“It’s obviously AI, Mom. How hard could it have been?”

Ouch.

I laughed it off more than I probably felt it.

The comment came after I shared a book trailer I had been working on—something built from a story I wrote, characters I know like family, a fictional Kentucky county that has lived in my head for years, and countless tiny decisions about everything from the fog rolling across the creek to exactly how a particular road should look.

And yes.

AI helped me create it.

That isn't a secret. In fact, if you've spent much time around Home, you've probably already figured that out.

I am a writer.

I am not an illustrator. I am certainly not an animator, cinematographer, visual-effects artist or video-production company.

And unless one of my cats has secretly developed those skills while I wasn't looking, none of them are much help either.

What I do have is an imagination.

And lately, artificial intelligence has given me tools that allow me to take some of the things living inside that imagination and finally show them to someone else.

Does that make the finished work less mine?

Maybe you immediately thought yes.

Maybe you immediately thought no.

Maybe you're somewhere in the middle.

Good.

Pull up a chair.

Because I don't think you have to agree with me to sit at this table.

What Does “Made With AI” Actually Mean?

I think this is where some of our conversations about artificial intelligence become too simple.

We ask:

Did you use AI?

And then we make a judgment based on the answer.

But maybe there's another question worth asking.

What did AI actually do?

Because those are two very different questions.

We've all seen the advertisements.

Let AI write your book.

Give it an idea. Choose a genre. Pick some characters. Push a few buttons and let artificial intelligence take it from there.

I'll admit something.

Those advertisements bother me.

Not because I believe everyone has to create the way I create.

But because the phrase “AI author” can put radically different creative processes into the same box.

There is a difference between asking artificial intelligence to write a novel for you and spending years developing characters, writing scenes, deleting scenes, rewriting chapters, changing your mind, starting over, questioning every decision you've ever made and occasionally wondering why you didn't choose a nice relaxing hobby like alligator wrestling.

At least there is to me.

My stories are mine.

The characters are mine.

Their histories, personalities, mistakes, secrets and relationships began in my imagination.

I decide where they live, what they say, what they refuse to say and sometimes what they absolutely will NOT do no matter how many times a certain AI assistant suggests otherwise.

Trust me.

There have been discussions.

When I create an illustration or video, I know what I'm trying to see before the technology ever becomes involved.

And then begins the process.

Nope.

Wrong house.

Too modern.

That doesn't look like Kentucky.

She wouldn't wear that.

The creek needs to be darker.

The road needs to be narrower.

Where did that building come from?

Absolutely not.

And occasionally:

THAT'S IT.

AI didn't give me Blackwater County.

I brought Blackwater County to AI.

But I also understand why someone might look at the finished image and see things differently.

Because this conversation is much bigger than my book trailer.

Home Was Never Supposed to Become Home

When I started building this place, the plan was fairly simple.

I needed an author's website.

That was it.

A place where someone could find my books, learn a little about me and perhaps read something I'd written.

Perfectly sensible.

Then my imagination got involved.

This happens a lot.

I could have written my novels, started querying agents and hoped for the best.

But that isn't really how I'm built.

I don't particularly enjoy sitting quietly and waiting for someone else to decide what happens to my future.

And these stories meant far too much to me to simply send them out into the world and wait.

So the website grew.

The books needed a Library.

The characters became Residents.

Then came the Front Porch Journal.

Mabel needed a Kitchen.

Characters had things to say outside the pages of their books, so we needed a Sitting Room.

Blackwater County needed a Map Room.

And somewhere along the way, the purpose of this place changed.

It stopped being:

Here are my books.

It became:

Welcome to my world.

And then even that wasn't quite enough.

Because what I really wanted was:

Welcome to my imagination. Pull up a chair. Everyone belongs here.

I wanted readers to finish the last page of a book without necessarily having to leave the people they'd come to know.

Come have coffee with Clara.

Visit Mabel's Kitchen.

Walk through Blackwater County.

Meet the people who live there.

Stay awhile.

