I never intended to blog about my writing or writing process, but over the past month or so, I’ve had enough disturbing encounters with AI generated slop, that it has inspired me to pick up the pen, so to speak.
Not because I can claim to be any kind of expert in AI or indie writing, but rather, because these recent experiences and this current environment, where we are awash in AI slop, are causing me to ponder difficult questions. And I thought, perhaps, there are others out there who may also be pondering these same things, and it might be helpful to put down my thoughts. Helpful for me. Maybe helpful for others by offering some comfort from feeling less alone in the Age of AI Slop.
So I mentioned I’ve had disturbing encounters. I will explain.
First encounter: Like many (most?) authors, I am regularly getting AI generated spam emails from who-knows-where (much of it appears based in Nigeria), praising my book and offering to help me market it. This is not all that disturbing in itself. It’s just one more kind of spam, after all.
But because I care so deeply about my books, and the whole point of writing them was to genuinely entertain and form a creative connection with readers, it stings whenever these emails show up. Because it’s someone (or some bot) taking something I care about and using it to try and exploit me.
Ugh.
Second encounter: The Mia Ballard Shy Girl scandal.
For those who may not know, or who don’t want to click the link, the gist of this story is that a popular novel was discovered to be 78% AI generated (according to the New York Times). The book was published by Hachette, who were perfectly happy to put the slop on store shelves, until internet critics (on places like Reddit) raised suspicions about it. Then the NYT investigated and broke the scandal wide. Then Hachette pulled the book.
From one way of looking at it, this is encouraging to see that at least some in the reading community (broadly speaking) care about whether or not what they’re reading is a story written by a real person.
But from many other ways of looking at it, this scandal is (I think) deeply upsetting.
It’s upsetting to see that the traditional publishers didn’t bother with due diligence.
It’s upsetting that more people didn’t notice the slop right away.
It’s upsetting to think about how this undermines trust and integrity in the social contract (if we can call it such) between authors and readers.
And if you want to go one more time around the downward spiral, you can layer in the conflicted interest of the AI writing detection company that was involved in the Shy Girl story…
There’s many layers here. But it seems like at each layer, there’s just so many cynical lessons to take. For example: Some people seem to genuinely love/enjoy/appreciate Shy Girl. And there are, no doubt, many other AI generated books that people are reading and enjoying right now.
And if readers are happy to read the slop, then… what can we say to them? It seems absurd to say that those readers are wrong about what they love. Or that they’re doing something wrong by enjoying the stories they enjoy. If they are genuinely entertained, then they are entertained. Period. I don’t know how one can argue with that. If what entertains them is AI slop, then so be it.
For indie writers, another cynical lesson here is that it looks like AI generating your books (in whole or in part) would be a smart business move. So long as you curate the slop enough that it can entertain, then you can still capture the hearts of readers. And that capturing can still be genuine. So why take all that time to handcraft your story? AI can do it all faster. It will enable you to better chase the trends, crank out the books, and pack them with all the tropes readers want. All you really need is one to catch on big…
Ugh.
If you care about things like art and trust and integrity—this really sucks.
Third encounter: AI generated reviews. The NYT was caught up in a big scandal around this, when a freelance literary reviewer admitted to using AI to help generate his review.
This is so bonkers to me. The critic’s job is to offer an original opinion! To engage with art and comment on it. And yet, in the Age of AI Slop, a critic —hired by the New York Times, no less—decides to outsource their writing to AI.
It is just so depressing. These are the gatekeepers for the literary world. These are the people who are supposed to help guide others toward good culture. And they can’t be bothered.
But, honestly, it feels like that’s the tip of iceberg. Just do a web search for “AI generated book reviews” and you will find a ton of tools pitching themselves for this exact purpose.
Even the reader reviews on Amazon book or product pages are mostly AI slop now. The way they all repeat the full product name and the same talking points. It reads like those spam emails that all purportedly come from totally different, 100% real, and 100% successful book marketers. All of it remixing the same vaguely personalized content.
Ugh!
Super depressing. Because where does that leave us?
It leaves us in a world where AI generated slop is getting published by the big publishers, sent off to be reviewed by AI critics and AI review generators, whose goal is to convince you to read and be happy with that slop rather than something else.
Chuck Wendig wrote a thoughtful piece about this on his site back in March. He observes that this is sort of like living in the terminator’s world, or Blade Runner, where you no longer know who is human and who is not. You start to suspect every book you read or piece of art you see could be AI generated.
And as a result, we’re all made more miserable.
Super depressing.
But is there some wisdom that might help us to think our way out of the depression?
Since my stories tend to be dystopian and inspired by Philip K. Dick kinds of ideas, where people are often unsure about what is real and what is not… there’s a sense in which I feel like I can feed my creativity from this fucked up environment. Because it sort of grounds and reinforces my already cynical storytelling tendencies.
But obviously that’s a very personal thing, and only relevant if you’re also a cynic who enjoys a darker story.
I think maybe a more general opportunity to be found here might be in re-focusing one’s self on the creative basics.
To survive in the Age of AI Slop, we have to try and forget about selling books, competing in the attention economy, cultivating the email list, harvesting 5-star reviews, getting a publishing deal, etc., etc.
Because all of that is the domain of AI slop. Or Amazon ads. Or search engine optimization.
It’s all the bullshit.
It’s not that it doesn’t matter. But you’ll never out-compete the bots. And worrying about it probably isn’t going to help with writing a good story.
So try to set all that aside.
Ignore the spam emails.
Ignore the scandals.
Focus on building your world and being excited about stepping into it each time you sit down to write.
Focus on telling a good story and sharing it.
Spencer Hey 
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