I am a victim in the AI wars. Or the aggressor. I haven’t quite decided which.
I’m going to admit, right up front, that I am an avid and enthusiastic user of what we’ve come to call “AI”, the billion-parameter knowledge sets that complete prompts in ways that seem almost human. Almost. We’ll get to that.
Back in 2022, just before ChatGPT was released to the world, where LLMs could only generate maybe a sentence or three at a time and would lose their memory after just a couple of paragraphs, I used AI to generate descriptions and art for 31 games, all based off the day number. The game rules didn’t make any sense. The art was terrible. I had fun with it, but there was no way that the tech of four years ago would ever be in danger of replacing any written or painted work.
A lot has changed since then! Now the US economy is dependent on using AI as much as possible, regardless of the costs. Data centers to support AI are crushing rural communities all over the nation; they are using up all the power to run the CPUs and all the water to cool them. They want to litter outer space with these, too. The biggest corporations in the country are playing hot potato with the billions of dollars in investments that they make in each other’s companies in order to pretend someone is making money. It’s all going to come crashing down. AI is ruining the country, the climate and the world and the only real question is whether or not the plates will come crashing down before the country does. The rich people will stay rich, of course; don’t worry about them. It will be the people with retirement plans and the people who have little savings at all that will pay the price.
So don’t tell me that I don’t understand the downsides of AI. I won’t even mention all the authors and artists that have had their life’s works stolen to train these models, or the overseas workers making pennies to categorize the images and other works so that they can be ingested by the models.
Okay, so I did mention it. I have no control over all that, though. Nothing I do or don’t do will affect any of this in the slightest. In fact, like millions of other knowledge workers, I am required to use LLMs at work and part of my compensation is based on using it a lot. I’d rather not, to be honest.
Last week, we were in PI planning, and management was telling us how programmers were learning all sorts of new skills by using AI to code for them, and then they would learn from the generated code. I offered that that wasn’t how this worked at all. Since they are giving us more work to do, there is no time to learn. There’s only time to write prompts, confirm the code matches the spec, and move on to the next. People are writing programs in programming languages that they don’t even understand. And at the end of the day, they still don’t understand them.
But hey, even knowing all this, I like having AI help write programs for myself, and generate cool images. If OpenAI and Anthropic and all them disappeared tomorrow, I’d just write programs entirely by hand and make my own images or steal them from the internet, like before.
So: AI and Blaugust.
It’s weird that the only introduction on the Blaugust sign-up form is a caution on using LLMs during the challenge.
Use of AI as a Blaugust Participant
Blaugust celebrates human creativity, personal expression and the shared experience of making and publishing something of your own. Participants are welcome to use AI tools for assistance, but the substantive creative contribution to a Blaugust post must come from the participant.
Posts that are wholly or substantially generated by AI should not be submitted as Blaugust content or counted towards Blaugust awards. This includes supplying an AI system with a prompt, notes or bullet points and asking it to produce, substantially rewrite or expand them into a finished post. Lightly editing an AI-generated article does not make it human-written.
A simple rule of thumb is – AI may assist your creative work, but it should not replace your creative contribution.
I’ve got no problem with this, by the way. Community organizers are free to make the rules for their communities; if people don’t like them, they do not have to participate. I wasn’t thrilled when Wes Fenlon denied me a spot in his gaming blog webring because I use AI-generated images, but it was 100% fine for him to choose with whom he associates, and I could just not use AI-generated images and be golden. We make our choices.
Here’s my finely-grained dividing line: I don’t agree that entirely AI generated posts should be verboten. And this isn’t just because I spent an entire Blaugust doing precisely that. I’ve come around to believing — my own personal choice — that I should not be putting my name on any AI-generated writing. I can’t draw; writing is really my chosen way to present myself and my ideas to the world. One can look at the earliest posts on this very blog to see just how far I have come as a writer, largely via blogging.
But this is my choice.
There are people on my Daily Blogroll who use AI to write some of their posts and own up to it, and there are people there who use AI to write some of their posts and do not. But I believe that in both cases, people are not trying to generate slop content for clicks and lols, but are trying to express thoughts and ideas they find hard to express in any other way.
If people are generating bad content, nobody will read it. People will choose not to read it, perhaps because it is AI generated, perhaps because it just isn’t interesting. One thing I have noticed about both AI-generated writing and images. AI cannot be creative. It just can’t. It can only reshuffle something that someone else has already created.
And so, this is my argument: Blaugust should be an expression of your creativity. It should be personal. Every one of these thirty-one posts should, explicitly or implicitly, tell me something about you. If a post says nothing about you and your personal experience, then I don’t care if the post was AI generated or not; it will be boring and I will not read it. If your post feels like you’re making a connection to the reader, showing us something new, bringing us along on something you have discovered — well, I’m there for it. Right next to you. I won’t ask how much was AI generated because I’ll know that whatever tools you used, they worked because now I know you a little better.
