The AI Witch Hunt Against Authors Needs to Stop

Apparently, we've reached the point where using an M dash is evidence that you used AI. An M dash, a punctuation mark. So, I guess Agatha Christie has some explaining to do, which might be difficult considering she died in 1976. I'm joking, obviously, but only kind of because there is a growing obsession online with trying to figure out whether

authors are using AI. And I understand where it came from. There are legitimate concerns about AI-generated books, undisclosed AI use, copyright originality, and people just pumping out low-effort books as quickly as possible. And I am not here to defend that. We've all seen examples floating around online of books containing passages that look

suspiciously like raw chatbot output. If your published novel contains something that sounds like, "Certainly, here is the revised chapter in a more emotional tone." then yeah, we have a problem. If you're going to outsource your novel to a robot, apparently proofreading is still part of the job description. But, there is a huge difference between

finding actual evidence of AI use and deciding someone must have used AI because their writing sounds like ChatGPT or because an AI detector spits out a percentage. That is where I think we have gone too far. There are now entire conversations online about supposed AI tells, M dashes, certain metaphors, words like delve or very

symmetrical sentences, or even constructions like, "It wasn't anger, it was fear." Apparently, the machines now own all of those, too. People have even pointed to Agatha Christie passages as a pretty funny counterexample because her writing contains some of the same stylistic choices that people now confidently identify as AI. Again, she died in the '70s. The obvious