National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a nonprofit that started in 1999 that has long encouraged people to harness their creativity and unleash it on the page. Every November, thousands of amateur creative writers take up the challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days. I’ve never taken up the challenge myself, but as a fiction writer, have always been interested in the idea. I’m not sure how many of these novels have the depth and quality to make a lasting literary work of substance, since thirty days is hardly enough time (in my opinion) to craft a compelling short story, but at least it’s getting people to start writing.

However, the AI specter has come to haunt the nonprofit; recently they approved of the use of AI for the annual writing challenge, claiming banning it outright had “classist and ableist” undertones. The organization suggested that a lot of people can’t hire human editors to go over their work, or might have a disability that prevents them from getting words on the page. Thus, AI should be acceptable for the fiction writer.

The pushback was swift and overwhelmingly negative. Meghan Herbst writes for Wired,

Four members of NaNoWriMo’s writers board, including science fiction/fantasy writer Daniel José Older and fantasy writer Cass Morris, have now publicly stepped down from their roles in response. One of the organization’s sponsors, Ellipsus, which advertises itself as a “principled alternative to Google Docs” and is staunchly opposed to the use of generative AI in its products, has officially withdrawn its sponsorship.

-Meghan Herbst, NaNoWriMo Organizers Said It Was Classist and Ableist to Condemn AI. All Hell Broke Loose

A lot of writers, including those with disabilities, also found the announcement distasteful, noting how it is condescending to think disabled writers need AI “plagiarism” in order to be legitimate creators. According to the Washington Times, NaNo added an addendum to the announcement admitting that were problems with the abuse of AI systems to generate prose, but it didn’t back down from its original statement.

We’re coming on two years since the release of ChatGPT, the Large Language Model (LLM) that can effectively scrape language from the internet and arrange it in coherent sentences based on text prompts. Writers and artists were among the first to cite some concerns about the use of new AI systems, especially as large tech corporations fell captive to a wave of AI hype and sought to invest in it for research and implementation. Now, though, it seems apparent that a large swathe of the population is tired of the prospect of an AI-generated culture. Maybe in our collective gut, we know that infusing human creativity with computer-generated work can potentially erode the world of the arts into something impersonal, formulaic, and boring.