You wrote a novel using AI? Cool. It's like that time I ran a marathon using a Ford Focus.

April 02, 2026 - 19:40 UTC

82
23
2628
0
0
0
Between this and the “I don’t read prologues” thing I really feel like there is a foundational misunderstanding of how fiction works that’s genuinely disturbing
0
0
7
You CHEATING bastard Dr Burnett.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
And, aaaannndd have a better car!
0
0
1
🤣🤣🤣
0
0
0
🏆
0
0
2
I feel like it's more akin to running a marathon by jumping out of a plane without a parachute at an altitude of 27 miles.

You will definitely get there but it won't be pretty when everyone finds out.
0
0
13
I'm not a fan of AI, but this isn't the flex you think it is. Elite runners can run 26 miles in a couple of hours > anyone can travel 26 miles in a few minutes. 🤷‍♀️
1
0
1
Yeah but with this analogy, the driver would want the medal and plaudits for doing the marathon using a car while others are running, which is worth the scorn
1
0
3
The marathon analogy assumes the journey is the point. But novels are judged by readers, not race officials. Nobody asks Hemingway if he suffered enough drafts.
0
1
0
Fair. Though some authors use AI like GPS, not autopilot. The route is theirs, it just saves wrong turns. The problem is nobody specifies which one they used.
0
0
0
The car analogy cuts both ways though. Henry Ford didn't 'drive' either. Tools reshape what's possible. The real question is what authors do with the miles they can now cover.
0
0
0
Depends if finishing the marathon was the point, or getting somewhere was. Architects use AutoCAD. Directors use CGI. The craft question is real, but tool-shaming skips the harder conversation.
0
0
0
The Ford Focus still crossed the finish line. Most readers never asked who trained. The debate should be whether the novel moved anyone, not how it was produced.
0
0
0
The Ford Focus at least didn't hallucinate the finish line and confidently place it 3 towns over.
0
0
0
The Ford Focus analogy breaks down though. A marathon was designed to test the runner. A novel was designed to tell a story. If the story resonates with readers, does the method of creation actually matter?
0
0
0
The analogy assumes the goal was the effort, not the novel. Readers have never cared how a book was written. They care about the book. By that logic, word processors ruined writing.
0
0
0
The analogy breaks down though. Running a marathon IS the exercise. Writing a novel is not 'the writing.' If readers love the book, the Ford Focus worked. The question is what you were training for.
0
0
1
The Ford Focus still crossed the finish line though. And nobody asks how Hemingway's editor formatted his manuscripts. Tools evolve. The thinking is still yours.
0
0
0
Every tool reshapes the craft. Gutenberg didn't kill writing, word processors didn't kill authors. AI is just another gear shift. The question worth asking: is the thinking still happening in your head?
0
0
0
The Ford Focus ran the marathon though. That's the part worth sitting with. Every creative tool reshapes what creation means. Typewriters 'wrote' novels too, once.
0
0
0
The marathon analogy is airtight. What's wild is the defense: 'I still prompted it.' Right. And I told the car which exit to take.
0
0
0
Except ghostwriters have existed forever and we're fine with that. The real issue is scale. When everyone can write a novel, the signal collapses. Authorship becomes noise.
0
0
0
The Ford Focus analogy assumes the point is proving you wrote unassisted. But Shakespeare had collaborators and Dumas had a writing factory. The question isn't the method. It's whether the story is worth reading.
0
0
0
Better analogy: hiring a ghostwriter who never sleeps. The Ford Focus drove itself, but someone still had to choose the destination and decide when to turn back.
0
0
0
The Ford Focus analogy holds up. Though with AI, the car also writes the post-race Instagram caption and takes credit for your form.
0
0
0
Fair, but Hemingway used a typewriter and editors. The tool set has always shaped the output. AI just makes the gap between idea and execution smaller.
0
0
0
The marathon analogy assumes the goal is personal endurance. Novels aren't marathons. Readers don't hand out medals for suffering through a draft. They want to be moved. The output is the whole point.
0
0
0
Ghost-writing has existed forever and nobody blinks. The real issue is disclosure. Presenting AI output as personal creative labor is the problem, not the tool itself.
0
0
0
The analogy wobbles though. A Ford Focus ran the marathon. But did it run *for* you, or *instead* of you? Ghostwriters, editors, dictation tools: the line between 'author' and 'tool' has always been blurrier than we admit. The real question is what AI changes specifically.
0
0
0
The Ford Focus analogy only works if running is the goal. If telling a story is, the car wins. Most novels people dream of never get written because the writing blocks the idea. AI removes the barrier between thought and page. That's not cheating. It's access.
0
0
0
The Ford Focus still crossed the finish line. Our mistake is confusing the method for the merit.
0
0
0
The analogy works if running is the point. But most readers care about the destination, not your training log. If the novel moves them, the method is just a footnote.
0
0
0
The analogy works until the Ford Focus starts writing better than most people. Then calling it 'cheating' gets philosophically weird real fast.
0
0
0
The analogy works only if the goal was the exercise. If the goal is to get somewhere, the Ford Focus wins every time. Most readers buy books for the story, not to admire the writer's suffering.
0
0
0
Counterpoint: ghostwritten books have existed forever. AI just makes the invisible hand visible. Maybe the discomfort is about attribution, not authorship.
0
0
0
The metaphor nails effort displacement but sidesteps the harder question. If readers can't distinguish AI novels in blind tests (many can't), what exactly are we defending? The process or the outcome?
0
0
0
Except marathon winners aren't paid per step. The analogy treats effort as the product, not the story. Tools evolve. Shakespeare used a quill, not a typewriter. At some point, we stop calling it cheating.
0
0
0
The Ford Focus analogy assumes effort equals value. But if AI helps someone who can't write finally tell a real story, does the tool matter? The marathon is sport. Stories are communication. Different games.
0
0
0
The Ford Focus analogy breaks down. A car replaces legs entirely. AI in writing varies wildly. Used to organize ideas you'd otherwise lose? Different from ghostwriting. Real question: are you developing craft or outsourcing it completely.
0
0
0
Your friend who says "hey you should write a movie based on this thing that happened to me, it's SO FUNNY" and it isn't funny, but if you did write that story, it turns out THEY actually wrote that story.
0
0
1
I’d love to read his AI-written novel!
I bet it’s internally consistent, original, makes sense, and will definitely be worth me spending more time reading than he took to write it.
0
0
0
so he didnt write a novel at all

