NaNoWriMo Is In Disarray After Organizers Defend AI Writing Tools

The Verge's Jess Weatherbed reports: The organization behind National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is being slammed online after it claimed that opposing the use of AI writing tools is "classist and ableist." On Saturday, NaNoWriMo published its stance on the technology, announcing that it doesn't explicitly support or condemn any approach to writing. "We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege," NaNoWriMo said, arguing that "not all brains" have the "same abilities" and that AI tools can reduce the financial burden of hiring human writing assistants. NaNoWriMo's annual creative writing event is the organization's flagship program that challenges participants to create a 50,000-word manuscript every November. Last year, the organization said that it accepts novels written with the help of AI apps like ChatGPT but noted that doing so for the entire submission "would defeat the purpose of the challenge." This year's post goes further. "We recognize that some members of our community stand staunchly against AI for themselves, and that's perfectly fine," said NaNoWriMo in its latest post advocating for AI tools. "As individuals, we have the freedom to make our own decisions." The post has since been lambasted by writers across platforms like X and Reddit, who, like many creatives, believe that generative AI tools are exploitive and devalue human art. Many disabled writers also criticized the statement for inferring that they need generative AI tools to write effectively. Meanwhile, Daniel Jose Older, a lead story architect for Star Wars: The High Republic, announced that he was resigning from the NaNoWriMo Writers Board due to the statement. "Generative AI empowers not the artist, not the writer, but the tech industry," Star Wars: Aftermath author Chuck Wendig said in response to NaNoWriMo's stance. "It steals content to remake content, graverobbing existing material to staple together its Frankensteinian idea of art and story."

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