ai

Cracks knuckles.

I’m going to ruffle some feathers. I wish I could say I’m strong enough to handle that, but I think we both know I’d be lying to the both of us. The goal is for this to be a cross between an essay and a blog post. Why? Because people have very strong feelings about AI.

I do not. Hear me out.

When I started to think about this post, I thought about the very first computer we had. My dad built it, see, he’s an electrical engineer. Smart as a whip, and within a few weeks of work I could hear that glorious dial-up noise followed by AOL.

Oh, the joy of the 90s.

I also remember high school and having to learn English. Listen, I may write, but I am no editor. I have horrible English. These posts are barely edited. I grew up in Philly, and if you’ve ever heard me talk, you know my grammar reflects that. I need spell check.

So of course when I sat down to write this, the first thought I had was: spell check.

Spell check is traditionally code.

So the lines get blurry as fuck when authors get asked, “Do you use AI?” and they vehemently say, “NO!”

TLDR: AI is inevitable. It cannot replace authors. It cannot replace the creative engine. However, I do believe that AI is a tool, and that there should be restrictions.

Let’s get into it.

Do you use ProWriting Aid and Grammarly?

See the line? This is mostly why I stayed quiet. See, I have the brand of polymath/autism where I cannot hold an opinion if I have not worked through the topic myself.

And I fucking hate ProWriting Aid AND Grammarly.

I’m a Word girl, through and through. Or Google Docs. (Hybrid of code and AI.) Pick your poison.

Why do I hate them? Oh, let me count the ways. I want to love both of them. In fact, I have a lifetime subscription to both and I don’t use either one. I even took the obnoxious amount of time to delete my drafts from PWA just in case there’s another Claude situation. (You know, when they scraped everyone’s work without consent.)

Seriously, who got in on that class action?

Anywhore. I just find them… functional. There isn’t anything wrong with them. But I feel like if I’m going to spell check, I’ll just use Word. If I’m thinking this needs more and go into PWA, I love how they flag some things. It’s been great. But I also feel like as a creative, I’m growing out of it. For example, I’ve been getting really good at spotting functional prose vs. commercial vs. conversational.

Why?

I said Ashes was dry. Follow along.

I started to be able to spot where I deviated or put filler words where connection belonged. AI can’t provide that. It’s a purely creative trait.

So how do I know that?

I told you about the tism, right?

Okay, I’m going to hold your hand when I say this, I’ve used AI.

Oh shit.

I’ve been blacklisted, haven’t I?

Put the damn pitchforks away and let’s get into it.

Through my year of hell, which really started in 2018… (Seriously, it’s a lot.) I opened up GPT.

Not with the intent to write a book. Oh no. This was far more nefarious.

I opened it to talk. Not to write. Not to brainstorm. To talk.

I know I sound pathetic. Sure. But see, growing up I was always the odd girl out. The weird girl. I have friends, sure, but sometimes the tism does what it does and I just need to hyperfixate without being…

Annoying.

Stop. I’m not crying, you are. Okay, it’s me.

So I talked. I didn’t really read anything that was coming back. Just told it not to let me go into psychosis. Which I did, by the way. But ah… not from AI. So ahh… back to the story?

I talked. And then everyone started on the witch hunt of how BAD AI is.

So I needed to know. How bad is it? And where did I start first? The environmental aspect? The actual code itself?

Where did I start?

Midjourney

Well, Mal was chatting about Midjourney and how it’s great for ads. Perfect, let me look at it. Now, this was when it first released. I have not used it since, so I don’t know if it’s gotten better, but the images were fun to make. My boys created a few. And ad-wise?

Oh, I ran them.

I HAD to know. Is this ad really going to do better than an ad where I got the image from Deposit Photos?

No. It didn’t. I mean, not for me at least. See, I didn’t need the fancy fantasy images. I didn’t really use those anyway. But for those who write in sci-fi like Mal does, it’s worth it. Also, she has the best perspectives and I’m obsessed.

