Blog Issue #11, November 2025
This edition considers our AI use perceptions—our fears, beliefs, hopes, and doubts—and how these shape the ways we interact with AI, especially as creatives. Our emotional responses and thought patterns influence these perceptions and choices.
Image: Catharina Steel, drawing a round house layout similar to one she remembers drawing as a nine-year-old, October 2025. Words on the image: AI and How We Think—AI Use Perceptions (Part Two)
People experience AI differently based on their AI use perceptions. Human reactions help explain why some feel threatened by AI, while others see opportunity. These varied responses reflect our individual mental frameworks and emotional experiences.
This series invites us to reflect on these diverse emotional and mental responses, not just in abstract, but as real influences on our behavior with AI. How we perceive AI, shapes how we use it—or avoid it. Recognizing these mental and emotional factors can help us approach AI-use more consciously and ethically.
The focus is on shifting how we think about AI by exploring ethical use. I wonder how we might create ethical guidelines for the general AI user population?
AI use perceptions—a tool, not a threat
Our emotional relationship with AI shapes whether we see AI as a threat or a tool. The fear of AI typically stems from an emotional response rooted in real concerns about creators’ livelihoods. Understanding this helps to shift our mindset toward AI-collaboration instead of apprehension.
If we embrace AI ethically, we can turn that threat into an advantage—changing our emotional and mental bias. Through thoughtful AI-collaboration, creators can take back control of their work. Afterall, the best writing always involves human judgment and their unique voice and identity.
Wouldn’t it be great if this sparked an ethical framework everyone could follow to use AI responsibly?
Mental-load with AI-collaboration
Understanding our mental-load, in addition to our AI Use Perceptions, helps us to consider why and when we choose to use AI. It also sheds light on maintaining balance and ethical boundaries with AI-collaboration. This can help to highlight when we may be stepping over that invisible ethical AI-use line.
Research AI-collaboration
Whatever your AI use perceptions are, when it comes to research, AI-assistance is powerful. It can reduce weeks or months of digging for information—not to mention lightening the mental-load required with this work. But it’s vital to double-check the facts!
Whether it is researching a book’s setting, history, culture, audience, or the ever-changing social media algorithms, AI has the potential to accelerate our ability to build platforms or write books.
Marketing AI-collaboration
It is a fantastic tool to help you identify markets, current trends, and the best posting window for your audience. It can also assist with clarity and flow, scan-ability for easy reading, and primary and secondary keyword optimization in posts, articles, or blogs.
There are several AI platforms out there, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. ChatGPT is great for conversation-style discussions and feedback on writing. Conversely, Perplexity is better for researching markets/audience, historical information, and reviewing copywriting/marketing materials.
Copywriting and marketing are areas where AI is a useful tool—lightening our mental-load. Whether drafting social media posts, creating advertising copy, or something else, copywriting forms the structure and underlying focus. I believe it is helpful to understand the basics of copywriting as a creative.
I use my copywriting knowledge to help me make the most of AI-assistance—maintaining my voice and identity.
AI-collaboration with brainstorming and drafting ideas
AI excels at brainstorming and drafting ideas. I picture this as though I am sitting in a roomful of people coming up with ideas for articles in this month’s issue. AI can even test the validity or market appeal of an idea—alleviating some fears and guesswork.
AI aids with collating points and organizing ideas for a blog or article. I often use ChatGPT’s speech-to-text feature (reducing my arthritic pain) to talk through my thoughts, then check and polish them, ensuring my voice, depth, and perspective remain.
When it comes to manuscript development—whether fiction or nonfiction—AI can support outlining, character development, worldbuilding, and plot structuring. But ultimately, if you want authentic depth and your own voice, the writing and editing work must be done by you—not your AI-assistant.
This maintains the essential human creative voice and identity, which AI cannot replicate—and I don’t believe it ever will. My stance is based on AI being built on statistical algorithms that identify and reproduce patterns in data. It can echo what it has seen (been fed/trained on), but without being human, it cannot grasp meaning or lived experience. Without that, it cannot truly replicate human depth, nuance, perspective, or voice.
AI-generated content verification
AI’s strength as a research tool comes from its speed and ability to pull relevant articles, research material, and other information from across the internet—once again, lightening our mental-load. Doing this manually could take a person hours, weeks, or more—depending on what information they are seeking.
However, as with anything accessed on the internet—not all things are accurate, so it is important to consider the trustworthiness of the source. Since AI is unable to determine this itself, it is up to the user to keep in mind that this is a “trust but verify” tool.
It is necessary to evaluate the information and own the responsibility for what you produce based on the AI-pulled information you are researching. This underscores the psychological need for vigilance and agency in using AI effectively. It is necessary to read through everything it delivers to ensure it is accurate.
AI-power is amazing, but ethical AI-use means being thoughtful and responsible, ensuring your voice, depth, and intentions remain in anything you produce, and that it’s just a tool used to streamline your processes.
For clarity, AI was not used in any stage of drafting, editing, or producing my book, Vanishings.
Coming Up Next
Next month, I will be delving into the use of AI in Author visibility endeavors.
To read my previous post about AI Tells and Human vs AI Writing, click here.
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