Not Everything Is Black and White
I’ve been thinking about AI lately.
More specifically, I’ve been thinking about AI, creativity, authorship, and where I personally stand in a conversation that seems to have a lot of very firm lines drawn around it.
So, here goes.
I’m P.K. Glaser. I’m an independent author and an artist, and I’m not anti-AI.
There. I said it.
I know that’s not necessarily a popular opinion in every corner of the writing and publishing community. And I understand why. There are some very legitimate concerns surrounding generative AI—how it is trained, copyright, artists’ work, authorship, plagiarism, and what happens when technology moves faster than the rules meant to govern it.
Those are real conversations. They need to happen.
I just don’t believe the answer is quite as black and white as “AI is bad, therefore anyone who uses it is doing something wrong.”
For me, AI is a tool.
And yes, I’ve used it.
When I first started publishing independently, I had essentially no budget. (Still don’t) I was learning everything from scratch. Publishing. Marketing. Social media. Video. Covers. All of it.
I didn’t grow up with any of this.
I’m in my sixties. The internet wasn’t part of my childhood, social media certainly wasn’t, and I didn’t come into independent publishing with a business degree, a marketing team, or a big publishing budget. Or even friends with skills to help.
I came into it with stories I wanted to tell, a lot of determination, a willingness to learn, and a very firm rule that I was not going into debt to become an author.
So I figured things out.
I sold artwork I created myself. I sold crafts I made myself. I put that money back into my books. I learned one thing, then another, and then discovered there were approximately seventeen more things I didn’t know I needed to learn.
And I kept going.
In the beginning, AI sometimes helped me bridge some of those gaps.
I’ve used it for inspiration and brainstorming. I’ve used it as part of my marketing process. I’ve worked with people I’ve hired to create videos and book materials, and they have used AI as one tool among many.
Some of my book covers have had AI involved in the process. Some haven’t.
And I’ve become more comfortable finding other resources as I’ve learned more.
My process today isn’t exactly the same as it was when I started.
It probably won’t be the same a year from now, either.
That’s part of learning.
And that’s where I think things get complicated.
I absolutely understand why an author group might decide that they want to be completely AI-free. If a group wants to say, “Generative AI isn’t something we allow here,” that’s their choice.
I can respect that boundary even if I don’t share it.
What I don’t personally believe is that using AI automatically means someone isn’t creative, isn’t an artist, isn’t an author, or isn’t doing their own work.
There is a difference between using a tool and handing the entire creative process over to that tool.
There is a difference between using AI to help brainstorm a marketing idea and having AI write an entire book and then presenting yourself as the author.
There is a difference between using tools as part of creating something and claiming you personally created artwork that you didn’t create.
As both an author and an artist, those distinctions matter to me.
I would never want someone to look at a piece of artwork generated entirely by a machine and believe that I had painted it with my own hands when I hadn’t.
That matters to me.
At the same time, I don’t think using a tool to help me develop an idea makes the resulting work meaningless.
And I don’t think I need to apologize for using a tool that helped me accomplish something I otherwise couldn’t afford to do.
That’s an important distinction for me.
I’m not saying AI is perfect.
It isn’t.
I’m not saying there aren’t serious ethical questions surrounding it.
There are.
I’m not saying regulations aren’t needed.
They probably are.
I’m not saying I’ll always use AI.
I may not.
In fact, the more I learn, the more I’m discovering other tools and resources that fit my creative process beautifully. I’m using some of those more and more.
But I also don’t want to promise that I’ll never use AI again simply because that happens to be the answer that makes me more acceptable to a particular group of people.
That’s not how I want to live.
And it’s not how I want to build my career as an author.
I want to be honest about what I create, honest about how I create it, and honest about the tools I use along the way.
I don’t think every person has to make the same choices I do.
In fact, I think that’s part of what makes independent creators interesting.
We all come to this differently.
Some of us have publishing contracts. Some of us self-publish. Some have big budgets. Some have almost none. Some have years of experience. Some of us are learning as we go.
Some people will use AI.
Some won’t.
Some will draw a hard line.
Some won’t.
I think there is room for those conversations without automatically turning them into judgments about someone’s character or commitment to their craft.
And maybe that’s the part I really wanted to say.
I don’t live in a very black-and-white world when it comes to this.
I tend to look at the whole picture.
Context matters to me.
Intent matters to me.
Honesty matters to me.
And so does creativity.
I am still learning. I’m still experimenting. I’m still figuring out what works for me.
That’s the strange and wonderful thing about becoming an author later in life.
I’m not finished becoming one.
I don’t know exactly what my process will look like five years from now.
I just know that I want to keep learning, keep creating, keep telling my stories, and keep doing it honestly.
So if you’ve been wondering where P.K. Glaser stands on AI, there you have it.
I’m not anti-AI.
I’m also not blindly pro-AI.
I’m somewhere in the middle.
And I’m perfectly comfortable standing there.
Because sometimes the most honest answer isn’t a hard line.
Sometimes it’s simply:
It depends.
And I think that’s okay.
P.K. Glaser 8/22/2026