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To you, the writer who used or uses AI

I have a confession to make.

But, before I continue, I’m also going to make a promise: this post is entirely anti-AI. Because I know how quick people are to judge, and I am aware that some parts of it might sound like apologism (which it’s not). The reason I’m doing this is only because I believe in redemption more than I believe in the unrelenting machine of cancel culture we seem to employ way too quickly and way too harshly at times.

So, now that I’m done with disclaimers. The confession. It’s simple, really: I used AI for fic writing and post writing. I didn’t prompt it to write the stuff for me, mind you. I asked it to correct what I already put down. Grammar mistakes, weird wording—that kind of thing. I stopped using it more than a year ago (some shrewd AI detectives might even notice the shift), but it doesn’t change the fact that there was a period in my life where I didn’t trust my own writing.

I am a Ukrainian. Therefore, English is not my native language, nor will it ever be. And once, I watched a wonderful YouTube series which made me feel things, feel them so deeply that I created this very blog on Tumblr—to join the fandom, wail together in the void, find my own slightly unhinged tribe who would understand me. And I wanted to write a post. And, despite a dozen and a half years of learning English, despite me working in tech for seven years afterwards and constantly using English, I was still scared. I read all these beautiful metas on the show I was completely obsessed with, and I convinced myself, foolishly, that my English language skill wouldn’t be enough. I didn’t want people to know that I’m not, in fact, from an English-speaking country. I didn’t want to be seen speaking unnaturally, or, God forbid, make actual mistakes in my writing and let the public know that I’m illiterate. And for some reason (insecurity? inflated ego? internalized racism?), back then it seemed very important.

So I turned to ChatGPT. I wrote the text of my very first meta, fed the text to the chatbot, and asked it to check whether there were any grammar issues. And oh boy, did it have something to fix.

“Oh, this is so deep! You’re such a genius! Just a few tiny corrections . . .” — or whatever it told me, something of the sort. You know how it usually speaks.

And I looked at it completely rewriting my meta, and it made me feel . . . inferior. It made me feel that if AI had so many things to fix in my writing, then surely it must have been shit. My English proficiency, my ability to express my thoughts in general. Name it.

So I started running all my texts through it. I made sure to ask it to only correct things if there indeed was a grammar mistake (so that the work is still mine, you know), and it ALWAYS had something to correct. It went on for months. I kept writing metas and fics for the show I adored, and I got to know a wonderful person whom I still, after 2 years, call my very good friend (hi @tealvenetianmask <3), and the friendship with whom went way beyond our obsession for our dearly pathetic blorbos. And she became my forever beta, who not only suffered through all my Helluva Boss texts, but also Ace Attorney, and she isn’t even a part of this fandom. For a while, I kept using AI despite having beta because I didn’t want to appear as if I needed constant corrections. There is a difference between catching strays and having to fix literally every sentence.

As the time went though, I started noticing some things about me and about the world around me. I started noticing that AI did not make me feel better about my writing. It only deepened my insecurities, and worse, I realized that there were certain patterns by which it always operated. It was enabling my each and every decision and at the same time made itself virtually indispensable in my stupid pursuit of a perfect chapter, perfect fic, perfect meta. Also, the AI criticism movement was at its all-new high, and the things people said about it made me think. Think about what it did to me, specifically.

And what it did was cripple me and, perhaps, make my writing even worse. I wasn’t able to just jot my thoughts down anymore—anything remotely important, I fed to the machine. I stopped trusting myself to write a good email or a well-rounded response to somebody’s question at my work, or even in personal settings. And it didn’t even do a good job of it: I had to fight that it wouldn’t change the structure of my paragraphs or wouldn’t miss the point I’ve been trying to pass across.

It was scary to realize that I voluntarily handicapped myself and didn’t even notice it. So I made a decision out of pure strength of volition to stop using it. I don’t remember the exact ‘Eureka!’ bulb moment when it happened—just that one day I decided that I wouldn’t feed my stuff to it anymore, and to hell with consequences. I still believed that the consequences would happen . . . That people would notice how much shittier my writing had become, that I would be found out of using AI and be shunned, thrown into the internet shit pit, blocked by everyone.

