NaNoWriMo faces backlash and resignations over controversial AI policy statement

There's some drama afoot in the book world this week, stemming from an organization known as NaNoWriMo. If you're not familiar, NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is a non-profit which helps writers find community as they try to power through writing a 50,000 word manuscript over the course of November. NaNo has been around since 1999, and in that time upwards of 400,000 people have participated in its events, both in November and off months where writers are encouraged to work on more freeform projects for similar activities like Camp NaNoWriMo.

All this is to say, NaNoWriMo is all about bringing writers together. But this past weekend, they upset quite a lot of them when they released a new statement on their AI policy, saying that it is the organization's belief that the "categorical condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and ableist undertones." That statement has since been edited to take out the "undertones" and try to point more to more specific issues, but the internet remembers:

"We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege."

- NaNoWriMo

The statement goes on to talk about how not all writers can afford to hire another human to edit their work, and how the condemnation of AI is an ableist issue because "some brains and ability levels require outside help or accomodation to achieve certain goals." Never mind that 1. hiring editors has literally nothing to do with NaNoWriMo, which is a fast-drafting event where people are slapping words down and typically not polishing them until later, and 2. disabled people have been participating in NaNo for years, so implying that many now suddenly need AI in order to participate is quite a condescending stretch.

"NaNo is basically asserting that disabled people don't have what it takes to create art when they trot out the lie that scorning AI is ableist," Witchmark author C.L. Polk wrote on Bluesky. "They're saying that disabled people can't make art, not *really,* that they don't have the ability to be creative or the skill to bring an idea to earth. Like come on that's insulting"

"But what happens to you if you fall for it?" they added. "Anything that's actually good? NaNo isn't trotting out this stance out of deep seated conviction. one of their major sponsors this year is Pro Writing Aid. This ain't about accessibility to anything but your wallet."

Essentially, NaNoWriMo views its mission as a way to help support the humans doing the writing, and doesn't view it as the organization's place to judge the methods they use one way or another. And on that front, I can understand the logic; they just don't want the burden of judging how people write. After all, NaNo is a self-induced challenge. No one forces people to do it, so why should the organization be that picky about how it enforces its standards?

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. AI has become an umbrella term for multiple different types of technology, but at the core of this particular issue is generative AI like ChatGPT. The Author's Guild is currently embroiled in a lawsuit against ChatGPT's parent company Open AI over their decision to use thousands of novels to power their AI without seeking copyright permission. Earlier this year, Open AI admitted in a filing to British Parliament that ChatGPT could not be powered without copyrighted material, which means that the entire business is dependent on material it used without compensation or consent from those who created it. The regulation of AI is one of the most pressing issues currently facing many creative industries, including publishing.

Complicating all this further is the fact that NaNoWriMo accepted a new sponsor this year, ProWritingAid, whose main product is an "AI-powered writing coach." So of course they were never going to condemn using AI in your NaNoWriMo writing challenges when they're being partially funded by one of the very companies pushing it.

Writers categorically condemn NaNoWriMo's new AI policy

Needless to say, a writing organization like NaNoWriMo putting out a statement like this ruffled some feathers. Already, numerous authors have announced publicly that they're resigning from the organization's Writers Board, such as Daniel José Older, one of the authors behind the new run of Star Wars books set in the High Republic, who said on Twitter/X that he was "officially stepping down from [NaNoWriMo's] Writers Board and encouraging every writer I know to do the same." Cass Morris, another author and longtime NaNoWriMo supporter, published an essay detailing her decision to step down from the Writers Board as well. Author Maureen Johnson similarly stepped down from the NaNo Writers Board of the Young Writers Program over the statement. A cursory search through Twitter, Bluesky, or Google brings up plenty of similar stories.

NaNoWriMo has already responded to the backlash, updating their article with a new paragraph. “We are troubled by situational abuse of AI, and that certain situational abuses clearly conflict with our values,” it reads. “We also want to make clear that AI is a large umbrella technology and that the size and complexity of that category (which includes both non-generative and generative AI, among other uses) contributes to our belief that it is simply too big to categorically endorse or not endorse.”

Whether that update will make any difference, only time will tell. This isn't the organization's first scandal in recent years. Barely a year ago, they came under fire when a longtime NaNoWriMo forum moderator was accused of child endangerment and grooming. This new AI scandal is much less worrying than that one, where minors were at risk from predatory behavior, but once again it seems like the organization's handling of things is creating far more friction than there needs to be. Really, they could have just said "we don't want to deal with making a statement on AI" and it probably would have gone over a lot better than telling writers they're "classist and ableist" for condemning something which many consider to be one of the single largest threats to their profession at the moment.

Having both of these scandals break over the course of one year paints a bleak picture for the future of an organization which has been crucial in many writers' journeys. We'll see how the story develops from here.

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h/t The Verge