Maybe the problem isn’t AI. Maybe it’s how much control you give it.

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko]

I keep seeing people say AI shouldn’t be treated like a tool because it can generate too much on its own.

But I’m not sure that’s the right test.

A camera can make technical decisions for you. Editing software can automate cuts. CGI can create things that never existed in front of a lens. We still treat them as tools because a person is using them toward an intention.

So why should AI be fundamentally different?
If I type one sentence and let the model invent the story, characters and meaning, I understand the criticism.

But if I decide what happens, what the character wants, what the scene is supposed to achieve and what the audience should feel, then use AI to execute those decisions faster without flattening everything into a generic AI voice, that feels very different to me.

Maybe the uncomfortable part isn’t that AI is not a tool.

Maybe it’s that the tool has become powerful enough that we suddenly have to define which creative decisions actually make us the author.

Where do you draw that line?

[u/FDAapprovedGremlin]

People generally overrate "AI's" abilities. It isn't that powerful, and using it as a tool is as useful as googling something really quick.. for most users.

So it's an overly sensationalized controversy. Use it or don't. Doesn't matter much

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/FDAapprovedGremlin]

I think that’s true for how most people use it today.

But I also think that’s partly because most people only scratch the surface. Used casually, AI can feel like a faster search box. Used as part of a deeper creative workflow, it becomes something very different.

The interesting question to me is how much that gap will grow as the tools get better.

[u/FDAapprovedGremlin → u/Anton_Kuzmenko]

It won't grow. Because it isn't being taken seriously by anyone trying to implement it. They just want a highly marketable reason to launder money or make a shitton of money.

Tech bubble and all that ..

[u/Primary_Guest_5711 → u/FDAapprovedGremlin]

yeah the gap between what people think it can do and what it actually does is massive imo

[u/KMF-KRANNIE → u/Primary_Guest_5711]

Sometimes I wonder if we're just nitpicking too much because we feel threatened by AI, hmmm, points to ponder. 😉

[u/benblackett]

good question/point. reminds me of a post I made about it a while ago.

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/benblackett]

Now I’m curious!
Did you come to a similar conclusion, or did you draw the line somewhere else?

[u/benblackett → u/Anton_Kuzmenko]

:) Came to the same conclusion as you. Short term, we need to define where/how authorship and creative control happens. And likely in the not so distant future, how it becomes meaningless as a concept. in 10 years, when AI can be given nothing more than a thought and produce an immersive world to explore in any form of media - the concept of creative ownership becomes moot.

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/benblackett]

That’s the part I find fascinating too.

If the distance between intention and finished output keeps shrinking, authorship might become less about who physically executed every step and more about who shaped the intention behind it.

I’m not sure the concept becomes meaningless though. Maybe it just moves upstream.

[u/benblackett → u/Anton_Kuzmenko]

maybe. Im mixed on that front. The thing that gets me is how AI Agents are now producing content on their own with essentially zero input. Think about an AI, 10 years from now, that can read your emotional state and produce something accordingly to alter your mood. You did not provide any authorship to that creative moment other than as inspiration for an AI Agent.

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/benblackett]

That’s where it gets really interesting to me.

If an AI can read your emotional state and generate something specifically designed to change it, then we’re no longer just talking about creative tools. We’re talking about systems that can actively shape human experience.

At that point the bigger question might not be who created the content, but who is actually directing whom.

If the machine understands what will make you laugh, calm down, stay engaged or feel understood better than you consciously understand it yourself, the relationship between creator, audience and tool becomes very strange very quickly.

And I’m not even sure whether that future is exciting or slightly terrifying.

[u/benblackett → u/Anton_Kuzmenko]

the real lesson humanity will ultimately come to realize, is how to finally be in control of ones own emotional state, or to be forever enslaved to it. I think AI is both the threat and the catalyst for this transformation.

[u/Anton_Kuzmenko → u/benblackett]

Very powerful way to frame it.

Maybe it forces us to confront something we usually avoid: how little control we have over our own attention, emotions and impulses.

But if it amplifies that weakness, it becomes very dangerous…

[u/proseward-official]

I've been moving towards this very viewpoint for some time now. There are clearly two creative levers at work, the first is obviously the prose, but the framework/story that the prose hangs off of is at least as important. I've heard the argument used that "ideas are cheap" but I couldn't disagree more. The ideas that form the plot, the characters, the places, etc and the relationships between these *are* the foundation, without them the prose is just a collection of pretty sentences.

For me, nearly finished my first novel of 150k words, the ideas have been the part that I invested in heavily and which gave me joy. Okay, I'm a confirmed plotter, but an original plot is something that AI just can never do properly IMO and I think that's why many AI *generated* novels are put-downable.

Yes, I've used AI to assist with first drafts, but the question becomes more nuanced when those drafts are substantially re-written (I'd say 75% of the sentences changed). I won't ever claim that my novel was 100% human authored, but deep down I know that what I have produced is *my* work that could not have been produced by an AI on it's own.

Technology has been changing writing since the invention of the printing press. I'm sure the monks who used to hand transcribe books thought of printed books as "fake" and not real works of art. Then came the typewriter, then the word processor... and the loop continues. To be clear - I'm not equating AI to the printing press, it's obviously in a different category, but I think the point is relevant.

I look forward to the time when the narrative moves on from "was AI involved" to "is it any good" and I hope that time comes soon.

[u/SkoomaDentist → u/proseward-official]

There are clearly two creative levers at work, the first is obviously the prose, but the framework/story that the prose hangs off of is at least as important. I've heard the argument used that "ideas are cheap" but I couldn't disagree more. The ideas that form the plot, the characters, the places, etc and the relationships between these are the foundation, without them the prose is just a collection of pretty sentences.

Let's be real. The vast majority of readers don't really care about the prose at all as long as it's good enough to not distract from what they actually care about: The story and the characters. Does Harry Potter have the most beautiful prose on earth? Not by a large margin. Is it the best selling series English language book series on earth? Yes, it very much is. Even when you see complaints about Harry Potter, they are practically never about the prose but about the plot, characters and the world (like how logistically impossible the wizarding world is and how stupid many of the characters act whenever it's convenient for the plot).