NaNoWriMo Gets Backlash After Defending the Use of AI

NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month, is a 25-year-old nonprofit dedicated to helping people write. Each year, their NaNoWriMo challenge encourages people to finally crank out those 50,000 words that make a novel.

But, in a severe case of haven’t-read-the-room, they also just recently made a statement saying that to speak ill of AI is to engage in “classist and ableist” rhetoric.

And no one was feeling it.

Everyone from Roxane Gay to John Scalzi called them out, not only on their defense of something that many people think has no business in creative fields, but also on the commandeering of social justice issues to avoid very valid criticism. Daniel José Older even posted his resignation as a NaNoWriMo Writers board member via X because of their stance.

NaNoWriMo has since updated their statement on AI, saying “We want to make clear that, though we find the categorical condemnation for AI to be problematic for the reasons stated below, we are troubled by situational abuse of AI, and that certain situational abuses clearly conflict with our values. 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.”

To read more about everything surrounding NaNoWriMo and their stance on AI, visit Lit Hub, Wired, and NaNoWriMo.

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.