NaNoWriMo is in disarray after organizers defend AI writing tools
Image: The VergeThe organization behind National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is being slammed online after it claimed that opposing the use of AI writing tools is “classist and ableist.” On Saturday NaNoWriMo published its stance on the technology, announcing...
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The organization behind National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is being slammed online after it claimed that opposing the use of AI writing tools is “classist and ableist.” On Saturday NaNoWriMo published its stance on the technology, announcing that it doesn’t explicitly support or condemn any approach to writing.
“We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege,” NaNoWriMo said, arguing that “not all brains have same abilities,” and AI tools can reduce the financial burden of hiring human writing assistance.
NaNoWriMo’s annual creative writing event is the organization’s flagship program that challenges participants to create a 50,000-word manuscript every November. Last year, the organization said that it accepts novels written with the help of AI apps like ChatGPT, but noted that doing so for the entire submission “would defeat the purpose of the challenge.”
This year’s post goes further. “We recognize that some members of our community stand staunchly against AI for themselves, and that’s perfectly fine,” said NaNoWriMo in its latest post advocating for AI tools. “As individuals, we have the freedom to make our own decisions.”
The post has since been lambasted by writers across platforms like X and Reddit who, like many creatives, believe that generative AI tools are exploitive and devalue human art. Many disabled writers also criticized the statement for inferring that they need generative AI tools to write effectively. Meanwhile, Daniel José Older, a lead story architect for Star Wars: The High Republic, announced that he was resigning from the NaNoWriMo writer’s board due to the statement.
“Generative AI empowers not the artist, not the writer, but the tech industry,” Star Wars: Aftermath author Chuck Wendig said in response to NaNoWriMo’s stance. “ It steals content to remake content, graverobbing existing material to staple together its Frankensteinian idea of art and story.”
This situation is the latest controversy that NaNoWriMo has faced over the last few years. The organization was previously criticized over a lack of transparency following allegations of child endangerment and grooming, and for platforming its sponsor’s AI writing assistance tools.
In response to the backlash, NaNoWriMo has since updated the post to acknowledge concerns about the impact of generative AI tools on the writing industry. “We are troubled by situational abuse of AI, and that certain situational abuses clearly conflict with our values,” the organization said in a new paragraph. “We also want to make clear that AI is a large umbrella technology and that the size and complexity of that category (which includes both non-generative and generative AI, among other uses) contributes to our belief that it is simply too big to categorically endorse or not endorse.”
It’s certainly a common occurrence for people to conflate generative AI (ChatGPT, Gemini, MidJourney etc) with non-generative AI tools (Grammarly, email spam filters, etc), but the differences are distinct and AI resentment among the creative community is almost exclusively targeting the former. That pushback has also grown as generative AI tools become increasingly better and more accessible.
NaNoWriMo has not responded to our request for comment at the time of publishing.
