A Dialogue on AI in Fiction Writing
A panel between a literary agent, an indie author, and a bilingual writer about AI translation, authorship, and disclosure.
Setting: A writers’ conference panel discussion. The moderator and three panelists sit before an audience of published and aspiring authors.
MARGARET STONE (literary agent, New York): Traditional publishing advocate, mid-40s, sceptical of AI
JAVIER RUIZ (indie author, Texas): Pragmatic technologist, early 50s, uses AI tools selectively
ANNE VIRTANEN (Finnish-American translator and author): Mid-30, bilingual, published Horse Ranger
MODERATOR: Let’s address the elephant in the room. Anne, your Amazon reviewer asked why you didn’t disclose AI use in your book’s introduction, even though you disclosed it to Amazon. Margaret, you’ve been vocal about AI threatening literary integrity. Your thoughts?
MARGARET: I appreciate Anne’s transparency with Amazon, but that reviewer has a point. Readers deserve to know upfront. When I open a novel, I’m entering a contract with a human imagination. If AI generated any part of that text—even translation—it fundamentally changes what I’m reading.
ANNE: But Margaret, what exactly changes? I wrote every scene in Finnish. I created Sally and David. I decided what they’d say, how they’d love, what they’d lose. Claude translated words from one language to another—a mechanical process.
MARGARET: Translation isn’t mechanical. It’s an art. A human translator makes creative choices, finds cultural equivalents, preserves voice. AI can’t do that.
JAVIER: With respect, Margaret, you’re romanticizing translation while demonizing AI. Have you read Anne’s book in both languages?
MARGARET: No, I don’t read Finnish.
JAVIER: So you’re making assumptions. Anne, how did you handle Claude’s translations? Did you just accept whatever it produced?
ANNE: Of course not. I reviewed every chapter. When Claude mistranslated “koppava” as “cocky” instead of capturing that specifically Finnish combination of stubbornness and quiet pride, I corrected it. When dialogue felt too formal or too casual, I adjusted. The translation is AI-assisted, but I made the final choices.
MARGARET: That’s still different from a human translator who understands both cultures intimately.
ANNE: Is it? Or is it different from a human translator I couldn’t afford? Let me be blunt: I’m a retired teacher in Helsinki. A professional literary translation costs 15,000 to 30,000 euros. I don’t have that. So my choices were: don’t reach English readers at all, or use AI translation that I could carefully supervise. Which choice honors my creative work more?
JAVIER: This is where Margaret’s argument collapses. She’s not objecting to AI on principle—she’s defending a gatekeeping system that prices out most writers.
MARGARET: That’s not fair. I’m defending quality and authenticity.
JAVIER: Let me ask you something. If Anne had written her book in English originally, used Grammarly for proofreading, hired a fact-checker for the Civil War details, and had a copy editor clean up her punctuation—would you demand disclosure of those tools?
MARGARET: That’s completely different.
JAVIER: How?
MARGARET: Those are editing tools. They don’t generate text.
ANNE: Neither did Claude, for the creative work. It generated English equivalents of my Finnish text. That’s closer to what Grammarly does—suggesting better ways to express what’s already there—than to generating original content.
MODERATOR: Anne, you mentioned using Claude for “beat generation” in some chapters. Can you explain that?
ANNE: I experimented with asking Claude to suggest plot beats—structural moments in a few chapters. “What are the key emotional turning points in a reconciliation scene?” That kind of question. But here’s the thing: I wrote those scenes in Finnish, in my own words. Claude never drafted sentences for me. It was more like brainstorming with a writing partner.
MARGARET: But it’s not a writing partner. It’s a machine trained on millions of stolen books.
JAVIER: Here we go. The “stolen books” argument.
MARGARET: It’s not an argument, it’s a fact. AI companies scraped copyrighted material without permission.
JAVIER: And you learned to write by reading thousands of books without paying their authors for the educational use. We all did. That’s how culture works. But suddenly when a machine learns from the same material, it’s theft?
MARGARET: Humans transform what they learn. AI regurgitates patterns.
ANNE: Does it? Because when I asked Claude to translate “hänellä oli kylmät välit isänsä kanssa,” it didn’t regurgitate some previous translation. It analyzed the meaning—“he had cold relations with his father”—and suggested “he and his father barely spoke,” which captured the emotional distance better than the literal words.
JAVIER: That’s not regurgitation. That’s linguistic analysis.
MARGARET: Programmed by humans who fed it copyrighted translations.
MODERATOR: Let’s shift focus. Anne, you mentioned AI’s language bias. Can you elaborate?
ANNE: Yes. This is something Margaret should actually care about, because it’s about whose voices get heard. When I tested other AI models in Finnish, they were terrible. Grammatically broken, idiomatically absurd. Why? Because tech companies optimize for English and Chinese—the markets with money. Finnish, with five million speakers, doesn’t matter to them.
MARGARET: So you’re admitting the technology is inadequate.
ANNE: I’m saying it’s unequally developed. Claude handled Finnish better than others, but even so, I had to correct plenty. The bigger point is: this is linguistic imperialism. If Finnish writers can only access good AI tools by working in English, that pressures us to abandon our own language.
JAVIER: That’s a powerful point. Margaret, your argument that AI threatens authenticity ignores how the lack of AI tools—or English-only AI tools—creates a different kind of threat: cultural erasure.
