Long rant ahead.
Once in a while, I read a decent story. The grammar is great. The tone flows. A bit repetitive over the chapters. The description familiar, like some other stories here... the use of words mildly impress me and I wonder why the command of language come to these authors easily unlike for me... and I earnestly hope that they are just that talented.
Then I see it. The cursed forgotten para of "Absolutely, here is the next chapter which covers how..."
A reply from an AI to a prompt.
And I get that dread. That sinking feeling of being cheated. That I beat myself up for my lack of skills as I compared myself to a bot.
Do I use AI in my writing? I have, on 4 counts. I take images, put it through Gemini, and ask it to describe it for me. Then I borrow the reply and tear through it with edits so it's my tone, my vibe. Perhaps it's a pride thing. But I will never let a bot write a chapter for me, and repost it as my own. I couldn't do that to my readers.
Maybe I'm old fashioned. Stuck in my old ways. And I'm in no position to tell people to not use AI. It's a great tool, especially for people who do not use English as their first language. And the plot is still the author's. Right?
I feel like such an awful person for snubbing AI written chapters. But man, the feeling still really sucks.