real people, and easier to access than real people, according to the NaNo stance.
Everything that NaNoWriMo thinks AI can help with can be aided much more effectively by community. By being a writer, or an artist, in a space with other creatives, who can lend their experience and support to help you improve. Community gives you the contacts to get your shit proofed, to find editors, to help your research, to help you portray minority characters and experiences in a way that feels accurate to those communities.
That should be what NaNoWriMo is about. It's an annual challenge with workshops and forums, it's an event that brings the writing community together to spend a month a year just creating. What you created in November never had to be good. It never had to be finished. It sure as shit never had to be polished. It was about making that start and getting the words down and giving yourself a springboard, and doing it alongside a whole bunch of others, of all levels of talent and experience, who were doing the same. It was something unifying.
And they're suggesting we use AI instead of getting in touch with other human beings. Instead of reaching out to our fellow writers around the world, we should trust a machine that has been fed other people's work without their permission to do the job.
If we do that, AI is going to destroy our communities, and then attempt to replace them with something much more expensive and objectively worse.
