NaNoWriMo Organizers Said It Was Classist and Ableist to Condemn AI. All Hell Broke Loose

National Novel Writing Month has long been known for its quirky, homegrown approach to creativity: Write a novel during the month of November! But last Friday, the 25-year-old nonprofit, known as NaNoWriMo for short, shocked many in the writing community when it published a controversial statement detailing its position on AI. In it, NaNoWriMo asserted that the "categorical condemnation" of artificial intelligence has "classist and ableist undertones." The statement went viral on social media over the weekend, drawing fire from longtime participants and well-known authors, some of whom credit the completion of their first novels to the organization. Four members of NaNoWriMo's writers board, including science fiction/fantasy writer Daniel José Older and fantasy writer Cass Morris, have now publicly stepped down from their roles in response.