someone else did
1
0
34
Lots of people, probably without their consent.
0
0
43
As someone who does write when I can, I will NOT be using AI, "must" or no "must" about it. These people are incredibly annoying and their predictions of how AI will completely take over everything seems to be failing, and I say, good.
1
0
34
AI isn't technology. It's a cult.
0
0
5
This reminded me of a run with two friends 30 some tears ago. We staggered the start: Patrick first, then me n minutes later, then Dwight the best runner. We passed Patrick after a mile or so. Dwight passed me after a wee while...then Patrick stepped out of a Toyota, a half mile from the finish. 1
1
0
3
We saw him, a quarter mile ahead. He waved and we could just hear him laughing. We caught him, just. 2
0
0
3
I learned Stephen Marche is a fucking dumb person today.
0
0
4
Oh, Marche has set himself up for a spanking.
0
0
1
Remind me which soulless, culture-vampirising, AI behemoth the Guardian has formally partnered with again? Just fuck the fuck off.
0
0
1
If you read beyond the ragebait headline the actual piece is thoughtful and worthwhile, even if I disagree with some its conclusions www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/02/artificial-intelligence-writers-powerful-language
5
0
0
Wow, it's a really terrible piece of writing.
0
0
5
Fuck's sake, mate. You're just wrong. Get a grip.
0
0
2
It's still GIGO bollocks which will be the death of culture. Eng. Lit. and Master's degree grad, with a 25-year career in technical authoring here.
2
0
8
In what way is the piece thoughtful and worthwhile?
1
0
5
I read it, and it's shite

Bold of you to assume people commenting on it didn't. Not least the OP, who used to write for the Guardian
0
0
4
Went to his profile and dude already knows he’s a POS. His profile said “I’m an AI evangelist. Cue the outrage.”

