(This is the fourth in a series on generative AI content.)
In the age of generative AI, a new form of dismissal has emerged, aimed squarely at writers who voice concern about their work being scraped, replicated, and displaced by machines: “If you really love writing, you shouldn’t care.” The logic goes like this—true writers write for the joy of it, for the art, for the personal fulfillment. If financial concerns or recognition come into play, well, maybe those writers were never in it for the right reasons.
It’s a sentiment that, on the surface, seems noble. Who doesn’t believe in passion as a driving force behind creativity? But in practice, this rhetoric is deeply cruel and demotivating, especially when it comes from the very people benefiting from the unpaid labor of those they claim shouldn’t care.
Passion Is Not Permission
The idea that writers should “just write for the love of it” becomes toxic when used to invalidate concerns about exploitation. Loving one’s craft does not mean consenting to that work being harvested, repurposed, or replaced—especially without credit, compensation, or consent. Telling writers to simply accept this is not only dismissive; it’s gaslighting.
Imagine someone walking into a painter’s studio, taking photos of every piece, reproducing them digitally, selling them for profit, and saying, “If you really loved painting, you wouldn’t care that I’m making money off your work.” That wouldn’t be seen as flattery—it would be theft. Yet this is exactly what’s happening to writers when their books, stories, scripts, and essays are scraped to train AI systems, only for those systems to generate new content that competes with the originals.
The False Binary Between Love and Livelihood
Loving a craft and seeking to earn a living from it are not mutually exclusive. In fact, for many writers, the dream has always been to build a life around their passion—to make the thing they love sustainable. The suggestion that passion should disqualify the need for payment isn’t just insulting—it’s economically devastating.
This mindset treats writing as a hobby unless it benefits tech companies. When writers ask to be paid, they’re told they should just be grateful to be creating at all. Meanwhile, those using AI-generated writing—built on scraped work—have no issue profiting. The contradiction is glaring: writers are told to expect nothing, while others build fortunes off their work.
Demoralizing the Very People Who Feed the System
There’s an extra sting to this dismissal when it comes from proponents of generative AI, because the technology itself depends on the work of those very writers. AI language models don’t create in a vacuum—they learn by absorbing billions of words written by real humans. Stories, dialogue, poetry, screenplays, articles—every dataset is built from the love, labor, and language of real people who poured themselves into the craft.
To then turn around and tell those same people that their motivation should somehow shield them from frustration, anger, or grief as their work is used without acknowledgment—that’s not just unkind. It’s exploitation masquerading as idealism.
The Damage to Creative Motivation
When writers are told their love of writing should override every other concern, the message received isn’t inspiring—it’s demoralizing. It says: “This system is allowed to use and erase you, and if that bothers you, you’re not a real artist.” That kind of rhetoric doesn’t uplift writers. It silences them. It shames them for expecting fairness. And it creates a chilling environment where the only “good” creatives are the ones who stay quiet while their work is taken.
Love Deserves Respect
Writing for love doesn’t mean writing for free. It doesn’t mean writing for the benefit of corporations that never asked permission. And it certainly doesn’t mean staying silent while one’s career path is rewritten without consent.
True respect for writing—for any art form—means valuing the people who create it. Not just when they’re pouring their hearts into the work, but when they ask to be treated fairly. Passion should never be weaponized to excuse exploitation.
Writers do love writing. That’s exactly why this matters so much.