I don’t use AI on this blog (or any of my writing) to the best of my knowledge. I know other people use AI for various reasons and this is not me picking a fight with them; this is me talking about my process. I acknowledge that I probably don’t know every single AI-using aspect of the tools that I use. However, when I detect them, I avoid them. I like to write, I like to type, and I can’t imagine wanting that process to be different. This is up to and including:
- My content management system. I use WordPress’s Classic editor and just type the HTML into the box.
- Spell checker or “help me write this” tools, though I do use Firefox’s “wiggly underline” to help make sure I’ve got things spelled right
- Speaking of Firefox, I’ve taken advantage of their “block AI enhancements” option. You can too.
- My laptop computer has Apple Intelligence turned off, as does my iPhone. My desktop computer is too old to even have it.
- I get most of my images from Flickr (or they’re my own) and try to avoid ones which have been obviously AI-generated or enhanced.
I’ve used AI/LLM tools before. I used to try DeepSeek occasionally for some of my work at the Flickr Foundation (think “what is this image” sort of things), found it wanting, and did not use it again. We had an AI clerkbot which we were encouraged to use to keep track of our daily/weekly tasks and I used it for a bit, found it wanting, and did not use it again.
The one bit of AI I have in my life now is that the code which makes up my reading list has been partially built by someone who was using Claude. My host upgraded their version of PHP, my booklist broke. I reached out to the man who had helped me fix it before. He asked my permission to have Claude help him update and document the code and I said okay.
If any of this changes, I’ll probably say something about it. I do have a lot of ethical and practical concerns with AI/LLMs companies as well as the tools they build. For now, I don’t use them because they solve no problems for me.