AI Writing, Can You Tell?

I'm seeing more and more posts about how to tell if writing is written by AI, verses written by a real author. There are all kinds of ways people suggest to tell if it's written by an AI chatbot. I've also seen many studies talking about how even AI detectors can't always tell.

So, as a writer, how do I feel about this? After all, I don't use AI with any part of writing my books at all, not even outlining. I have a creative process and AI is not part of this. I have been keeping up with the social issues of AI and how it will affect writers, though. 

Right now one of the supposed most common ways to tell if it's AI is the use of the em-dash. Here's the thing: I was taught as a writer how to use the em-dash in writing, especially to replace the ellipses (...).  Other professional writers have also argued back about this being a sign of AI writing, as we are taught to use it.

In fact, many ways neurodivergent writers (ADHD and Autism are only two varieties of neurodivergent) write are seen as signs of AI writing as well. That might be why AI detectors sometimes report human writing as being highly probably written by AI instead. I recently watched an interesting video on YouTube by Thought Couture (Generative AI and the War on Writing) where she feeds the detectors a passage from the classic Moby Dick. Two of the three detectors think it's AI.

How are we supposed to tell? Do we care? From everything I've seen, the only way to tell is by reading an entire novel. Is the plot consistent? Is there emotional depth to the work? Does the story make you feel? What about the writers who have been called out for using AI on individual scenes, but maybe not the whole book? 

The sentiment is out there: "Why should I bother to read something they didn't bother to write?" I actually agree with this.

Right now, as a (probably) neurodivergent writer who was actually taught to write decades ago, this topic is a bit overwhelming. Will someone accuse me of using AI to write just because my brain works a bit differently? I know language changes, and the English language changes fast. As a writer for the YA audience, I try to keep up enough to be understandable. I'm learning from the same sources AI is - all of you!

So, what do we do? Do we even care? If writers from 200 years ago can be detected as AI, can we even tell? It does show the classics have been used to train AI, if it writes like long-dead writers. I will keep writing and using my process, no matter what. I even still write all my own emails and website text and social media posts. As a creative writer, it's all I can do.​