As a longtime Angeleno, I’ve received the identical beef with AI as everybody else on this city. I don’t need it stealing tales from writers, voices from actors or belief from audiences.
However the condemnation of synthetic intelligence has now blown previous scripts, scraping and unscrupulous studios. Earlier this month, New York Instances opinion columnist Bret Stephens begged readers never to write with AI — not even to arrange notes. It’s “mentally enfeebling,” he wrote, “an escalator towards a outcome when you actually need to make a day by day behavior of taking the steps.”
Not everybody can take the steps.
I’m a contract author with shredded tendons, a wrist tear and nerve compression that units my arm on hearth after only some minutes of utilizing a pen, keyboard, mouse or trackpad. So I dictate all the things as an alternative — this sentence, flowery Yelp opinions I by no means submit, texts to myself reminding me to set timers, and timers reminding me to ship texts.
I write clear however discuss soiled, and dictation means all of it lands on the web page — the supposed prose, the unintended profanity, the inevitable parentheticals and the “Who’s a great boy?” when my cursing summons Walter the anxious labradoodle into my workplace together with his large squeaky Xanax capsule toy.
The result’s pages of unpunctuated chaos.
I exploit AI to scrub up the dictation particles — the cursing, the enhancing instructions, the typos you get if you swap a keyboard for a microphone and “increase the stakes” turns into “increase the steaks.” It doesn’t write. It cuts. Nothing is added. What stays is simply what got here out of my mouth — a touch much less chaotic, poorly punctuated vomit draft.
Then I’m going by means of six or seven or 70 rounds of revision — yelling at my laptop computer as I over-enunciate. “Begin dictation.” “Em sprint not en sprint.” “Arghhhh no, M as in Mary.” “Noooo! Delete M as in Mary!”
I hate writing this manner, however it’s the one approach I can. What Stephens sees as a mentally enfeebling escalator is definitely my entry ramp to the web page. To Jen Statsky, co-creator of the hit TV sequence “Hacks,” taking that ramp exposes me for what I’m: “Should you use it in your work, you’re a hack,” she mentioned on a recent podcast episode.
Ouch.
I don’t really feel like a hack. At 61, I’ve MacGyvered a strategy to write out loud — spectacular for somebody who nonetheless can’t get from KTLA to Hulu with the Amazon Fireplace TV Stick.
I agree with Statsky on this a lot: Writing is tough, and that’s OK. “The grist and the battle and the friction is a part of the method. It’s what makes artwork good,” Statsky mentioned, arguing towards AI. And whereas I wouldn’t name what I write artwork, I’ve received loads of grist and battle and friction. A burning arm, throbbing palms and pages of dictation rubbish don’t make my writing higher. They only get between me and what I’m making an attempt to say. I nonetheless should do the exhausting half — pondering, deleting, overthinking, revising, agonizing, Command-Z-ing, as I attempt to flip the mess in my head into phrases that say what I imply. It’s exhausting and irritating and painful — which simply may be sufficient struggling to satisfy Statsky and Stephens’ threshold for an actual author.
I doubt both of them had me in thoughts after they condemned writing with AI. My specific use is weirdly area of interest and, I believe, ethically defensible. However when one author says “by no means” use AI and one other says anybody who does use it’s a hack, there isn’t a lot room left for individuals like me.
And there are a variety of us: 1 in 4 adults within the U.S. has a disability. The methods we use AI for entry, if we use it in any respect, differ significantly. I exploit it to scrub up my verbal wreckage — another person would possibly use AI to explain a picture they will’t see or talk phrases they will’t vocalize.
That doesn’t imply all of us embrace AI. Incapacity isn’t a monolith, and I don’t presume to talk for anybody however myself. The truth is, a 2025 study of 54 queer disabled fiction writers discovered them “markedly extra pessimistic than others” about generative AI’s impression on their trade. In a 2026 focus group study, 13 of 20 disabled adults used generative AI for accessibility, though none trusted it unconditionally.
You possibly can acknowledge the hazard AI poses in a single context and nonetheless worth the entry it provides you in one other. That’s why “by no means” is a awful rule.
Scraping another person’s work or passing off AI-generated prose as your individual is totally different from utilizing AI to get your phrases on the web page. AI wants guardrails — in writing, in faculties, in artwork. However a blanket prohibition is simple to make if you’re the one in a position to take the steps.
When Stephens and Statsky sit right down to resolve what the boundaries of AI in writing ought to be, the remainder of us deserve a seat on the desk, too. A few of us will want a ramp to get there.
Sharon Schindel writes about what retains her up at evening — power ache, invisible incapacity and getting outdated. Instagram: @ithurtsmetosaythis