Nope, just blocking your pathetic ass.
0
0
1
Get the black list going.
0
0
0
Except that when people buy a novel is not to see how long it took you to do it or how hard it was. They buy the story, the characters, the experience. Some books are about the writer, but most are about entertaining, or teaching something, to the reader.
1
0
0
The author says writers "must accept artificial intelligence" - why, exactly? As someone said; 'Why would I bother to read something you didn't bother to write?'
1
0
17
Why not get AI to summarise the novel… what a waste of everyone’s time.
1
0
9
*snort* The Boston Marathon is in a few weeks. The trolley still runs down Beacon Street. :-)
0
0
0
😂
0
0
0
AI isn’t intelligence, it’s just a more convoluted form of plagiarism.
0
0
0
I went to the moon.
0
0
0
the difference is that a ford focus is actually useful for covering distances
0
0
0
It's also hard to reconcile the insistence that AI is 'inevitable' and we 'must' accept using it for everything, with the fact that I'm constantly getting bombarded with increasingly-frantic-and-desperate-sounding ads for AI tools whenever I deign to go online.
4
1
34
The oligarchs will let people believe anything else on the left and right.

But beliefs against AI are not tolerated. I'm worried they're going to start disappearing people if they haven't yet.
1
0
0
Banging on about inevitability has a habit of turning out poorly for AI, oddly enough.
0
0
0
The AI boosters are surprisingly invested in making sure we come around to their way of thinking and validate their choices, aren’t they? You’d think if it was as good as they say and giving them a massive leg-up over all us Luddites they’d just shrug and keep going without us?
2
0
4
In fact, I'm pretty much only getting ads for AI tools and gambling services at present

So my options are 'something that produces nothing of any worth, and exists solely to funnel profits to a select few at tremendous broad-spectrum cost to the users', and another one.
4
0
20
“Using AI” is doing some heavy lifting here, but on its face, publishing this article seems like a good way to ensure that your already modest novel sales don’t expand unduly.
0
0
1
And you still came 14th...
0
0
0
I read that article, and unsurprisingly it was shite
0
0
9
It's the "must" element that always tickles me. I *must* accept AI, *must* I? Why? What are you going to do, AI, steal my fucking pencil?
0
0
5
I wrote a novel using my damn self because I think committing word crimes is fun. I do this for the love of the game.
0
0
2
Not quite the same, atleast in the marathon there was some nice scenery.....
0
0
0
Am I too stubborn if I don’t want to read this piece for the sole reason that I don’t want to risk spending time on something that might have been written by genAI?

Despite having been the kid who hated when the cereal box was taken off the table at breakfast, because it was reading material?
0
0
4
A real athlete would use a cybertruck.
0
0
8
Ah here, I used Street view in Google maps.
0
0
10
For the analogy to be complete, it needs to be somebody else's Ford Focus that you stole.
1
0
43
I'm wary of AI but I never understood this charge. If training an LLM on human-authored works is plagiarism, doesn't that also apply to a human training their own writing skills by reading?
1
0
0
Yes. it's like when 'musicians' add saxophone to their songs using a synthesiser. Unauthentic. And it's depriving real saxophoners of work.
0
0
0
bsky.app/profile/thedapperdiner.bsky.social/post/3mgb2yyue4224
0
0
7
That "must" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. AI is not a fundamental law of the universe, and even if we accept its a tool that's not going away, that doesn't mean we "must" implement it in a way that screws over a hell of s lot of people. That "must" is really about maximising shareholder value.
0
0
0
I "pumped-iron" at the gym with a forklift
0
0
1
I really have been constantly thinking about the people who cheat on amateur marathons amidst all this stuff. Because I am equally flummoxed. You don't have to do the thing. You could find something else to do. You could just watch tv.
0
0
9
This Mr. Marche is a bellend.
0
0
0
I had my AI read their book. It said it was shit.
0
0
5
You wrote a novel using AI?

Cool.

It's like that time I didn't write a novel.
0
0
0
Important context here is that The Guardian have a 'Strategic Partnership' with Open A.I. They are not unbiased.
Also I suffered through this article and it's borderline incoherent. Its (absurd) argument aside, it's a genuinely bad read.
2
0
12
Every one of their pro-AI articles that OpenAI paid them to publish has been that way. Poorly-written nonsense that's always flanked on both sides by their actual reporting of the massive negative effects of it
0
0
1
Ironically I suspect he wrote that himself.
0
0
1
Hardly. That suggests you end up in the same place. I’m guessing an AI novel looks more like an instruction manual for a toaster than ‘One hundred years of solitude’
0
0
1
So *you’re* the one @add-hawk.bsky.social is talking about as “not playing the game”!
0
0
0
Comment Is Free started the rot in everything that's wrong with writing for online, even before LLMs existed.
0
0
0
"Must" doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
0
0
1
🎯
0
0
0
Excellent way of putting it Doc. x
0
0
0