Advice needed: AI used in the writing process, trad published author
Hi, writers, I genuinely need evidence-based, judgement free advice.
I am a traditionally published writer with a established track record and have published a few books in my genre traditionally.
I have used gen AI for brainstorming, research, outlining and refining my text (although I don't allow the model to draft, nor take its suggestions.) All of my prose is mine and I am very careful about this as I am concerned about copyright.
For the record: I have not published or tried to publish anything that I used AI to work on. Yet.
I understand the conversation about ethics, etc. Some of my past projects have been used to train models.
I'm genuinely worried about the ambiguity of AI in publishing right now, and the lack of boundaries. I'm also a POC which is another layer of worry as many authors in that space have paid the price for or been accused of using AI.
I have completed two very marketable projects, with AI used in the capacity I described above. I don't have an agent at the moment, but I want to query to someone who has expressed interest in my work in the past. I love these books; the first is a re-write of a book that I wrote six years ago, well before ChatGpt came on the scene, and I believe that using the tools I used really helped in the novel's revision, acting as a developmental editor.
At the moment I feel my options are:
- disclose from the get-go to the agent and (potentially) get the project killed
- don't disclose and potentially get caught, in a J. Falade type of situation,
- kill the projects myself and write something else
- Or self publish, which I don't have the time, inclination or money to do (my previous publications are in a different genre.)
At this point I wish I'd never touched the software. Other books will come, I know that, and I will be more circumspect with future projects. But in the early days, I had no idea that publishing would begin to react to AI use so vehemently. And I am so in love with these books, even though they started as experiments.
Thank you in advance for your kindness in taking a moment to comment. I'm open to candidness, but please be objective, and not rude, as I think there might be other authors in my situation. I'm also posting in a couple other subreddits so please excuse any duplication.