a teacherâs take on fanfics and AI
itâs quite a fascinating experience being a teacher who reads fanfics. as someone who has spent over a decade teaching literacy, teaching young people to become writers, itâs interesting to read the faceless work of individuals who I know nothing about. and it is because of this very fact â the anonymity of it all â that I must acknowledge how incredibly important it is to have an authorâs voice for your fic to stand out and hold itâs own.
this has become increasingly vital in the age of AI, (which has an extremely obvious âvoiceâ of its own, albeit bland and repetitive), and I find myself sitting with a number of competing truths regarding itâs existence within literature, and the world itself.
Iâll be the first to admit that thereâs discomfort in that. like many complex issues, we have to consider the nuance surrounding AI and what it means moving forward as readers, writers and humans. I want to be clear, I am not inherently against AI, and have at times found it to be a very useful tool that enables me to meet the demanding requirements of my job. at the same time I can appreciate the damage AI is doing, not only to the environment, but to our minds.
it saddens me, both as a teacher and a lifelong reader and writer, when Iâm drawn in by the description of a fic, only to open it and realise that it is most definitely created by AI. I canât help but think that itâs such a waste of creative opportunity. it also naturally raises genuine concerns regarding the âlost artâ of writing (though this is somewhat tempered by the sheer volume of fics that are still being imagined and written by authors all over the world).
so here I sit, uncomfortable and unsure, and wondering what things will look like moving forward. I didnât have a clear direction when I started this post, so please forgive me for my unfiltered thoughts, but sometimes I just need somewhere to put them. Iâm sure there will be more to come.