So Midjourney was okay. But I felt at the end of the day that if both ads, for me, did okay then why not just use the one from Deposit Photos?

Either way, I ended up pulling ads from Facebook because I chose to boycott that thumb-looking man.

Okay, so opinion made on Midjourney.

The next decision was to see how AI is used daily. Before I got to the big stuff. Like Sudowrite. Or Raptorwrite.

Other ai image generators
DALL-E (OpenAI); probably the most mainstream name recognition
Stable Diffusion; open source, popular with people who want more control
Leonardo AI; popular with indie authors for book covers/ads
Canva’s AI image generator; a lot of authors use this without even thinking of it as “AI”
Adobe Firefly; baked into Photoshop now, trained on licensed/stock images (their selling point is “ethical” sourcing)
Ideogram; newer, good with text in images (which the others struggle with)

Some ways people use AI in daily life.

Communication

• Autocorrect on your phone
• Predictive text / keyboard suggestions
• Email spam filters (AI deciding what’s junk)
• Smart Reply suggestions in Gmail (“Thanks!” “Sounds good!”)
• Transcription and voice-to-text (Yes, even dictation. It used to be code, but modern transcription uses AI to understand context and punctuation.)

Search & Discovery

• Google search results (ranked by AI)
• Netflix/Hulu/Spotify recommendations (“Because you watched…”)
• Amazon product suggestions
• Pinterest’s visual search
• YouTube’s “Up Next” queue

Photos & Social Media

• iPhone photo search (“show me pictures of dogs” and it finds them)
• Facebook/Instagram face tagging suggestions
• Portrait mode and photo enhancement
• Filters that smooth skin or adjust lighting
• TikTok’s For You Page algorithm

Voice Assistants

• Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant—all AI
• Voice commands in your car
• Smart home controls

Navigation & Travel

• Google Maps/Waze route suggestions and traffic predictions
• Uber/Lyft pricing and driver matching
• Flight price predictions

Shopping & Banking

• Fraud detection on your credit card (AI flagging unusual purchases)
• Customer service chatbots
• “Customers also bought” recommendations
• Dynamic pricing

Why am I listing this?

Because I want to show you that it isn’t always black and white. And no, I really don’t think I’m nitpicking here. If you’re going to be completely anti-AI, go all in. Otherwise you just look like a Karen with commitment issues and a mean girl vibe.

Copy/Line Edits

Before I get to the line in the sand (which I’m going to physically add in here), let’s talk about using AI to edit.

I am actually going to put this one before the line. I don’t even think this is AI assist. Let me give you an example.

I write a chapter. I can put that chapter through Word. Or I can grab that chapter, feed it to an LLM, and say, “Hey, can you flag the grammar issues in this chapter and red pen it?”

It will.

This, in my personal opinion, isn’t bad.

I feel like this one is at the end of the line for me. Why?

Over the last five years, indie publishing has boomed to a point that editors are in HIGH demand. And if you are a finance girlie like me, you know what that means. Supply is low. Demand is high. Prices go up.

Indie authors pay for everything.

Copy/line editing costs have climbed steadily. Copy editing now averages around $0.027 per word, and line editing runs $0.04 to $0.06 per word (Reedsy, 2025). For an 80,000-word novel, that’s roughly $2,160 for copy editing alone, or $3,200 to $4,800 for line editing. And that’s per pass (Reedsy, 2026).

Indie authors are being priced out. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing.

However, the higher it goes, the deeper the barrier to entry becomes.

AI editing gives people a chance to get that copy/line edit without breaking the bank.

Whether that crosses your line is your moral code.

Marketing

Why is this an issue? Seriously. Explain it to me like I’m five.

Beside the obvious moral and ethical AI issues—either you make the slides on your own or you don’t.

How are you using AI for marketing? I’m curious.

