NaNoWriMo

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NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that promotes creative writing around the world. Its flagship program is an annual, international creative writing event in which participants attempt to write a 50,000-word manuscript during the month of November. The emphasis is on creating a first draft that can be worked on later and improved.

The project started in July 1999 with 21 participants. In 2022, 413,295 people participated in the organization's programs.

AI has been a sticking point with the program. NaNoWriMo has tolerated AI programs, both generative AI (ChatGPT, Gemini, Midjourney, etc.) and non-generative AI tools (Grammarly, email spam filters, etc.). This year they have taken a stronger stand.

On Saturday, NaNoWriMo published its position on the technology, announcing that it doesn’t explicitly support or condemn any approach to writing, but did so with a flair. “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.

"Classist and ableist." "Privilege."

This was not taken well by many. There have been resignations from the Board, and outrage on the social media platforms. While plagiarism is a legitimate primary concern, the general tone has been anxiety over the devaluation of the human creative spirit.

“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.”

Fascinatingly, the very openness of NaNoWriMo to intervention by AI so as to blunt the "classist,' the ableist,' and the "privilege" that generates them reveals the subtle and much more dangerous element that has not been mentioned but must disturb protesters: quality.

Equity, as a historical economic concept, values all work equally--not the work's product or the product's value to a consumer. And that undermines the very objective of art.