I wrote a comment about Blaugust on Mastodon but deleted it because I figured all it would do is upset people and no one cares what I think.
But I do miss when Blaugust was about fun and creativty and supporting each other, not about beaurocracy and rules that must be follow to WIN THE PRIZE.
The prize should be the blog posts you create (however you create them). As soon as they started giving out prizes, they started killing off Blaugust. [Same path that NaNoWriMo followed… remember when the only official rules for NaNoWriMo was that you maybe skimmed the book “No Plot, No Problem”? And then you tried to write 50K words in November and if you did you got to say “Yay I did it.” and that was enough of a prize. Oh, and you had a novel you’d written… but no one cares about that. It is “Did you WIN the NaNoWriMo badge?”]
I’m not participating in Blaugust this year. Not meaning I won’t write 31 posts — though I won’t be doing that either — but making a deliberate effort not to read anything tagged with Blaugust.
The fact that I am not part of the discord or anything, and I am still aware of this AI controversy, says it all. The outrage about the event rules is drowning out any good that might come from the event.
Well, people like the badges. I display mine 🙂 Well, I guess I didn’t have one last year. I don’t think I posted much, last year.
Blaugust is how I started blogging again. I’d been on Twitter and then Google Plus and then back to Twitter, but Twitter was becoming evil and I was thinking about blogging somewhere where I controlled it all and some other megacorp couldn’t just erase it. Belghast and Blaugust were there to ease me back into it. So I have nothing but warm feelings for Blaugust.
I understand why the Blaugust organizers hope for no AI. I don’t think it’s going to work; those people who were going to use AI will keep using it. It’s not a fight anyone has to have. The more people blogging, the better — that’s the core concept. If LLM posts help someone get the confidence to start writing posts on their own — fantastic. If it convinces them that AI without a substantial injection of creativity from the author is useless but so much better when they contribute — even better.
I see AI as a way for bloggers to find their footing, to get into their lane, to measure what they’re posting against others, to see what real writing looks like and inspire them to, as I said above, to share themselves. It’s scary and painful and worth doing. I don’t want to shut the door in their face. I think those who never valued the blogging experience won’t stick around. Those that do, well, I think they will reach the point where they don’t need LLMs at all. And then we all win.
I really wish this wasn’t going “by the book”. Blaugust used to be a celebration; now it’s the corporatization of the concept. I know that Bel HAD to address AI use and I am certain he did the very best he could, but now that he’s gone it feels like children squabbling over how to run the kingdom. Bloggers going after bloggers and gatekeeping over what is and what isn’t true blogging is counter to what the event was about when it started.
Since a house divided and all that, I think Nimgimli was right and that the event HAS outlived it’s usefulness. Cramming “a celebration of blogging” into a single month worked when blogging was getting curb stomped by video, but now that many bloggers know about the event and how it works, it’s purpose, and how to onboard new users, it’s time they remembered what it’s ABOUT: getting people writing not just for one month but for the whole year.
Blogging needs less pomp and circumstance and more 24/7, 365 community support. Bloggers need to support bloggers every day. I don’t read every post I see, but I try to boost their reach so they are seen by people who DO want to read those kinds of posts. Relying on RSS or hash tags is good, but it’s still one person hustling in the hopes that their content reaches the right eyeballs. I think we need more people helping people, and I DO think that Tipa’s AI generated synopsis does that. If someone did that task by hand, they’d be celebrated; does the fact that you automated it make it less useful to the community or to the blogs you’re boosting? I think it’s purely sour grapes on the part of some people, and it’s coming from “inside the house” in a way that kind of hurts my soul.
I agree that blogging just to blog, and opting to use AI for it, is missing the point. I think anyone who does this is being lured in by Nimgimli’s point on the gamification of the whole thing. People love to earn and be seen earning, and it’s a quick way to get on the board, assuming “showing up” is the highest prize that can be won. But is argument seems less about authenticity and more about people exercising their new authority to beat people over the heads with their own agendas. If authenticity is served in the process, it’s a side-effect.
I don’t know what people are reading or where, but as far as I am aware, Blaugust is still a celebration of blogging that tries not only to get people involved for a month but possibly the long term.
There are no rules.
There are some guidelines. They are just that, guidelines. In so far that they provide “guidance”. The thing that always strikes me about guidance is that it’s there to guide you, if you see fit. You can read the guidelines and say “duly noted” and then do the complete opposite if you wish to. Frankly, if you want to film yourself, rolling around in a pile of faecal matter and then upload it to YouTube, you can if you really want to.
Furthermore, we don’t read every post that’s shared during Blaugust and check for AI. Nor do we then send Bulk and Skull round to people’s houses to punish any transgressions.
