I think NaNoWriMo walked into a controversy unnecessarily just because they wanted to speak without getting off their high horse first.
They were never going to speak against AI when some of their main sponsors are AI companies. But they could have said "we are tool-agnostic" and be done with it. Instead they decided to paint AI use as "ableist and classist" while describing those working in the publishing industry (aka "their participants") as "resources" one rents by the hour. At no point did they acknowledge that those "resources" are seeing their livelihoods threatened by the same tools NaNoWriMo is promoting.
This controversy led me to learn that NaNoWriMo is not a "quirky" side project anymore but rather a non-profit with $1.6M revenue in 2022 alone. I guess it's hard for them to understand how difficult things are for the "resources" down below when they're looking from that high up.
They were never going to speak against AI when some of their main sponsors are AI companies. But they could have said "we are tool-agnostic" and be done with it. Instead they decided to paint AI use as "ableist and classist" while describing those working in the publishing industry (aka "their participants") as "resources" one rents by the hour. At no point did they acknowledge that those "resources" are seeing their livelihoods threatened by the same tools NaNoWriMo is promoting.
This controversy led me to learn that NaNoWriMo is not a "quirky" side project anymore but rather a non-profit with $1.6M revenue in 2022 alone. I guess it's hard for them to understand how difficult things are for the "resources" down below when they're looking from that high up.