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The book world has been shaken by yet another AI scandal, this one involving one of the most well-known and beloved nonprofit organizations in the literary community: NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The organization published their stance on AI, and let's just say, there is a lot to unpack here.

If you're not already familiar, NaNoWriMo started in 1999 as a challenge for writers to write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. Over the years, it has resulted in the production of some best-selling books. According to their website, in 2022 more than 400,000 writers participated in their programs. This organization has a lot of reach and influence in the writing community, but now that influence stands to be threatened because of the controversy surrounding their stance on AI.

NaNoWriMo’s AI Statement

Their post is titled, “What is NaNoWriMo’s position on Artificial Intelligence (AI)?” They say:

“NaNoWriMo does not explicitly support any specific approach to writing, nor does it explicitly condemn any approach, including the use of AI. NaNoWriMo’s mission is to ‘provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people use their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page.’ We fulfill our mission by supporting the humans doing the writing. Please see this related post that speaks to our overall position on nondiscrimination with respect to approaches to creativity, writer’s resources, and personal choice.”

This initial paragraph just seems to emphasize that NaNoWriMo doesn't really care how the sausage gets made, or in this case, how the writing gets done. I do agree that writers should be able to use their own creative process, though I do wish they were more specific here in describing what type of AI they're talking about. We know there is a vast difference between using generative AI and AI tools for things like grammar checks or organization or research.

This first paragraph seems to align with the stance they published last year on AI, which reads:

“The goal of participating in NaNoWriMo is to motivate yourself to write and give yourself space to develop your creativity. ‘Winning’ is a personal achievement and has always been based on the honor system! If using AI will assist your creative process, you are welcome to use it. Using ChatGPT to write your entire novel would defeat the purpose of the challenge, though. Just for kicks, here’s what ChatGPT said when we asked it about AI and NaNoWriMo…”

And it goes on to include the AI-generated response to that question.

Between last year's statement and this year's statement, it seems like the NaNoWriMo board is really just shrugging and telling authors to do what they want. I do appreciate that they call out that using ChatGPT to write the entire novel wouldn't make sense in regards to completing this challenge, because that's totally true. The whole reason it's a challenge is because it is hard to find the time to sit down and write a full novel.

As to this week’s statement, there may not have been such a firestorm if they had simply stopped here, with their laissez-faire approach to using AI, but that's not what happened.

Classism and Ableism

Here's the next part of the post outlining their stance on AI:

“Note: we have edited this post by adding this paragraph to reflect our acknowledgement that there are bad actors in the AI space who are doing harm to writers and who are acting unethically. We want to make clear that, though we find the categorical condemnation for AI to be problematic for the reasons stated below, we are troubled by situational abuse of AI, and that certain situational abuses clearly conflict with our values. We also want to make clear that AI is a large umbrella technology and that the size and complexity of that category (which includes both non-generative and generative AI, among other uses) contributes to our belief that it is simply too big to categorically endorse or not endorse.
“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.”

The last sentence in this section is what immediately angered a lot of writers and publishing professionals. It seems to be suggesting that to condemn the use of AI in fiction writing, specifically generative AI, is somehow classist and ableist. Many people questioned and argued against this comment, so the NaNoWriMo team published bullet points expanding on what they mean:

“Classism. Not all writers have the financial ability to hire humans to help at certain phases of their writing. For some writers, the decision to use AI is a practical, not an ideological, one. The financial ability to engage a human for feedback and review assumes a level of privilege that not all community members possess.”

To me personally, it's a bit confusing why they seem to be narrowing in on the question of whether AI should replace “engaging a human for feedback,” also known as editing, because the NaNoWriMo challenge has less to do with the revision process and more to do with the drafting process. And, of course, writing a novel is completely free. Plus, it's not necessarily true that you always have to pay to get feedback on your writing.

In response to this particular classism question, many individuals have raised the point that many AI tools are not free and require a subscription to access most, if not all, of their AI tools. While that payment may very well be less than paying a human to give you feedback, it's still not completely free.

