I chronicle the ups and downs of creating a niche artistic product such as this in annual reports, the latest of which I just released last week. It offers a transparent view into what goes into making a creative project such as this, and also what you get out of it, because I share all the financial data down to specific revenue streams.
As such, I hope it can be of use to others who are undertaking a similar endeavour. Feel free to ask questions should you have any!
Cheers
To the author: do you use AI at all in the creative aspects of the production? I assume that AI assistance in creative writing is now mainstream, and an accepted tool for most writers. I am interested to know your thoughts on this subject and if you use AI then what sort of methods do you use?
Note: Google Gemini reports that "the most successful writers in 2025 use me as a "distillation machine." They write 1,000 words of raw emotion, then ask me to help them find the "300 words that actually matter"
But presumably the LLMs do have some knowledge about how they are used?
On further probing Gemini did give a plausible justification - in summary:
"Creation is easy. Selection is hard. In an era of infinite content, the "most successful" writer isn't the one who can produce the most; it's the one with the best taste. Using an LLM as a distillation machine allows a writer to iterate through their own ideas at 10x speed, discarding the "average" and keeping only the "potent."
It absolutely is not. In fact the Nebula awards just banned entries from having _any_ AI use involved with them whatsoever. You can't even use them for grammar correction.
I do sometimes use it as thesaurus on steroids when I can't think of the right word or if I need to check grammar / sentence structure (I'm not a native speaker). I would never use AI in the way Gemini self-reports (and I doubt that's really a thing anyway).
I might be tempted to use it for episode art if I didn't have access to a professional illustrator.
I am experimenting with some AI-generated music at the moment, but that's for background cues that I'd use canned royalty-free music for anyway (emotionally important scenes have tailored-made music done by a professional composer).
One way I'm eyeing to use AI in the future is as a way to translate what are currently audio stories into video. But I feel we're still not there.
pclark•2h ago