I've been writing on CrazyKinux's Musings in one form or another since 2005. Long before ChatGPT, Claude, image generators, or any of the current AI tools existed, I was writing about EVE Online, about the community of players & bloggers, sharing things I had learned, interviewing people and generally following whatever rabbit hole happened to interest me.
So AI didn't suddenly make me creative, but it's definitely changed how I create.
Take The Safe Spot, the EVE podcast I co-host with Rixx. The conversation itself is ours. We decide the topics, who we want to talk to and what we're curious about. But afterward I can take a transcript and use AI to pull out themes, build show notes, identify things worth following up on, or even notice parts of the conversation I'd almost forgotten.
The same thing happens with the EVE guides I write about.
Quite often I'm asking questions because I've returned to the game after a long absence and genuinely need to relearn something. We, that is ChatGPT and I, might work through a ship fitting, a skill queue or some obscure mechanic. I'll challenge the answers, test things in-game and come back with what happened. Eventually I realize: there's probably a guide in here. Other times, I'll use transcripts from EVE players’ YouTube guides as raw material for written guides of my own, especially when I want something easier to reference while playing. When I do, I usually embed or link the original video and clearly credit the creator, while reshaping the information into a format that fits how I learn and how I write.
Fiction does get a tad messier. My recent story involving Caelin and Cassian Drake is a good example. I created the characters, their histories, their relationship, BlackCrystal, the favour between them and the meeting aboard Jita 4-4. But I also used AI to help turn that into drafts. Then I rewrote things. Cut things. Changed dialogue. Rejected ideas that didn't fit the characters. Eventually I even used Claude for another editorial pass.
So no, I didn't type every sentence myself, but I still it as my writing. but I'm also perfectly comfortable calling that AI-assisted writing if push comes to shove.
The visual side works much the same way. By the time I've spent a while exchanging ideas with an AI image tool, I usually have a fairly specific picture in my head. If what comes back doesn't match it, we go again. I change things, reject things, push it in another direction and keep working at it until what I'm looking at feels like the thing I was trying to create. It's a work in progress and so is my learning of these tools.
Final thoughts on AI and a good creative process
Which is why I've become less interested in the question, "Did AI make this?", and more interested in asking: "Where did the creative decisions come from?"
Because whatever AI contributes, I'm still the final editor and the gatekeeper.
Every word, sentence & paragraph gets read, and then reread. Every word can be changed. Every image gets judged against what I had in mind. I'll polish, tweak, reject, rewrite and reiterate until I'm satisfied with it. Sometimes ChatGPT gets me there. Sometimes Claude helps. Sometimes I use a combination of both.
Nothing gets published simply because the AI produced it. That applies to pretty much everything I create with these tools. AI can help me get somewhere faster, explore more directions, or work through ideas I might not have reached on my own, but it doesn’t make the final decision.
So maybe AI hasn’t changed whether I’m creative as much as it has changed what I, or it, can bring into the creative process.
I’m still the final editor, the gatekeeper, and the one deciding what is good enough to put my name on.
And that's good enough for me.
CK out.
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