The Theft of the Journey
You may have seen this shit on Twitter. In summary: a milquetoast tech-bro used AI to generate art and text for a children's book, got it put together in a weekend, and put it up on Kindle. He thinks this is a win, as tech-bros are big on output and streamlining production. The focus is on the product, not on process, which is like wanting to eat spaghetti every night and relying solely on Doordash to get it you instead of taking the time to learn how to cook it yourself and improve the recipe over time to your liking at a greatly reduced cost.
Anyway: AI-created art and text is theft. It's built on the uncompensated work of countless creatives, put into a machine-learning blender and spit out for profit. That's bad enough, and reason enough to side-eye any AI-produced work until someone comes up with a more ethical way to feed the machine. It also steals the journey from aspiring creatives by circumventing the learning and improvement process.
My example: I grew up fairly poor. My parents spoiled me when they could, but what they always had plenty to give me was support. They believed in me and backed any dream I had, including wanting to work in the game industry some day.
I went to college later than most, focusing on professional writing, as that was how I was going to make my career writing for games and about games. I had been writing my entire life, and it seemed fitting. In the end, all my work landed me a QA job, which lasted about a year. For the next few years, I worked service jobs while doing bits of game writing here and there, some paid, some not, all in an effort to get back in.
Around 2015, well into my 30s, I got a job at another studio doing community and support, which would eventually turn into roles in writing, narrative design, and game design. Before that happened, I set my targets elsewhere. I looked at BioWare's hiring requirements. They were looking for writers with traditionally-published fantasy novels under their belts. I had a concept I had been wanting to explore for the better part of a decade, but it was a lot of effort, so I tried to figure out what else I could do to break in.
In 2017, I had managed to become a game writer and narrative designer at my studio without realizing it by contributing when asked and being handed more and more responsibilities. I had broken in through the window, but I was still focused on the front door. That, in my mind, required a novel to open. I revisited my concept and over the next two years, I wrote one of the finest trunk novels in existence and half of a sequel.
I had worked on several gamest by this point. I realized that you don't need a published novel to be a game writer or narrative designer. That was just BioWare being weird. But I still wanted to put a novel out into the world. I caught the itch. I spent the next year writing what would become Scarlet & Sunder, my upcoming self-pub debut, and three more years editing, refining, and producing it. I'm also 100k words into another novel, started in that same timeframe.
I can't tell you how much I've improved, as a writer and as a human being, from the experience of creating these books. I've learned a lot about myself, from what work flow is best for me, to the times of the day I'm most productive, to what I'm capable of. I've gone further than I ever imagined, and I carry that confidence and skill forward into future projects and endeavors.
Now, imagine if I had sat down one weekend, thrown a few phrases like "Sentai" and "Magical Mecha" and "Tokusatsu" into text fields, pressed enter, did the same for cover art, and hit "Publish." Not only would I have a much worse product, but I would have denied myself all of that growth. I would have stolen that journey from myself, and learned nothing. I would have gained nothing.
I'm not saying artists need to struggle, or that creating art should be more difficult than it has to be. Art is for everyone. Tools exist to make your life easier and increase productivity, and many of them don't steal from uncompensated artists. You also don't have to do everything yourself. I'm a writer by trade. I can't draw for shit. Does that mean I should learn digital painting, as the only alternative to theft, if I want cover art?
Not necessarily. It's a good skill to have, but I poured my points into the written word, and have no interest in a re-spec. I could have used AI to generate a cover, like Tor recently did (that's a whole other can of worms). Instead, I put aside money for production. I hired Felix Ortiz to produce my cover art. I contracted Charlie Knight to handle editing. I'm tentatively working with Shawn T King for design (fingers crossed he has time for me!)
You may or may not know these names, but these folks rock. It took time and planning to save up the thousands of dollars I needed to hire the exact professionals I wanted so I could do the job right to my personal standards. Not everyone has that privilege, and I recognize that. Self-pub, and art in general, shouldn't be as expensive as it is.
People should also be compensated for their work, though, and there are cheaper ways to create. There are ways to get access to the content you're not able to create yourself, from budget options, to crowdfunding, trades, and more. There are other options to explore before resorting to theft. Your work deserves to exist and be seen, but not at the expense of other working creatives.
Develop your skillset in your chosen discipline. Create wonderful things. If you need content that falls outside of your wheelhouse and circumstances keep you from learning how to make it yourself, you should be able to have it, but you're not entitled to it. Collaborate. Work on smaller, simpler projects while you save up for the magnum opus. Whatever you need to do to get there.
Just don't cheat other creatives, and don't cheat yourself.
