I'm concerned about paying someone to edit my book, and they use AI and still charge the same price. And missing things that could make the story better. I am okay with assistive AI, such as spellcheck (God bless, because my fingers are dyslexic), but paying someone $800+ to use AI is discouraging.

at this point, I'm fine not 'keeping up'.

Right? But it really does help!

I forgot about that! I remember hearing her talk about that when I was much younger. (I never liked her, even as a kid and huge Harry Potter fan.)

Please support the authors who pulled out of this event. And please continue standing up to AI infiltrating every medium of art and every part of our lives. <3

Your frustration was and is 100% valid. This was not how the session was communicated, and they are backpedalling. In my opinion, they may deserve cautious forgiveness, but not donations. They need to recover from this obviously poor tone-deaf choice on their own. This wasn't one person.

I'm very impressed. And I'm being serious. I Google emdash and copy and paste it.

I work in communications and have to follow a style guide. I'm trained to use the emdash. It is real! I do it automatically in my writing. I support the AI is bad narrative, and I also support emdashes.

A session/panel on AI and how it is affecting the writing and editing of books would be the better approach. This is so disappointing, and I really loved this festival. :(