WHAT PART OF THE WORK IS MINE?

I have been thinking a lot about what I am, particularly in the artistic arena.

There has to be a different name for what I do than for what a more traditional artist does. Someone like my friend, Ember Carmilla Carousel has spent years creating element by element through her own writing and artwork. She has recently expanded into 3D printing, and I am excited for her to experience some of what I have been enjoying. But she and I approach it differently.

So far, the pieces I have seen her print have come from scans of her original artwork. I usually begin by using ChatGPT to generate an image, drawing something and then using ChatGPT to develop it, or finding visual references and using generative tools to explore them. From there, I continue directing, revising, modeling, printing, testing, and revising again.

I am not Michelangelo carving a sculpture from stone. It is a very different process, and I want people who see my busts to understand that. I do not want credit for labor or skill I did not perform.

If someone points at my work and says, “That isn’t real art,” part of me has to answer, “Okay, then tell me what it is.”

Some people would call it AI slop, but I do not think that term accurately describes everything created with AI. When people complain about AI slop, they are often responding to low-effort material produced quickly and dumped into the market in hopes of making easy money.

That impulse existed long before AI.

Amazon has a category called low-content books: journals, notebooks, coloring books, and similar products. Once people discovered that these could be made quickly and might generate passive income, the market became flooded with them. It was the same impulse behind various trends involving vending machines, car washes, and other supposed shortcuts to easy money.

Quick money takes many forms. Low-effort material has always existed in every medium, and probably in most areas of life. When people are offered a painful path and an easy path, many will choose the easy one—or at least move toward the easiest version they believe they can get away with.

That is not what interests me.

I have started thinking of myself as more of a craftsman than what people might call a “legitimate artist.” I am comfortable with that distinction, although I also recognize that I once looked down on craft. I thought of craft as making something common and useful, like a bowl: something that can be repeated for use or profit but can still be made artistic within that context.

What I enjoy is the iterative process. I begin with something incomplete, react to it, change it, and continue until it moves closer to what I want. I use AI like a tennis partner. I send something across the net, receive something in return, consider what it shows me, and then either continue in that direction or pivot.

The finished object matters, but the process matters more.

That is also how I use AI in writing. I use it for organization and reflection more often than I use it simply to generate content. I present an idea, read the response, look for the counterpoint, and then react. The exchange changes what I think and what I write.

For example, while reflecting on this very subject, I realized that another novel set in the world of The Recursive Man could be called The Iterative Woman. Explaining why would require another long post, but that idea emerged in the middle of a conversation about iteration, authorship, therapy, and identity.

That is where the boundaries become difficult.

This week, while writing a paper for class, I realized that I do not always know how to divide my writing from the writing of the AI. I try to bring the result as close to my actual thinking as possible. But because I regularly ask AI to provide a counterpoint, it inevitably changes the direction of my thinking.

That also happens in my books.

I want to claim my writing. I want it to be mine. But I know that another influence is present. My fingerprints and ChatGPT’s fingerprints are distinct, and I can sometimes recognize passages that sound more like ChatGPT than they sound like me. Those are the sections about which I feel least confident. I feel much more certain about the passages I wrote word for word, or nearly word for word.

The books I have produced over the last three years emerged from many, many conversations. Those chats involved brainstorming, argument, organization, drafting, revision, and reflection. Reconstructing the entire process now to prove exactly which idea or sentence came from which source would be nearly impossible.

That does not mean I was trying to deceive anyone. I have been honest about my use of the technology. But honesty does not completely resolve my questions about authorship.

Generative writing and AI-assisted art have largely been rejected by the broader market, at least for now. Perhaps that will change. Regardless, I cannot maintain an audience that is not built on genuine connection. I am currently learning to become a therapist. I cannot spend this period stripping away falsehoods in one part of my life while building a fake version of myself in another.

Learning to become a therapist has felt remarkably similar to writing my memoirs. In both processes, I have felt as though I were stripping myself to the bone and examining every atom and molecule: asking where it came from, what it might mean, how it affects other people, and what I can do to bring my actions into greater consistency with the person I would like to be.

That makes the truth of my creative process important. I do not want to pretend that I carved something by hand when I directed its development through generative imagery, digital modeling, prototyping, and 3D printing. I also do not want to claim that I independently composed a passage when I can still hear another voice inside it.

I am now considering writing the first draft of my next book entirely by hand after developing its outline and major organizing principles. AI will probably still enter the process more than it would for a writer with no experience using it. I am not searching for some imaginary state of purity.

I simply want to know what happens when I give my own long-form voice enough room to exist before inviting another intelligence into the work.

I want to preserve a complete draft that I can identify as mine, then return to it and iterate. I want evidence of the foundation I created and a clearer understanding of what changed after the conversation began.

I may never publish another book after I finally finish The Recursive Man. Publishing has not been a particularly rewarding experience for me. I mostly did it to prove to myself that I could. The response has been small, and I do not have the energy to repeatedly promote the same material in the ways the market seems to demand.

That is somewhat ironic because my writing continually returns to the same ideas: grief, identity, recursion, change, forgiveness, and the stories we tell about ourselves.

But I know myself better now. I know what parts of creation I enjoy, what compromises I am willing to make, and what I am unwilling to surrender. My time is one of the things I am no longer willing to compromise.

I do not yet have a neat conclusion about what this makes me. Artist, craftsman, creative director, AI-assisted designer, collaborative writer—each term captures something, but none captures everything.

For now, I am trying to describe the process accurately and determine what I can honestly call mine.