Feminist Author Mary Robinette Kowal Takes Heat For Admitting To Using AI To Write Her Latest Novel

Perhaps the biggest possible scandal among the BlueSky crowd is the use of AI. Traditional publishing has worked itself into a frenzy over the technology tool, and people are out looking for, in many cases, literal blood from people who utilize it. Now, Mary Robinette Kowal is under fire after admitting to using the tool in her latest DEI sci-fi screed.

The world first heard of Mary Robinette Kowal as she was brought into Brandon Sanderson’s Writing Excuses podcast as a co-host. The men there wanted to virtue signal by bringing in a female with feminist leanings as a “new perspective” for their audiences. The show’s tone soon changed from fun to something different, but it propelled Mary Robinette Kowal to some prominence in the industry.

Most of Kowal’s work appeared to be romances billed as sci-fi, for which she started winning the award circuit for her outspoken feminism with the John. W Campbell award for best new writer. Her clout in the industry increased, and soon, her award nominations did as well.

Like many writers in the elites, there’s little information on how much she’s sold or what kind of readership she’s cultivated, but a string of award wins and nominations a mile long.

Eventually, she parlayed her awards into a Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) presidency, where she began the decline of the professional organization into the embattled social club it is today.

Mary Robinette Kowal was also brought in to run WorldCon in Washington, D.C., after scandals led prior chairs to step down. The weapons manufacturer Raytheon sponsored the convention, and the sci-fi fandom quickly chastised the convention, and she was forced to apologize for it.

She also had a history of attacking conservatives in science fiction. She used her blog and clout to attack authors who organized the Sad Puppies slate of nominees in the Hugo Awards. “Historically, every time there’s an advance in the rights of a disenfranchised group, whether that’s women’s lib or desegregation, there’s a corresponding pushback by the dominant group because it feels like it is losing power,” she wrote at the time on her blog while attacking Baen Books writer Larry Correia and his friends in the industry.

Her Lady Astronaut series is a hallmark of her feminism and her push to move science fiction away from being little more than romance novels in a space setting, with many critics describing her plots as not much happening at all outside of the intrapersonal moments and explicit sex scenes, which earn Kowal award nominations. The most recent book, The Martian Contingency, advocated for the murder of babies within the book, which was cheered on by the publishing elite.

Unfortunately, they didn’t realize she used the dreaded AI.

Authors have been reacting to SFWA changing their rules for the Nebula Awards regarding AI, and Mary Robinette Kowal admitted her use of it on BlueSky in response to it.

One wonders how much AI she utilized in the book with this, pardon the pun, nebulous statement. However, one can make an educated deduction from SFWA’s now removed rules that she wrote something using generative large language models in the book and it wasn’t just something used to hunt typos:

Apparently, the backlash was so bad that she received death threats for posting about it:

Fan reaction continued to pour on in opposition to Mary Robinette Kowal on BlueSky afterward:

It appears that no matter who much SJW virtue signaling Mary Robinette Kowal does, AI use in any form is simply too far for the mob of her audience.

What do you think of this AI news?

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