Home became another form of storytelling.

And AI helped me build parts of it I simply didn't have the technical or artistic ability—or the budget—to create otherwise.

Which brings me to an uncomfortable question.

What If People See the AI Before They See Me?

This question has come up in my own house more than once.

If a literary agent visits Home, what will they think?

Will they see an author who has worked hard to create a world around her stories?

Or will they see AI-generated illustrations and wonder whether the books were generated too?

Will an editor take the writing seriously?

Will someone see the trailer before reading a single paragraph I've written and decide they already know how much of the work is mine?

I don't know.

And I don't think pretending I know would make this conversation any more useful.

The publishing world itself is still working through these questions.

Some literary agencies now explicitly prohibit AI-generated manuscripts. Some go further and restrict AI-assisted editing or AI-generated query materials. Other organizations distinguish between substantive AI-generated writing and assistive tools such as grammar or copy-editing software.

And yes, AI-detection programs exist.

But research has also found significant differences in how accurately those systems perform, particularly when human writing and AI assistance are mixed. A detector score isn't a magical window into how a piece of writing was created.

So writers are living in an odd moment.

Artificial intelligence can help us research, organize, brainstorm, edit, visualize and create.

Artificial intelligence can also write entire passages—or entire books.

And sometimes all of those things get reduced to one label:

Made with AI.

Maybe that label isn't telling us nearly as much as we think it is.

AI Is Already Sitting at the Table

Something interesting happened at a family wedding recently.

Without me bringing up the subject, AI—and specifically ChatGPT—came up in conversation again and again.

One person talked about using it to work through a difficult situation with a family member.

Another used it to help a teenager understand algebra.

Others talked about using AI to organize schedules, create documents and presentations, manage employee schedules or simply keep track of everything life throws at them.

Sounding board.

Tutor.

Administrative assistant.

Organizer.

These weren't people attending a technology conference.

They were people at a wedding.

That made me curious.

Just how many people are actually using this stuff?

Quite a few, apparently.

According to 2026 research from Pew Research Center, 44% of American adults say they use ChatGPT, up from 18% in 2023.

Among Americans ages 50–64, 37% report using it.

OpenAI reported in 2026 that ChatGPT had grown to more than one billion weekly users worldwide — with Reuters reporting about 1.2 billion consumer users in late September 2026.

People use AI chatbots to search for information, perform work tasks, create and edit images, learn, entertain, organize and even seek emotional support or advice.

That last one deserves an important distinction.

An AI chatbot isn't a substitute for a qualified mental-health professional.

But people are clearly using these tools for far more than generating funny pictures or asking what to cook for dinner.

AI has already quietly worked its way into everyday life.

And here's where things get particularly interesting.

Many of us are simultaneously using AI and worrying about AI.

Maybe that isn't contradictory.

Maybe that's human.

We've Been Here Before. Sort Of.

Whenever a major technology changes what people are capable of doing, we seem to go through a period of figuring out what that change means.

When photography arrived, people debated whether a mechanically produced image could really be considered art.

When typewriters and later word processors changed writing, people questioned what mechanization and computers might do to the craft.

When calculators entered classrooms, teachers worried students would become dependent upon them and lose fundamental mathematical skills.

When computers began transforming workplaces, people worried automation would eliminate jobs.

Sometimes those fears proved exaggerated.

Sometimes they didn't.

Telephone automation, for example, really did eliminate huge numbers of telephone-operator jobs.

Research into that transition suggests younger generations eventually moved into other occupations.

But that doesn't mean the workers caught directly in the transition weren't affected.

They were.

That's important.

History doesn't give us permission to shrug and say:

Technology always works out. Don't worry about it.

It tells us something much more complicated.

Technology creates opportunities.

Technology disrupts industries.

Technology can give one person access to something she never had before while taking something away from someone else.

Those things can be true at the same time.

And That's Where This Gets Uncomfortable

I don't have the budget to hire an illustrator every time I need artwork.

