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For years, people cautioned, “it’s coming.” And now, for better or worse, Artificial Intelligence is here.

Artificial Intelligence has been used in rough incarnations since the mid 20th century, but it wasn’t until the mid-2020s that smoothly comprehensive Large Language Models infiltrated the creative landscape. The most widely used LLM is ChatGPT, a text-derivation juggernaut that can perform a life-changing array of cerebral tasks — everything from analyzing your love life to outlining a dystopian novel.

But the very notion of AI “writing” a book is dystopian: Why should real writers even try anymore when LLMs are gaining sophistication seemingly overnight?

Well, here’s the thing: AI can instantly sort and extrapolate patterns. It can research human, natural, and cultural history back to the single-cell era. It can organize, categorize, circle back, double down, and carry the three. But it can’t think. Every scene AI “writes,” every bit of suggested dialogue it dribbles out onto your screen, is a futuristically fast remix of existing text. Nothing fresh or inspired will ever emerge from AI. While its practical uses are endless and even intimidating, its vulnerability to backlash cannot be deprogrammed. And in fact, rebellion is already on the rise.

In this class, we’ll talk about what AI can and can’t do, its humorous and even dangerous pitfalls, some of its legal ramifications, and why writers shouldn’t be intimidated by the idea of artificial intelligence replacing the creative imagination. Because it can’t.

Melanie McGee Bianchi has worked as a features journalist in Western North Carolina for 30 years, writing arts, nature, and culture stories and editing regional lifestyle publications including Mountain Xpress, VERVE Magazine for Women, Bold Life, Asheville Made, and Carolina Home + Garden, with work forthcoming in the online edition of The London Magazine. Additionally, she’s published music features and personal essays in Oxford American and is an award-winning short-story writer whose work has appeared nationally and internationally in The Mississippi Review Summer Prize Issue, The Irish Times, and several other journals. Melanie’s first book, The Ballad of Cherrystoke + Other Stories, was published by Blackwater Press. She is represented by Trident Media and has a novel in the works. Melanie teaches creative writing as part of the Community Enrichment program at A-B Tech. In April, her essay about Sylvia Plath will appear in The London Magazine online.