AI Usage on SubStack: Am I Standing Alone on this?

A discussion revolving AI use and my stance regarding it.

Photo by Greta Pichetti on Unsplash

Please note: When talking about AI in this post, I’m referring to generative AI— which is used for a variety of things such as Art and Writing.

In recent time, we have seen a huge rise in the casual use of AI in art and writing. Though it has been more prevalent in art than the latter.

You can see it just about anywhere on the platform, whether you’re scrolling down the newsfeed and coming across it, or getting new post notification from one of the SubStacks you follow. There’s just no escaping exposure to it.

I imagine there are a few of you who don’t even realize you’re using it. I mean like, SubStack has an option when you’re selecting an image to hit generate, and that just gives you whatever you’re looking for. Simple right? But that is using AI, and by extension, not supporting actual artists and photographers.

Now some of you may not care about the use of AI. Most of us still write our own stories or posts, so what’s the harm in a bit of generated image?

It’s lazy for one, but again it takes away from actual artists and photographers— which mind you, you can easily get images from the stock photo option. And that credits the person who made the image.

With how normalized AI has become, I expect this piece to end up being considered controversial. But with how little it feels people care here, it begs the question: Am I standing alone on this?

One of the core principals in which I created Hazel Allen Writes was to help bring growth to other artists and writers. And using something which goes against that just doesn’t feel okay to me.

And I understand I’m not going to be able to get people to just stop. Once you get into a habit of doing something it can be hard to break away from it.

Yet I think it’s time to become more clear on my stance with AI, and how I’m going to treat it moving forward here:

I don’t condone usage of AI, whether it be in text or image form. If I see it, I’m not going to feature it here on my blog, and I’m not to read, like, comment, or restack your post.

I’m not going to reach out, unless its due to a submission to The Collective, to explain why I’m not engaging with your post.

Or if you’re a blog I follow consistently using AI, I may reach out just in case, but if it keeps happening I will unsubscribe.

However, if I do something which goes against my stance on AI, feel free to call me out on it. Sometimes slip ups happen and things don’t get caught.

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This is a sucky post to be making right as I’m about to hit 300 subscribers, since it may lose me some. But I realized I haven’t been clear enough with my stance on AI, so it was about time I actually wrote a post detailing it.

I don’t want to feel like I’m alone in not supporting it, so I hope this resonated with some of you. And if it did, please let me know in the comments below. This is a not a subject to be treated lightly. So, if you don’t support my stance on this, I’ll just say this: I’m okay with losing a few subscribers, even if it does suck.

Thanks for reading, Hazel out.