The Thoughts Were Always Mine

AI has given me creative license. 

I am an artist. A painter. A photographer. A creator. 

I have always loved tools—not for what they do on their own, but for what they allow me to do. 

A paintbrush does not choose the subject. It does not supply the memory, the eye or the impulse  to create. It gives me a way to place what I see onto the canvas. 

A camera does something similar. It allows me to hold on to what I notice—to catch the detail,  the moment, before it disappears. 

Words have always been harder. 

The thought could be complete in my head, but I could not always place it on the page in a way  someone else could understand. 

I needed bridges between what I was thinking and what I was able to express. AI has become one of them. 

Writing has always evolved. 

From a hand making marks on a cave wall to a quill dipped in ink. From pen to pencil, marker  and crayon. From the printing press to the typewriter, the Xerox, the computer and now AI. 

Each tool has helped take a thought from inside someone’s head and place it into the world. I did not go from not writing one day to using AI the next. 

I have been writing for years. I have used Final Draft, Word, Pages and spell-check. Each helped  me move my thoughts onto the page. 

AI is another tool, but I had to learn how to use it. 

Someone sat beside me and showed me how. I learned that the key is asking the right questions —most importantly, questioning what AI gives me, making corrections and continuing until I  recognize myself in the answer. 

Using AI properly is not passive.

It requires me to know what I mean, what belongs and what does not. 

AI did not make me a writer. 

It gave the writer I already was a more powerful tool. 

I am dyslexic. 

Just because I cannot spell does not mean I cannot think clearly. 

But for most of my life, I did not understand the difference. 

My life was narrowed in almost every direction by what I thought of as the shame of a learning  disability. 

It always felt like my fault. 

Dyslexia placed so much of the world’s information just beyond my reach. I avoided  opportunities because I was afraid that if anyone saw me struggle, they would think I was dumb. 

Period. 

Much of what was happening during my lifetime—socially, politically and culturally—felt as  though it were happening at a distance. 

I lived through it. I saw things. I felt things. I had opinions. 

But I did not always have a way to enter the conversation. 

My photographs gave me a way to speak. They held what I noticed before I knew how to explain  it. 

That is why the photographs I use with these essays are not decoration. 

They are part of the thought. They are part of how I tell the story. 

AI helps me place the words beside them. 

To me, AI is like those magnetic words that were once a fad on refrigerators. All the words are there, but they are scattered. 

AI helps me move the jumble in my head into place. 

Properly. 

Grammatically. 

So someone else can understand what I have been trying to say.

I am in my late sixties. 

When Parkinson’s entered my husband’s life, I saw how easily a person can disappear. I wanted my grandchildren to know the real me—not only remember me, but know my thoughts. I began writing like I needed air. 

AI does not give me more time. It lets me do more with the time I have. 

It allows me to place my ideas, experiences and imagination into the world instead of leaving  them trapped inside me. 

I am no longer standing outside the conversation because I cannot spell my way into it. Of course there needs to be a line. 

I do not want AI to give me something to think. I want it to help me express what I am already  thinking. 

Sometimes it gets too polished. Sometimes I read something back and wonder where I went. That is when I stop and find myself again. 

What if I had a person sitting beside me? 

A researcher finding information. An editor reorganizing a paragraph. A friend suggesting a  better word. Someone correcting my spelling as I dictated. 

Would their input make the work illegitimate? 

Songwriters collaborate with other songwriters, musicians, producers and mixers. Filmmakers  rely on editors. Authors work with researchers and book editors. 

Very little is singular. 

We already have language for human collaboration: edited by, researched by, produced by,  written with. 

AI arrived before we agreed upon the language. 

Assistance and authorship are not always the same thing. 

If someone—or something—supplies the idea, imagination and story, that is different from  helping a person express what was already theirs. 

The experiences are mine. 

The ideas are mine.

The photographs are mine. 

The final decisions are mine. 

Why should assistance with expressing them make authorship illegitimate? Why is it suspect when it helps a dyslexic writer be seen? 

Is AI really worse than White-Out? 

I have to laugh. 

White-Out helped us cover the mistake. 

AI helps me find the words I was trying to write in the first place. 

The tool changes. 

The human need does not. 

We are still trying to say: This is what I saw. This is what I felt. This is what I need you to  understand. 

These essays will be made from what I remember, what I photograph, what I notice and what I  am finally able to say. 

The thoughts were always mine. 

Now they have somewhere to go. 

still curious.