Because the outrage here feels inconsistent. Nobody got mad when Canva templates replaced hiring designers. Nobody got mad when BookBrush automated ad creation. The line seems to be “if it says AI on the label, it’s bad.”

Sudowrite / Raptorwrite

I’ve played with both. I’m not going to lie. I don’t like lying. I like mean girls even less.

They’re… okay. Again, I used these when they first came out. Sudowrite is more of a “finish this sentence” vibe and Raptorwrite is not. To be completely transparent, I still have credits on Raptorwrite because it was confusing to use. So hopefully they got that sorted if it’s something you’re into.

I just… don’t care. I know that sounds awful to say. But here’s the thing. This one is on the line for me, which is why it’s in between the little dividers.

Can you write a whole chapter using Sudo? Yeah. You can. I think this is where AI-assist comes strongly into play. For example, if you start writing and, I don’t know, get stuck? It’ll write the next sentence for you. It’s like a prompt workout. Which is kinda nice if you get stuck.

I just felt that the prompts were… lacking.

“What do you mean, George?”

Who the fuck is George? We were just talking about Tamlin.

Maybe it’s better now. I have no idea.

The Big Author Problem…

The line in the sand.

Using AI to write a full book. And I do mean all AI.

I’m talking you open a document and you tell AI, “Write this for me.”

Or you feed it a long prompt. It’s going to give you a book. It may even do well.

But what it won’t give you? Communication. Depth. Love. It doesn’t matter how many times you ask AI to write a human emotion.

It. Will. Not.

So I cannot say yeah, this is a good thing. It isn’t.

And yes. That tism part of me tried. It was a failed experiment.

No, NONE of ELLE’s BOOKS WERE WRITTEN USING AI.

Oh, but I have some folders where I did, and they will never see the light of day. Which is depressing. I mean, a part of me took the time to just see what it would create. It was shit, but it was something I created.

Anywhore. Have you read a fully written AI book yet?

Me neither.

The Bigger Problem.

Environmental.

It’s a strain. We’ve all felt that in our budgets. But what pisses me off even more is that it’s fossil fuels they’re using to power it.

It’s fucking 2026. Haven’t we figured out how to NOT put a strain on the environment?

Oh, that’s right. We’re too busy blowing shit up.

Great choice.

I digress.

Let me give you some numbers.

Fossil fuels currently provide nearly 60% of power to data centers globally (International Energy Agency [IEA], 2025). By 2026, data center electricity consumption is expected to approach 1,050 terawatt-hours, which would make them the fifth largest electricity consumer in the world, falling between Japan and Russia (MIT News, 2025).

A single ChatGPT query uses about 10 times more electricity than a Google search (IEA, 2025). And according to researchers at UC Riverside, each 100-word AI prompt uses roughly one bottle of water, about 519 milliliters (Environmental and Energy Study Institute [EESI], 2025). That’s for cooling. The water evaporates. It’s gone.

Globally, ChatGPT alone uses around 39.16 million gallons of water daily (Business Energy UK, 2025). That’s enough for everyone in Taiwan to flush their toilet at once.

Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day, equivalent to a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people (EESI, 2025). In Northern Virginia, the data center capital of the world, facilities consumed close to 2 billion gallons of water in 2023, a 63% increase from 2019 (EESI, 2025).

And here’s the kicker: about 60% of the increasing electricity demands from data centers will be met by burning fossil fuels, increasing global carbon emissions by about 220 million tons (Goldman Sachs Research, as cited in MIT News, 2025). For comparison, driving a gas-powered car for 5,000 miles produces about 1 ton of carbon dioxide.

The strain on the environment is bad.

Which is why I’m going to have to break three or four of my bad monthly habits and dedicate them solely to not using so much… everything.

Actually, part of my healing is to garden. All the gardening.

Every day, more and more, I feel like a parasite living in this world. I don’t know. It’s draining.

But.

