Why Chris Fox isn't using AI

For my fellow writers

I just watched this video from Chris Fox, and I think it's really interesting. He comes from a software development background. He also worked in AI development before becoming a full-time author, so he has some very interesting knowledge and views on AI.

In this video, he explains that if you were a person who just wants to tell stories, maybe you should target other markets. If writing books isn't the be-all end-all for you and you want to tell good stories, he posts the question: Should you be looking at other things like animation?

I think this is really interesting, because I didn't think about that at all. With Amazon being flooded with AI-generated books and low-content books created by AI, often for authors, it feels like there's no point anymore. No one's gonna find your work, and you're going to get lost in the sea of mediocre writing. “But I want people to see my mediocre writing!”

So, what if you remove yourself from the flood? What if you create something else that yields the same result?

I'll be honest-making an animated series is not for me. I might be able to do a thing where I write an episodic dialogue-heavy show, but definitely not animation, which is something he mentioned in the video.

But this is giving me a lot to think about. I love comic books, for example. Chew and Transmetropolitan are some of the best comic books I've ever read. And there are also these wonderful watercolor and ink-illustrated comic books from Boom Comics. One is called Grass Kings by Matt Kindt and Tyler Jenkins. The other one that I think is absolutely beautiful is Snow Blind by Ollie Masters and illustrated once again by Tyler Jenkins.

Maybe podcasting is a way to tell our stories, maybe writing a comic book, or writing solely on a platform like Substack or Buttondown? Maybe the future of writing is completely analog, and books are released one chapter at a time in the form of zines folded from one single sheet of paper?

Who knows? It's interesting to think about, and it's always nice to dream of possibilities.