Our Heads Are Better Than AI: Working Together on Challenges in Industry
Dear writer,
Right now, the SFF online conversation is potent and proactive (read: FIERY). The topic? AI scammers, the increasing complexity of their scams, and the challenges they pose as they infiltrate one publication, then use that credit to break into more.
To catch you up, I’ll share some resources at the end of this letter. Not everyone is as keyed in on the daily blow-by-blow of social media or reading at the speed of the Internet (I don’t know how you all are even writing creatively these days). For those of you who are online all the time, skim freely.
We want to provide useful guidance for a discussion that airs out the challenges many publishers and writers face in this age of LLM tools. It is so easy to feel shame, frustration, and anger after any scam, but we can’t let that keep us from growing as a community. When we all know what’s going on, we can work toward the changes we want to see.
Thanks to the work of many thoughtful creators on the frontlines, our genre community is now engaging with big questions, like how do we keep our trust networks strong? How do we expand the genre and extend the platform to new and global writers when verification is much harder? And how do we do all of this with the small human teams who run so many of our great publications?
In recent days, the community has come together, through data and compassion, to help answer these questions and to let fellow editors and writers know that they are not alone.
SFWA was hit, too, when Planetside: The Online Magazine of SFWA encountered scammers savvy enough to get past other major publications first. The old model of trusting in legitimate writing credits needs adjustment in our new era. But thanks to our responsive community, we were able to flag the work, take it down, and work on next steps.
Not Everyone Is Taking The Same Next Steps
Some teams, like Planetside, are changing processes for author verification and transforming editorial training. Others are using AI detection tools with final human oversight to reduce the load for their frontline volunteers. We all want our humans to keep working with humans.
But how each team evaluates their own next steps is a complex decision, wrapped up in nuanced discussions of detection workload and data privacy.
Sometimes I’m longwinded, so let me be clear:
- Blacklisting by geographical region degrades and diminishes our community; and
- AI cannot save us from AI. We want, and need, humans making these decisions.
We know that a stronger publishing industry is built on openness, diversity, and trust. Equitable practice has to create inclusive on-ramps while balancing the work of fraud detection and account moderation. The protection of contributors’ rights and work must be at the center of every community practice we adopt in response to the latest threat.
New Battles in an Old Arena
This new era can seem daunting, but these are not all new challenges.
Victoria Strauss from Writer Beware® has written about online scams for us for years, while SFWA’s Advocacy Team, including our Legal and Contracts Committees, are always following key case law for opportunities to push back.
SFWA’s mission is to serve writers coming from many backgrounds, and we do not approach creating any blanket policies or procedures lightly. Detangling the current crisis in publishing will require patience and cooperation.
But we will not back down from our unwavering desire to see HUMANS typing on keyboards, writing in notebooks, and scrawling stats for RPG playtests.
That’s where we need your help, writer. We need YOU in the conversation.
The main thing I’ve learned as SFWA President: we create our best solutions together.
In that vein, this summer and fall, we are inviting you deeper into the conversation, with the ultimate goal of making sure we are all better prepared for the future ahead as we fight for the one we want: wildly human, creatively vibrant, and written by us.
Join Us to Learn More, Get Engaged
Building on a groundswell of excellent member and community feedback last December, our Emerging Tech Committee has been crafting resources to help writers, readers, educators, and students. This weekend’s Emerging Tech conversation is the first in a series of opportunities to bypass the hype and make informed, pro-human decisions for ourselves and our writing tools.
If you can’t attend “Understanding AI: A Hype-Free Overview” this Saturday, July 18 at 1PM PDT, please submit questions and other feedback on our preliminary resource page. Your questions will be answered by panelists on Saturday, and that page will grow this summer to provide more tools to sharpen our understanding together of key terms and industry products.
This event is open to the public, as part of our Givers Fund Fundraising Kickoff weekend. You can donate to the Givers Fund, which supports human creators growing the SFF community, when you RSVP for access to all our weekend’s kickoff events.
Also this summer, our Short Fiction Matrix Project will be launching Phase One of another community-driven resource page, which will support writers and publishers in a market where professionalism, transparency, and a commitment to writers’ rights are requirements to be part of the genre conversation. We are here for that! Help push for the changes you want to see by working with their team, just as you have done for years by sending sample contracts to our Contracts Committee. Your questions and contributions help us all.
If you are with a partner organization or magazine, or are an industry pro, touch base with me personally. We have resources behind the scenes to get you further connected and supported.
It’s going to be a good weekend. I can’t wait to continue the conversation with you. I’ll bring along questions of my own. We’ll work through them together.
Keep creating,
Kate Ristau
SFWA President
Resources for Further Reading
Apex Books & Zine. “Facebook Visual Post Rescinding Publication.” July 10, 2026.
Bona Books. The Machines Are Coming for Your Masthead: Small Press Publishing in the Age of AI. July 2026
Cast of Wonders. “Bluesky Post Thread Rescinding Publication.” July 7, 2026.
—. “The Many Faces of Charity Ogechi.” July 7, 2026.
Clarke, Neil. “AI and Short Fiction #1 – some recommendations for readers” and “AI and Short Fiction #2 – some recommendations for editors.” July 14-15, 2026.
DeLuca, Michael J., Reckoning Press. “AI: A Press Statement.” July 6, 2026.
Strauss, Victoria. “The First Clue to an Email Scam May Be the Address,” Writer Beware® , June 30, 2026.