Why So Many Authors Are Still Wary of AI
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If you've spent any time in fiction-writing communities, you've probably noticed something: authors are visibly more cautious about AI than almost any other group of professional writers. The wariness isn't vague anxiety — it traces back to a handful of specific, well-documented reasons.
They're Genuinely More Resistant Than Other Writers
This isn't just a feeling. A 2025 survey of 1,481 working writers by Gotham Ghostwriters and analyst Josh Bernoff found that fiction authors use AI at noticeably lower rates than writing professionals as a whole: only 42% of the 291 fiction authors surveyed reported using AI tools at least sometimes, compared to 61% across all the writing professionals in the study. The report singled out fiction authors, alongside copy editors and journalists, as among the groups least likely to use AI in their work (Publishers Weekly).
Reason One: A Real, Documented Flood of Low-Effort Submissions
In February 2023, the science fiction magazine Clarkesworld was forced to temporarily close submissions after being overwhelmed by AI-generated stories. Editor Neil Clarke reported that by the time the magazine closed submissions, it had received 700 legitimate stories and 500 machine-written ones in just a few weeks, submissions driven largely by "side hustle" influencers promising quick money through AI-generated fiction (NPR).
This wasn't a one-time scare. As recently as August 2025, Clarke noted that submissions had more than doubled at their peak due to AI-generated work, and that the magazine has had to keep adapting its submission process to keep up (Clarkesworld Magazine). For an entire genre community, this turned AI from an abstract concern into a concrete, ongoing operational problem.
Reason Two: Worry About Quality, Not Just Quantity
Beyond the volume problem, fiction authors who don't use AI consistently cite concerns about the quality of AI-generated text itself: hallucinated details, generic phrasing, and writing that reads as flat or interchangeable. This concern was close to universal among the fiction authors in the Bernoff study who chose not to use AI (Publishers Weekly).
Reason Three: Deep Concerns About Authenticity and Ownership
Even among fiction writers who already use AI regularly, the wariness doesn't disappear, it just gets managed more carefully. A 2025 University of Washington study presented at the ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition interviewed 18 creative writers who use AI in their regular practice and found their decisions were consistently shaped by concerns about authenticity, ownership, and craftsmanship, not just efficiency (ACM Digital Library).
Reason Four: Distrust of the Companies Behind the Tools
Some of the wariness isn't about the tools at all; it's about the companies that built them. The Authors Guild and 17 authors filed a class-action copyright lawsuit against OpenAI in September 2023, later adding Microsoft as a defendant, arguing that training AI models on copyrighted books without permission doesn't qualify as fair use (Authors Guild). A subsequent Authors Guild survey of more than 2,400 authors found that 96% believed writers' consent should be required before their books are used to train AI systems, and that they should be compensated if it happens (Authors Guild).
It's hard to feel neutral about a technology built, in part, on your own unpermissioned work.
What This Adds Up To
None of these four reasons are irrational, and none of them are really about being "anti-technology." They're about a flooded submissions inbox, a worry about diluted quality, a desire to protect what makes the work theirs, and a legitimate grievance about how some of these tools were built in the first place.
That combination explains why fiction writers, more than almost any other group of professional writers, have been the slowest to embrace AI, and why a slower, more deliberate approach to adoption isn't hesitation for its own sake. It's writers protecting something they have good reason to protect.
Sources
Publishers Weekly, New Report Examines Writers' Attitudes toward AI
NPR, A sci-fi magazine has cut off submissions after a flood of AI-generated stories
Clarkesworld Magazine, Editor's Desk: The Future of Dealing with AI Submissions
ACM Digital Library, From Pen to Prompt: How Creative Writers Integrate AI into their Writing Practice
The Authors Guild, Artificial Intelligence advocacy page
The Authors Guild, New Authors Guild AI Survey Reveals That Authors Overwhelmingly Want Consent and Compensation