MARGARET: I’m not arguing against Finnish literature. I’m arguing that if Anne wrote in Finnish and wanted English readers, she should have found a human translator.
ANNE: With what money? Be specific. Where should a retired teacher get 20,000 euros?
MARGARET: Traditional publishers provide translation funding for books they acquire.
ANNE: Traditional publishers rejected my manuscript. Three times. Should I have given up? Or should I have used available tools to reach readers who, by the way, have rated my book 4.3 stars on Amazon?
JAVIER: And here’s the real question, Margaret: have you read Horse Ranger?
MARGARET: No.
JAVIER: So you’re condemning a book you haven’t read based on the tools used to translate it, not on its actual quality or the human creativity it represents.
MARGARET: I’m taking a principled stance on AI in publishing.
JAVIER: You’re taking an abstract stance that ignores concrete realities. Anne’s book exists because of AI translation. Readers enjoy it. She was transparent about her process. What exactly is the harm?
MARGARET: The harm is precedent. If we normalize AI-generated content—
ANNE: Stop right there. AI-assisted translation of human-created content is not the same as AI-generated content. My book is not an AI-generated novel.
MARGARET: But where’s the line? You used Claude for beat suggestions. Someone else might use it for scene drafts. Another person might have AI write entire chapters. At what point does it stop being your book?
ANNE: The line is authorial intent and creative control. I intended every scene. I controlled every choice. Claude was a tool I directed, like a sophisticated dictionary or thesaurus.
JAVIER: Margaret, you keep moving the goalposts. First AI translation is the problem, then AI editing, then AI brainstorming. It sounds like your real position is: writers shouldn’t use AI for anything, ever.
MARGARET: Not true. I think spellcheck is fine.
JAVIER: Oh, how generous. So writers can use the AI tools that existed before they were called AI, but nothing newer. That’s not a principle—that’s just technophobia disguised as ethics.
MODERATOR: Anne, what would you say to a writer who uses AI more extensively than you did? Say, someone who has AI draft scenes that they then heavily revise?
ANNE: Honestly? I’d have questions. Not judgment, but questions. What’s the creative work you’re doing? Are you the author shaping AI output, or is AI the author and you’re the editor? There’s a spectrum, and I think we need to be honest about where we fall on it.
JAVIER: That’s fair. I’ve experimented with having AI draft action sequences that I then completely rewrite. The AI version is usually generic—“he ducked and fired”—but it gives me a structural skeleton. I add the sensory details, the character-specific reactions, the emotional stakes. Am I still the author?
MARGARET: I’d say no.
JAVIER: Even though the final text is 90% my words and 100% my creative choices?
MARGARET: You’re building on an AI foundation.
JAVIER: And you built on teachers, workshops, craft books, and every novel you ever read. We all build on foundations we didn’t create. The question is whether we transform those foundations into something genuinely ours.
ANNE: I think Javier’s walking a finer line than I am. But I also think Margaret’s absolutism isn’t helpful. We need nuance.
MARGARET: What I need is a clear definition of authorship in the AI age.
MODERATOR: Can we find one? Anne, you disclosed to Amazon but not in your book. Javier, do you disclose?
JAVIER: I include an author’s note: “This novel was written with AI assistance for drafting and editing. All creative decisions are my own.” Two sentences. Done.
MARGARET: That’s too vague. “AI assistance” could mean anything.
JAVIER: And that’s intentional, because readers don’t need a technical breakdown. They need to know the core truth: I’m the author, I used AI tools, and I stand behind every word.
ANNE: I’m considering adding something similar to my second book. “Written in Finnish, translated to English with AI assistance, edited and researched with AI tools. The story is mine.”
MARGARET: You’re both normalizing a technology that will destroy professional writing.
JAVIER: Or we’re adapting to tools that expand who can be a professional writer. Anne couldn’t afford a human translator. I can’t afford the three years it would take to write a novel completely unassisted while working full-time. AI doesn’t replace our creativity—it removes barriers to expressing it.
MARGARET: And what about the translators who lose work? The editors? The researchers?
ANNE: That’s a fair question. But it’s not unique to AI. Digital photography destroyed darkroom technicians’ jobs. Word processors eliminated typing pools. Should we have rejected those technologies to preserve jobs?
MARGARET: Those technologies didn’t claim to be creative.
JAVIER: Neither does AI. It claims to assist creativity. There’s a difference.
MODERATOR: We’re running out of time. Final thoughts? Margaret?
MARGARET: Writers who use AI extensively should be labeled as such, clearly and upfront, so readers can choose. Otherwise, it’s deception.
JAVIER: Writers who use AI as a tool should disclose it reasonably, but we shouldn’t create a scarlet letter that implies AI assistance makes work less authentic. The work should be judged on its own merits.
ANNE: I’ll continue using AI for translation, editing, and research. I’ll continue being transparent about it. And I’ll continue insisting that my creativity, my vision, my years of work—that’s all human. Claude didn’t write Horse Ranger. I did. In Finnish. The English version is just… more people getting to read what I created.
MARGARET: We fundamentally disagree.
ANNE: Yes. But I hope we agree that readers deserve good stories, however they’re made.
MARGARET: Only if “however they’re made” honors human imagination.
ANNE: Mine does. Whether you believe that without reading the book… that’s your choice.
[END]