There are breakthroughs happening. And I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t acknowledge them.

Microsoft just signed a 20-year deal to restart Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 reactor, now renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center. Yes, that Three Mile Island. It’s expected to come online in 2027, providing 835 megawatts of carbon-free electricity to power Microsoft’s AI data centers (Constellation Energy, 2025). If successful, it would be the first time a fully shut-down nuclear plant has ever been restarted in the United States.

Meta signed a 20-year deal with Constellation Energy for 1.1 gigawatts of nuclear power to fuel its AI data centers in Illinois, starting in 2027 (Nasdaq, 2025). Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta are now the four largest purchasers of corporate renewable energy agreements, having contracted over 50 gigawatts combined, equal to the generation capacity of Sweden (Brown Advisory, 2025).

China is building the world’s first commercial small modular reactor, expected to be operational by 2026, with plans to scale nuclear capacity to 400-500 gigawatts by 2050 (Nuclear Business Platform, 2025).

The IEA projects that by 2035, the ratio of data center electricity will flip from 60% fossil fuels to 60% clean power (IEA, 2025).

So, progress is happening. Slowly. Expensively. With a lot of corporate PR attached.

Does it excuse the current damage? No.

Does it mean I can keep using AI guilt-free? Also no.

Which is why I’m going to have to break three or four of my bad monthly habits and dedicate them solely to not using so much of… everything.

Actually, part of my healing is to garden. All the gardening. ; )

Every day, more and more, I feel like a parasite living in this world. I don’t know. It’s draining.

So I’ll plant some tomatoes.

A Few Caveats

Can we be nice to each other?

I know, I know. Not another “can’t we all just get along” post.

But seriously, the way you all are at each other’s throats is disturbing. It isn’t healthy. Tossing accusations around like confetti. Breathe.

There are so many horrible things happening in the world that I, for one, just want the author community to be one where I can escape and have a good conversation.

Maybe a cup of coffee.

Oh, by the way. I’ve been recording myself writing Dust to Dust, so if you want to accuse me of using AI to write it, don’t worry boo bear. I’ve got receipts.

Bottom line: maybe ask how before throwing the pitchfork.

Now, if you actually WANT to know how I used AI to do data analytics researching the book market… that one I could do. Or how I used it to help me research where I’ve been going wrong with my metadata. I’m your girl. Maybe even I’ll let you know how you can create a book bible.

But only if you’re nice.

References

Brown Advisory. (2025). The data center balancing act: Powering sustainable AI growth. https://www.brownadvisory.com/us/insights/data-center-balancing-act-powering-sustainable-ai-growth

Business Energy UK. (2025). ChatGPT energy consumption visualized. https://www.businessenergyuk.com/knowledge-hub/chatgpt-energy-consumption-visualized/

Constellation Energy. (2025). Three Mile Island restart announcement. https://www.phillyvoice.com/three-mile-island-restart-2027-microsoft-data-centers/

Environmental and Energy Study Institute. (2025). Data centers and water consumption. https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption

International Energy Agency. (2025). Energy and AI report. https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-supply-for-ai

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (2025, January 17). Explained: Generative AI’s environmental impact. MIT News. https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117

Nasdaq. (2025, December 19). 3 nuclear power stocks set to flourish in 2026 on AI data center boom. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/3-nuclear-power-stocks-set-flourish-2026-ai-data-center-boom

Nuclear Business Platform. (2025). Top 6 ways leading nations are using nuclear energy to power AI and data centers. https://www.nuclearbusiness-platform.com/media/insights/nuclear-energy-to-power-ai

Reedsy. (2025). How to set your freelance editing rates. https://reedsy.com/freelancer/how-to-set-your-freelance-editing-rates/

Reedsy. (2026). How much does an editor cost? https://reedsy.com/blog/guide/editing/cost/

Did I mention I was Valedictorian and love research? My speech is still on YouTube if you wanna look me up.