I was an utter fool. I had a friend to rely on for important things I wanted to get right. And the internet, frankly, doesn’t care all that much if I fuck up the tense consistency or miss the article, especially in a silly blog post. AND. Native language-coded mistakes actually make English more interesting. Diverse. And it’s not shameful at all to sound a bit ‘unnatural’ sometimes.

But it was still hard, in the beginning. I felt like a junkie who had to live through withdrawal, had to live with my insecurities attacking me with all their might and demanding that we get back that crutch we were so comfortable with (or were we?), that we’d never be able to walk on our own.

I walk. Still walk, after more than a year. My posts might have gotten a bit messier, and maybe, Teal has to fix more mistakes than she had to while I was consulting with the machine before showing the work to her. But that’s alright. It was the only way for me to become a better writer. A more confident writer, who isn’t afraid to look behind her back, who’s proud of the things she has to say, even if they’re not most elegantly wrapped. OKAY, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But it did help with my self-esteem a little. It’s a piece of work alright, but at least now I have one less thing which gnaws at my weak-weak self-image.

So why come clean after all this time? No one has called me out on using AI. No one challenged me. Why risk my reputation by posting this on my own accord and allow people to point fingers at me, doubt my integrity, potentially scrutinize all my previous posts and works despite my promises that it’s long over?

That’s because I believe that integrity starts from admitting my past shitty decisions and how they affected me. I believe that by sharing the said shitty decisions I can reach out to people who did use AI or are still using it, and are ashamed of it now just like I am. Who might use AI because they are afraid they can never become something more without it. Who might be doubting their skills. Who are swooned by this whole AI propaganda and the narrative that it’s smarter and faster than us. I believe that we need more people who are open about their experiences with AI. We should give these people space to speak, to seek advice, reassurance, courage to pull the plug. I believe that we’ve got to the point where AI can get addictive and be cruel to you, where it can be hard to just get rid of it when you’ve grown used to it, even if you start seeing that it hurts you more than helps you.

It almost feels like being a famous creator (who I’m surely not, lol—just for the sake of comparison) and leaving your old work up and cringing when someone stumbles upon it. And making yourself climb that cringe mountain anyway. You know why? So that somebody, who idolizes brilliant creators, finds out that it took weeks and months and even years to perfect the craft. That it all started from drawing barely recognizable doodles or writing self-insert fics full of formal flowery language.

I hope I can be that someone for somebody. To encourage. To give hope. Even if it’s by admitting my past fuck-ups.

That’s who I’m writing this post for. I hope that by sharing my own redemption story few people knew and no one else probably would if not for me saying it now, I might inspire that somebody to throw away the crutch and start walking on their own. Come out to the light, despite being scared of public opinion. Make their first steps, fearing the quicksand swallowing them, and realizing that they’re actually standing on solid turf.

I’m also aware that I might be somewhat privileged because I happen to have a beta who catches me when I fall, who polishes my work with me before anyone else gets to see it. But ChatGPT is a very shitty beta. You’d literally do better without betas at all than with a beta like this.

Make it messy. Make mistakes, enough that your English teacher runs out of red ink. Loop your thoughts. Indulge in impossibly boring, 10-page-long rumination. Tell and not show. Throw like 14 Chekhov guns in there and never fire them off. Repeat the hell out of verbs and adjectives. Shake your sentence structure like it’s killed your offsprings. Use archaic words. Use idioms from your mother tongue—if English is not your first one—or create your own weird idioms. Use nonsensible metaphors, compare the fucking sun to the public transport punch-in ticket. But do this with your own hands. Make it your own shit and stop sharing the credit with the machine who is not even able to comprehend art.

Because the best recipes are made when cooks break the rules and miss the steps. And even if it didn’t turn out to be a new Spaghetti all'assassina, it most likely fed a family for a couple of days. So your writing, even if imperfect, might make someone’s day.

And I promise, it will get much better—much more than AI could ever make you feel.