AI vs. Ghost-writing – A Manifesto Against Selective Outrage

The rise of artificial intelligence in literature has triggered a moral panic dressed up as artistic integrity. Everyone is suddenly deeply concerned about the soul of writing. About effort. About purity. About the sacred loneliness of the author and the honest ache of the blank page.

It would be touching if it weren’t so selective.

Because publishing has never been pure. It has never been lonely. And it has certainly never been honest about how books are made.

Authors insist AI threatens authenticity. That it produces hollow text, detached from lived experience. The implication is clear: that the real writing must involve struggle, solitude, and suffering. That art cannot be outsourced without becoming hollow.

And yet ghost-writing has been openly institutionalised for decades.

Not tolerated. Normalised. Celebrated.

Entire careers, reputations, and cultural monuments rest on words written by people whose names do not appear on the cover. These books are not whispered about in shame. They are marketed aggressively, reviewed seriously, taught in universities, and handed out as proof of intellectual and emotional authority.

Prince Harry did not write Spare.
Michelle Obama did not write every line of Becoming.
Donald Trump did not write The Art of the Deal.
Paris Hilton did not write Paris: The Memoir.
Millie Bobby Brown did not write Nineteen Steps alone.

This is not scandalous information. It is public knowledge.

And still, no one storms the gates crying fraud.

Why?

Because ghost-writing preserves the illusion that we desperately want to keep intact. The illusion of authorship as identity. The illusion that the person on the cover is the sole origin of the words inside. The illusion that meaning flows neatly from a singular human soul to the page, unmediated, untouched.

Ghost-writing allows the industry to outsource labour while maintaining mythology. A human intermediary makes it feel safe. Organic. Earned. The invisible writer disappears into professionalism. The visible name absorbs the credit. Everyone pretends this is collaboration rather than substitution.

AI does not play along.

AI does not hide behind a smile or a confidentiality clause. It does not quietly accept erasure in exchange for a pay check. It does not flatter our romantic fantasies about creativity. It simply produces text and dares us to explain why that is suddenly unacceptable.

This is the real rupture.

The outrage is not about ethics. It is about exposure.

AI exposes how often “voice” is constructed rather than discovered. How frequently originality is an edited illusion. How deeply writing is already shaped by tools, systems, markets, trends, algorithms, and expectations. How rarely a book is the product of a single, untouched mind.

Editors reshape prose. Agents suggest changes. Sensitivity readers intervene. Marketing teams adjust tone. Ghostwriters assemble entire manuscripts. Software checks grammar, style, pacing, repetition.

And still, we insist the author is alone.

The romantic image of the solitary genius at a desk is not endangered by AI. It has been fictional for a long time. AI simply refuses to keep pretending otherwise.

This is why the anger feels disproportionate. This is why the arguments wobble. This is why the debate often collapses into vague moral language instead of precise critique.

Because the problem is not that AI writes.
The problem is that AI refuses to stay invisible.

It does not fit neatly into the hierarchy of acceptable assistance. It cannot be quietly thanked and then erased. It forces an uncomfortable question onto the table: if writing has always involved delegation, mediation, and technology, what exactly are we defending now?

Effort? Many authors with ghostwriters exert very little of it.
Authenticity? Entire memoirs are shaped by professionals trained to manufacture it.
Human experience? Often filtered, sanitised, and repackaged for mass consumption.

What remains, then, is not principle but control.

AI disrupts who gets to participate in authorship. It destabilises gatekeeping. It blurs the boundary between “real” writers and those who were previously excluded by time, money, education, language, or access. It unsettles an industry that depends on scarcity and prestige to maintain authority.

The fear is not that machines will replace writers. The fear is that writers will no longer be easily ranked by myth alone.

AI does not eliminate creativity. It demands that we define it more honestly.

Is creativity the physical act of typing?
Is it the origin of the idea?
Is it the shaping of meaning?
Is it responsibility for what is said?

If a ghostwriter translates a person’s life into prose, we call it authorship.
If an editor rewrites half a book, we call it refinement.
If software corrects grammar, we call it efficiency.
If AI assists in structuring language, suddenly we call it corruption.

This inconsistency is not philosophical. It is emotional.

In the 21st century, authorship is no longer a sacred ritual. It is a negotiation. Between humans and tools. Between intention and execution. Between visibility and erasure. Between who speaks and who gets credit for the speaking.

AI does not destroy art. It destabilises hierarchy.

It forces us to confront uncomfortable truths:
That writing has always been collaborative.
That originality has always been relative.
That authorship has always been a performance, as much about perception as production.

If ghost-writing is acceptable, then AI is not the ethical apocalypse it is painted to be. It is simply the first tool that refuses to uphold the theatre of purity.

And perhaps that is the real threat.

Not that machines can write.
But that we can no longer pretend we were ever alone.

You might want to read more:

Let’s Write Liminal, Dreamlike Fiction

The Psychology of Character Desire

How to Write Emotionally Intense Fiction

The Bestseller Illusion: Why Great Writing Doesn’t Always Win