As a longtime Angeleno, I\u2019ve got the same beef with AI as everyone else in this town. I don\u2019t want it stealing stories from writers, voices from actors or trust from audiences.<\/p>\n
But the condemnation of artificial intelligence has now blown past scripts, scraping and unscrupulous studios. Earlier this month, New York Times opinion columnist Bret Stephens begged readers never to write with AI<\/a> \u2014 not even to organize notes. It\u2019s \u201cmentally enfeebling,\u201d he wrote, \u201can escalator toward a result when you really need to make a daily habit of taking the stairs.\u201d<\/p>\n Not everyone can take the stairs.<\/p>\n I\u2019m a freelance writer with shredded tendons, a wrist tear and nerve compression that sets my arm on fire after only a few minutes of using a pen, keyboard, mouse or trackpad. So I dictate everything instead \u2014 this sentence, flowery Yelp reviews I never post, texts to myself reminding me to set timers, and timers reminding me to send texts.<\/p>\n I write clean but talk dirty, and dictation means it all lands on the page \u2014 the intended prose, the unintended profanity, the inevitable parentheticals and the \u201cWho\u2019s a good boy?\u201d when my cursing summons Walter the anxious labradoodle into my office with his giant squeaky Xanax pill toy.<\/p>\n The result is pages of unpunctuated chaos.<\/p>\n I use AI to clean up the dictation debris \u2014 the cursing, the editing commands, the typos you get when you swap a keyboard for a microphone and \u201craise the stakes\u201d becomes \u201craise the steaks.\u201d It does not write. It cuts. Nothing is added. What remains is only what came out of my mouth \u2014 a marginally less chaotic, poorly punctuated vomit draft.<\/p>\n Then I go through six or seven or 70 rounds of revision \u2014 yelling at my laptop as I over-enunciate. \u201cStart dictation.\u201d \u201cEm dash not en dash.\u201d \u201cArghhhh no, M as in Mary.\u201d \u201cNoooo! Delete M as in Mary!\u201d<\/p>\n I hate writing this way, but it\u2019s the only way I can. What Stephens sees as a mentally enfeebling escalator is actually my access ramp to the page. To Jen Statsky, co-creator of the hit TV series \u201cHacks,\u201d taking that ramp exposes me for what I am: \u201cIf you use it in your work, you\u2019re a hack,\u201d she said on a recent podcast episode<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ouch.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t feel like a hack. At 61, I\u2019ve MacGyvered a way to write out loud \u2014 impressive for someone who still can\u2019t get from KTLA to Hulu with the Amazon Fire TV Stick.<\/p>\n I agree with Statsky on this much: Writing is hard, and that\u2019s OK. \u201cThe grist and the struggle and the friction is part of the process. It\u2019s what makes art good,\u201d Statsky said, arguing against AI. And while I wouldn\u2019t call what I write art, I\u2019ve got plenty of grist and struggle and friction. A burning arm, throbbing hands and pages of dictation garbage don\u2019t make my writing better. They just get between me and what I\u2019m trying to say. I still have to do the hard part \u2014 thinking, deleting, overthinking, revising, agonizing, Command-Z-ing, as I try to turn the mess in my head into words that say what I mean. It\u2019s exhausting and frustrating and painful \u2014 which just might be enough suffering to meet Statsky and Stephens\u2019 threshold for a real writer.<\/p>\n I doubt either of them had me in mind when they condemned writing with AI. My particular use is weirdly niche and, I think, ethically defensible. But when one writer says \u201cnever\u201d use AI and another says anyone who does use it is a hack, there isn\u2019t much room left for people like me.<\/p>\n And there are a lot of us: 1 in 4 adults in the U.S. has a disability<\/a>. The ways we use AI for access, if we use it at all, vary greatly. I use it to clean up my verbal wreckage \u2014 someone else might use AI to describe an image they can\u2019t see or communicate words they can\u2019t vocalize.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean we all embrace AI. Disability isn\u2019t a monolith, and I don\u2019t presume to speak for anyone but myself. In fact, a 2025 study<\/a> of 54 queer disabled fiction writers found them \u201cmarkedly more pessimistic than others\u201d about generative AI\u2019s impact on their industry. In a 2026 focus group study<\/a>, 13 of 20 disabled adults used generative AI for accessibility, even though none trusted it unconditionally.<\/p>\n You can acknowledge the danger AI poses in one context and still value the access it gives you in another. That\u2019s why \u201cnever\u201d is a lousy rule.<\/p>\n Scraping someone else\u2019s work or passing off AI-generated prose as your own is different from using AI to get your words on the page. AI needs guardrails \u2014 in writing, in schools, in art. But a blanket prohibition is easy to make when you\u2019re the one able to take the stairs.<\/p>\n When Stephens and Statsky sit down to decide what the limits of AI in writing should be, the rest of us deserve a seat at the table, too. Some of us will need a ramp to get there.<\/p>\n Sharon Schindel writes about what keeps her up at night \u2014 chronic pain, invisible disability and getting old. Instagram: @ithurtsmetosaythis<\/a><\/p>\n