I certainly don't have the budget to hire a production company to create cinematic trailers for my books.

Before generative AI, my realistic choice wasn't necessarily:

Hire a human artist or use AI.

Sometimes it was:

Use AI or don't create it at all.

That matters to me.

But this matters too.

There are illustrators, designers, writers, photographers, musicians, editors and other creative professionals who worry that the same technology giving people like me new opportunities may threaten livelihoods they spent years building.

They're not wrong to worry about their future.

There are legitimate questions surrounding copyright and training data.

Education.

Misinformation.

Jobs.

Privacy.

Overreliance.

And what happens when we become so accustomed to asking a machine for an answer that we forget how important it is to sit with a question ourselves.

There are questions about what happens when technology makes creating so easy that the sheer volume of content makes it harder for human-created work to be discovered.

And yes, there is the possibility of taking shortcuts.

AI can write something for you.

Pretending otherwise would be silly.

But perhaps that makes another distinction even more important.

There is a difference between using a tool to replace the creative process and using a tool to help execute a creative vision.

Where exactly is the line between those two things?

I don't know.

Different people will probably draw it in different places.

And that's okay.

Grow. Create. Disrupt. Adjust. Adapt.

Human beings have been creating tools for a very long time.

We create something that changes what we're capable of doing.

That change disrupts something that came before it.

We argue about it.

We establish boundaries.

We make mistakes.

We adjust.

Eventually, we adapt.

Then somebody invents something else and we start the whole process over again.

A machine can mass-produce a table.

And somewhere there is still a woodworker spending days making one by hand.

The existence of the machine didn't make craftsmanship meaningless.

It changed the conversation around what craftsmanship means.

Perhaps AI is beginning another version of that conversation.

Because this time the technology isn't only helping us lift heavier things, travel farther or calculate faster.

It is entering territory we have traditionally connected very closely to ourselves.

Language.

Art.

Music.

Images.

Ideas.

Creativity.

No wonder we're uncomfortable.

Maybe we should be a little uncomfortable.

Questions this big deserve more than an immediate thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

Where Does the Tool End and the Creator Begin?

I don't know.

And that's probably the most important sentence in this entire entry.

I don't know where society will eventually draw that line.

I don't know what artificial intelligence will look like ten years from now, much less fifty.

I don't know which jobs it will create, which ones it will change or which ones may disappear.

I don't know whether future generations will look back at our current arguments and laugh—or wish we'd asked even harder questions.

None of us knows yet.

We're living in the middle of the story.

But I do know what AI means in my own creative life.

It is a tool.

A remarkably powerful one.

It can help me research.

Organize.

Brainstorm.

Question my own assumptions.

Catch something I overlooked.

And yes, it can help me turn the images in my imagination into something another person can actually see.

It doesn't know Mary the way I do.

It doesn't love Clara.

It doesn't understand why one tiny detail about Blackwater Creek matters unless I explain why it matters.

It doesn't sit awake thinking about these characters.

I do.

AI helps me build a bridge between what I imagine and what I am capable of creating with the resources available to me.

Someone else may look at that exact same process and decide it crosses a line they aren't comfortable crossing.

That's okay.

Maybe transparency matters.

I don't want you wondering whether I use AI.

I do.

I'd rather tell you what I use it for, tell you what I don't use it for and let you decide how you feel about it.

When Two Letters Suddenly Felt Bigger Than Everything Else

So let's go back to that book trailer.

“It’s obviously AI, Mom. How hard could it have been?”

The comment hurt.

More than I admitted at the time.

And if I'm going to ask you to pull up a chair and have an honest conversation with me, then I should probably be honest about that too.

For one fleeting moment, it wasn't just the trailer I wanted to scrap.

It was all of it.

Home.

The books.

Blackwater County.

The characters.

The dream.

All of it.

I wondered whether the very tools that had helped me show people how enormous this world was inside my imagination might cause them to question whether the imagination was mine at all.

I wondered whether any of it mattered if people were going to look at everything I had created and see only two letters:

AI.