Now let's get into the next bullet point.

“Ableism. Not all brains have same abilities and not all writers function at the same level of education or proficiency in the language in which they are writing. Some brains and ability levels require outside help or accommodations to achieve certain goals. The notion that all writers ‘should’ be able to perform certain functions independently or is a position that we disagree with wholeheartedly. There is a wealth of reasons why individuals can't ‘see’ the issues in their writing without help.”

Throughout this statement, there are a couple of grammatical issues, which is strange coming from a writing organization. Maybe it means that this response was written in haste. This section seems to be emphasizing that writers who require help to achieve their writing goals should get it, which isn't a point I think anyone is arguing against. But what I don't understand is why the implication is that the help has to be AI. Of course, disabled authors have written compelling books for decades without the introduction of AI, and AI isn't necessarily a requirement for them to write a story.

Many of the criticisms about NaNoWriMo’s statement online centered around this question of ableism, and many disabled writers chimed in to say that they do not feel the need to use generative AI in their work. Many said that they don't feel that AI makes their writing process more accessible, because many AI language models have been trained on others’ creative works, in some cases without their permission.

Writers and Equal Access

Here's the next bullet point from NaNoWriMo:

“General Access Issues: All of these considerations exist within a larger system in which writers don't always have equal access to resources along the chain. For example, underrepresented minorities are less likely to be offered traditional publishing contracts, which places some, by default, into the indie author space, which inequitably creates upfront cost burdens that authors who do not suffer from systemic discrimination may have to incur.”

It is absolutely true that minority representation in the publishing and literary industries is a huge concern. But again, it's not totally clear to me why AI is being presented by NaNoWriMo as the solution, especially because we know that AI models have a lot of inherent bias in the responses they generate. Cost is brought up again here, but again, using AI doesn't necessarily replace all of the costs associated with publishing a book, and in many cases does require payment in and of itself.

I saw some responses online to the language that indie publishing is a default for those who can't get traditional publishing contracts, which doesn't account for the fact that many indie authors choose to be indie authors because it works better for their particular goals.

We're on to the final two paragraphs of the statement:

“Beyond that, we see value in sharing resources and information about AI and any emerging technology, issue, or discussion that is relevant to the writing community as a whole. It's healthy for writers to be curious about what's new and forthcoming, and what might impact their career space or their pursuit of the craft. Our events with a connection to AI have been extremely well-attended, further-proof that this programming is serving Wrimos who want to know more.
“For all of those reasons, we absolutely do not condemn AI, and we recognize and respect writers who believe that AI tools are right for them. We recognize that some members of our community stand staunchly against AI for themselves, and that's perfectly fine. As individuals, we have the freedom to make our own decisions.”

Their final statement reiterates that they absolutely do not condemn AI, which I personally feel would read better as, “Do not condemn AI absolutely.” Given that they don't specify what types of AI tools they're talking about and what use cases they're considering, most people are interpreting this response to essentially condone the use of generative AI to write entire novels, using it for creative purposes without restriction, and ignoring its complex issues. To me, it feels like this statement is taking all of the nuance out of the conversation surrounding AI and publishing, and the blanket statement that to condone AI is classist and ableist doesn't really feel like it holds up.

Response from the Writing Community

So, what has happened now that this statement has gone out? All of this discussion about NaNoWriMo had some authors resurfacing scandals and controversies that happened with the organization in the past, including complaints last year that a moderator was grooming teens in a NaNoWriMo program forum and complaints back in 2022 that they partnered with questionable publishing companies that were known for predatory practices. In response to this AI statement, several members of the NaNoWriMo writers board have publicly resigned.

What do you do if you're an author who was planning to participate in NaNoWriMo this year but no longer want to? While NaNoWriMo provided some structure to the challenge, it was never a requirement to sign up for it to complete the challenge. You can, of course, do it on your own at your own pace, so if you still want to go ahead and finish a book in a month, nothing is stopping you. In fact, it might be freeing to complete the challenge on your own schedule in a month that works best for you.

Thanks so much for reading, and happy writing!