Book Dragon Editorial
AI Policy
I, Katherine Suzette, will abide by this policy, and will expect similar from clients (and a full disclosure of AI usage during a conversation to ensure that I am comfortable taking on a manuscript).
Effective Date: 08-01-2025
Purpose: This policy is written to ensure my clients and community know where I (Katherine Suzette) stand on my personal use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI, and how it aligns with the business values for Book Dragon Editorial.
Note for clients: If you are a potential client and are using, or considering using, AI to aid you with writing your book, my AI policy may be a helpful guide to help you decide how and how much to use AI. As always, do your own research and use your own discretion, but know that many editors and other publishing industry businesses are developing their own AI policies which may exclude your manuscript if you use AI in a way that goes outside of their policy’s comfort zone.
Let me (Katherine Suzette) begin by saying, AI is awesome. And AI can be really harmful—especially to creatives and to the environment.
Artificial Intelligence is negatively impacting creative careers, income from human-generated work, and the capacity humans have for creativity (when relied on generatively for final works).
AI also helps small businesses and human-driven brands to keep up with the market and do more than is humanly possible in a day.
It helps us to learn the basic skills for menial tasks quickly, or helps us by performing those menial tasks well enough that we can focus on the things that bring us joy (or money). I love using AI to discuss/research what I need to do to adjust my budgeting, how to create content pillars, and figure out what the weaknesses are for the monsters I create for my next horror element in a novel.
I often use AI to generate inspiration, understand a task I have little or no previous experience with, or get me started on a project.
However,
AI generated content will ever be in any of my final, client or reader-facing, works.
I will not copy + paste AI into my policies, contracts, websites, leadpages, social media content, blog posts, or books.
I will never knowingly share any client work with any AI that might mine it for data.
I commit to doing my best to stay informed of the risks relevant to writers.
As an editor, I contractually obligate my clients to disclose any AI use or influence in their writing before I agree to edit and I will not take on any fully AI generated writing projects.
I believe that AI will never replace human creativity and intelligence. It is “artificial.” While our food industry has proven that we don’t mind some artificial ingredients here and there, the unadulterated, pesticide-free, human creativity is better for us. It feels better to our brains and our bodies, not only to read human-written works, but to also create them ourselves.
AI doesn’t think like humans or do a great job with predicting human behavior. It may adapt more in the near future, but I still believe it will never erase the need for human oversight and creativity.
Whenever possible, I commit to hiring human help for even the tasks that AI can do to whatever degree I, or my team, deems best for our businesses and our communities. For example, as a lean startup, BDInk may use the help of AI to plan our marketing strategy in the early days. And with such help, we plan, and expect, to be able to afford human help with all areas of marketing sooner than we may be able to without the help of AI.
AI programs I use daily: Google search engine, MS Word spell check, Gemini spell-check, Claude.
I do use generative AI, and I do so consciously and with a commitment to fighting for the rights of creatives to their work (and how it is used) and to limiting my other impacts on the environment. I will change and adapt how I use it as I observe AI’s integration into the world and the impacts of it.
I believe that humanity may be able to negate or even heal much of the negative impact to the environment, perhaps even with the help of generative AI, but I do not believe it can heal the harm it does to creatives.
Whilst I cannot undo the harm it has already done, I commit to being a part of the fight for AI to be used more ethically.
Unfortunately, the environmental impact is already bad and has the potential to be truly horrific, especially in regions and nations most vulnerable to environmental abuse. It is humans who have a responsibility to use their power (AI and otherwise) to limit and rectify this in any way possible.
I commit to being part of the solution that finds a way for AI use and environmental healing to be synergetic.