That moment passed.

But it happened.

And maybe that's part of this conversation too.

Because behind all our debates about technology, ethics, creativity and what counts as “real” art, there are still human beings on both sides.

Words land somewhere.

That doesn't mean people shouldn't say what they believe because it might hurt someone's feelings.

My daughters are entitled to their opinions about AI just as I am entitled to mine.

I don't want agreement simply because someone loves me.

And I certainly don't want anyone pretending to support something they genuinely don't believe in just to make me feel better.

But after the hurt settled, I realized something.

I still believe in these stories.

I still believe in Home.

I still believe there is something worthwhile about creating a place where someone can finish the last page of a book and discover that the door didn't close behind them.

So I'll keep writing.

I'll keep creating.

I'll keep learning.

I'll keep building.

And I'll keep inviting people in.

Some will love what I'm doing.

Some won't.

Some may love the books and dislike the AI artwork.

Some may enjoy Home but wish I'd built it differently.

Some may never get past the fact that AI is involved at all.

And that's okay too.

Because I don't need everyone to see this the way I do.

There's Still a Chair for You

My daughters and I can disagree about artificial intelligence and still love each other fiercely.

I can listen to why they're uncomfortable with something without surrendering what I believe.

They can disagree with my choices without becoming the villains in my story.

And I can be hurt by what someone says without deciding they shouldn't have said it.

Disagreement doesn't require exile.

Maybe that idea has become a little too rare.

There is room at this table for the artist worried about her livelihood.

There is room for the independent creator who finally has access to tools she could never afford before.

There is room for the teacher worried about students relying too heavily on AI.

There is room for the student who finally understood algebra because something explained it differently.

There is room for the writer who refuses to let AI anywhere near her manuscript.

There is room for the writer who uses it as a brainstorming partner.

There is room for the person who uses AI every day.

There is room for the person who wants absolutely nothing to do with it.

And there is room for everyone still trying to figure out exactly how they feel.

You don't have to convince me.

I don't have to convince you.

We can ask questions.

We can listen.

We can disagree.

We can learn from one another.

We can change our minds someday.

Or not.

Because maybe the most important question isn't:

To AI or not to AI?

Maybe the important part is that we're willing to keep talking about it.

The coffee is hot.

The chair is empty.

You don't have to agree with me to sit here.

P.S. Yes, AI helped create the illustration for this article.

I couldn't resist.

Sources & Further Reading

Don’t just take my word for it — here’s what I read; go explore and decide what you think. 💗

• Pew: Americans and AI 2026 — our strongest source for the 44% of U.S. adults using ChatGPT, the increase from 18% in 2023, age breakdowns, chatbot uses, and Americans’ attitudes toward AI.
• Pew: How AI use differs by age — supports the statistic that 37% of Americans ages 50–64 use ChatGPT, compared with 55% ages 30–49 and 61% ages 18–29.
• NBER: Answering the Call of Automation — the fascinating historical study on telephone automation: mechanical switching eliminated most telephone-operator jobs in affected areas; later generations moved into other clerical and service work, while the incumbent operators experienced substantially greater harm from the transition.
• Study: Who wrote this? Evaluating the reliability of AI detection tools — a 2026 peer-reviewed study testing GPTZero, Pangram, Copyleaks and Turnitin on known human, AI, hybrid and “humanised” AI texts. Performance varied substantially among the detectors.
• Frances Goldin Literary Agency submissions policy — a concrete publishing-industry example: queries, proposals and manuscripts must be the author’s original work and not generated or co-written using AI.
• Kimberley Cameron & Associates submissions policy — goes further and currently says it cannot consider works “generated or edited” by AI, in part or in whole.
• Eve White Literary Agency submissions — they don't accept covering letters, proposals, synopses or manuscripts written using generative AI; their FAQ explains the current concern involves copyright protection.
• Reuters: latest ChatGPT usage reporting — reported ChatGPT at about 1.2 billion consumer users in late September 2026.