As for the gamification of blogging throughout Blaugust, it helps some folk. So is that a big deal? But again, it is optional. I tend to do my own thing during Blaugust and seldom do all the prompts and activities. Lots of other participants do exactly the same.
I have read the comments above and I bear no ill will to those who have made them but I don’t recognise a lot of what is being argued against. I certainly don’t get the “authority” criticism. If there is a specific criticism please make it. Be clear in detail so we can check it veracity.
As for the AI usage dispute, a position was agreed among those who are organizing this years event. Ultimately, it was just a clarification of last years position. It’s a compromise, as these thing so often are. Some people didn’t agree with this position and left the event. There was then a few comments traded on someone’s blog about this situation and they could be construed as a bit “baity”. It’s all somewhat subjective. If it were me, it would be water off a Duck’s back but we’re all different. That matter has now blown over as far as I’m aware. But there certainly isn’t a politburo running Blaugust and pushing some complex agenda. Like we have the time for such dramatic bullshit.
However, I do not claim to be all knowing and may be misreading the “room”. So I’ll be doing exactly what I described in my blog post today. I’ll also try and make myself useful on the Blaugust Discord. I also like to leave comments on the blogs that are new to the event, if possible. I like to encourage people to write. I do this every year and have since the first NBI in 2012.
In Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, much of the book is concerned with recognizing “Quality”. I call this “big-Q” Quality. It’s something everyone can recognize when they see it.
Pirsig wouldn’t have been super concerned about the process to arrive at the Quality, but he would have been very dismissive of anyone who spent their time and money not making something the best they could make.
I’d have preferred to see, on the Blaugust sign-up form, something about “we hope you will try your best, but will celebrate your creativity and are grateful you are keeping the bright flame of blogging alive in this dark world.” Or something.
Low Quality posts will be dismissed and forgotten, whether or not AI was used.
Roger, I appreciate your work and that of the other organizers. I want the 2026 Blaugust to capture the spirit of the community you and Mark and all the others created. I hate that AI use was seen as any sort of discussion point, much less the primary one.
We have enough trouble bringing new bloggers into the fold.
I think I’m already on record as not ever having liked the achievement aspect of Blaugust but unless I’m misremembering, that was 100% Belghast’s idea and execution. I’m pretty sure most, if not all, the achievements this year were cut&pasted from the ones he came up with years ago. Personally, I never claim them or use any of the badges but over the years lots of people have had lots of fun with them and they’ve been a core part of the event for most of the time it’s existed.
Added to which, even before that, the event was innately competitive, with the whole point being to post 31 days in a row, which was Bel’s original challenge. I know he mellowed on that over the years and it became a point of principle to stress how optional the various targets and challenges are, but they’re still the framework on which the whole thing rests.
I think the whole encouraging new bloggers to start and lapsed bloggers to return comes more from the New Blogger Initiative, which was incorporated into Blaugust. It might be worth considering splitting that back out into its own event next year but the problem with that, and with Developer.Creator Awareness Week, which also got rolled into Blaugust, is that there wasn’t anyone willing to carry on running them after a certain point, so Bel stepped in and took them on because that’s the kind of thing he did. Whether anyone would want to take them on now, I doubt but the NBI certainly ought to carry on in some form. It was a great event in its own right.
On the substantive point of AI usage, I’m at the more positive end of the scale. I use AI all the time for music and I’m extremely happy with the results. I sometimes share some of that on the blog although that’s not what it’s for. It’s for me. I use AI images on the blog sometimes, if I feel there’s a point to doing so. I use AI for ad hoc research as I’m writing because it’s at the top of all my search results anyway so why not? I don’t use many AI pictures, though, because it takes way longer than I want to spend to get good results and while it amused me to do that a few years ago, it doesn’t any more. I also have to double-check all the AI research because a lot of it is just plain wrong. AI is a tool. Use it or don’t as you prefer, that’s my position.
I think the guidelines for Blaugust this year are fine. They only refer to the achievements anyway. If you sign up and submit posts that have mostly or completely been produced using AI, they’re still going to be included in Blaugust-the-Event. Everyone will still see them and be able to read them if they want to. They just won’t be counted for the various achievements.
Does that really matter? It doesn’t to me because, as I said, I don’t care about the achievements anyway. in fact, I mildly dislike them. I’d prefer it if they weren’t there but they aren’t for me so I just ignore them, which is very easy to do. I would like to think all the people who don’t like AI would extend the same courtesy and just ignore any blogs or posts that use it but some people seem to walk around looking for hills to die on…
I’m going to use exactly as much AI on my blog during Blaugust as I would have if it was July or September and I’d strongly encourage everyone else to do the same. I’m sure we’ll all survive!