New fiction course allows writers to incorporate and “resist” AI influence
Rice is bringing generative artificial intelligence into the creative writing world with this fall’s new course, “ENGL 306: AI Fictions.” Ian Schimmel, an associate teaching professor in the English and creative writing department, said he teaches the course to help students think critically about technology and consider the ways that AI models could be used in the creative processes of fiction writing.
The course is structured for any level of writer and also includes space to both incorporate and resist the influence of AI, according to its description.
“In this class, we never sit down with ChatGPT and tell it to write us a story and that’s that,” Schimmel wrote in an email to the Thresher. “We don’t use it to speed up the artistic process, either. Instead, we think about how to incorporate it in ways that might expand our thinking.”
Schimmel said he was stunned by the capabilities of ChatGPT when it was initially released in 2022, wondering if it truly possessed the ability to write. He said he found that the topic generated more questions than answers.
The next logical step, for Schimmel, was to create a course centered on exploring the complexities of AI and fiction writing, with assigned readings ranging from New York Times opinion pieces critical of its usage to an AI-generated poetry collection.
Schimmel said both students and faculty share concerns about how AI can help or harm academic progress and potentially cripple human creativity.
“Classes that engage students with AI might be some of the best ways to learn about what these systems can and cannot do,” Schimmel wrote. “There are so many things that AI is terrible at and incapable of. Seeing that firsthand is empowering. Whenever it hallucinates, glitches or makes you frustrated, you suddenly remember: ‘Oh right — this is a machine. This is nothing like me.”
“Fear is intrinsic to anything that shakes industry like AI is doing,” Robert Gray, a Brown College senior, wrote in an email to the Thresher. “I am taking this class so that I can immerse myself in that fear and learn how to navigate these new industrial landscapes.”
The course approaches AI from a fluid perspective that evolves as the class reads and writes more with the technology, Schimmel said. Their answers to the complex ethical questions surrounding AI usage evolve with this.
“At its core, the technology is fundamentally unethical,” Schimmel wrote. “It was developed and enhanced, without permission, on copyrighted text and personal data and without regard for the environment. So in that failed historical context, the question becomes: what do we do now? Paradoxically, the best way for us to formulate and evidence arguments against this technology might be to get to know it on a deep and personal level.”
Generative AI is often criticized for its ethicality, such as the energy output and water demanded for its data centers to function or how the models are trained based on data sets of existing copyrighted works.
Amazon and Google-backed Anthropic recently settled a class-action lawsuit with a group of U.S. authors who accused the company of using millions of pirated books to train its Claude chatbot to respond to human prompts.
With the assistance of AI, students will be able to attempt large-scale projects that typically would not be possible within a single semester, according to the course overview. AI will accelerate the writing process for drafting a book outline, and students can “collaborate” with AI to write the opening chapters of a novel for NaNoWriMo, a worldwide writing event held every November where participants would produce a 50,000-word first draft of a novel.
NaNoWriMo, short for National Novel Writing Month, announced its closing after more than 20 years in spring 2025. It received widespread press coverage for a statement released in 2024 that said condemnation of AI in writing “has classist and ableist undertones.” Many authors spoke out against the perceived endorsement of using generative AI for writing and the implication that disabled writers would require AI to produce work.
Each weekly class involves experimentation in dialogues and writing sessions with ChatGPT, with Schimmel and his students acknowledging the unknown and unexplored within AI and especially the visual and literary arts. Aspects of AI, from creative copyrights to excessive water usage to its accuracy as an editor, were discussed in one Friday session in the Wiess College classroom.
“We’re always better off when we pay attention to our attention. If there’s a topic (or tech) that creates worry, or upset, or raises difficult questions, then that’s a subject that we should pursue,” Schimmel wrote. “It’s in those undefined, sometimes uncomfortable places where we humans do our best, most important learning.”
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