Years ago, when I worked as a waitress in what was known locally as one of our city’s best family restaurants (The BoPeep), I met two men who became regular customers.
Not just occasional customers.
Regulars.
The kind of regulars you got to know a little.
The kind who started chatting with you as though you were more than the person bringing coffee and plates to their table.
And no, not in a creepy way.
More like big brothers.
One afternoon, they asked me if I had ever read a really good book.
I answered immediately with, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I have.”
The book was A Stone for Danny Fisher by Harold Robbins.
That surprised them.
Apparently, Harold Robbins had become better known for a very different kind of book by then.
Let’s just say his reputation had shifted somewhat.
So, they asked me what this particular book was about.
When I told them, they were surprised again.
One of them said something along the lines of, “He must have hired a ghostwriter for that one.”
I have never forgotten that conversation.
But the bigger reason I never forgot the book itself goes back even further.
My father was the one who recommended it to me.
I was in high school at the time.
Maybe around sixteen years of age… though I cannot be completely certain now.
I was not what I would call an avid reader.
And this was not a thin little book by any stretch of the imagination.
The version I had was a thick pocket novel that looked intimidating before I even opened it.
My father, however, was always reading.
He devoured pocket novels by the shopping bag full.
He used to say he got to go around the world through books.
So, when he told me that I would love A Stone for Danny Fisher, I trusted him.
And he was right.
What amazed me most was not just the story.
It was how Harold Robbins made me feel what Danny was feeling.
I remember being interrupted while reading this book.
My mother would call me to help with something, as mothers tend to do.
And each time, when I had to put the book down, I noticed something.
Whatever mood Danny was in when I stopped reading, I seemed to carry that mood with me.
If Danny was angry, I felt unsettled.
If Danny was hurt, I felt heavy.
If Danny was desperate, I felt pulled into that desperation.
That impressed me deeply.
To me, that is the mark of powerful writing.
Not merely telling the reader what happened, but pulling the reader into the emotional weather of the story so completely that the feeling lingers even after the book is closed.
I remember talking about that with my father.
And because he was such a reader himself, he understood exactly why that mattered.
Years later, I read The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler.
And I remember feeling genuinely startled.
Not because it was the same book word for word. It wasn’t.
The setting was different.
The author was different.
The details were different.
But the bones of the story felt awfully familiar to me.
A young Jewish man.
A working-class struggle.
Ambition.
Pressure.
Moral compromise.
The hunger to become “somebody.”
One story had its own world.
The other had its own world too.
But the resemblance felt impossible for me to ignore.
Now, I am not interested in turning this into a literary courtroom.
That is not the point of this post.
The point is what that memory made me think about years later, as I watched people argue over artificial intelligence and originality.
Because today, AI is often accused of stealing.
Borrowing.
Blending.
Reworking.
Reshaping.
Reintroducing older ideas in newer clothing.
And every time I hear that argument presented as though AI invented this behaviour, I think:
Wait a minute.
Humans have always been remixers.
AI didn’t invent influence.
Every writer, artist, marketer, speaker, teacher, business owner, and creator carries pieces of what they have read, heard, watched, admired, questioned, rejected, remembered, and absorbed.
Sometimes the influence is obvious.
Sometimes it is subtle.
Sometimes it is intentional.
Sometimes the person may not even realize how much of an earlier idea stayed with them.
We read something.
It leaves a mark.
We hear something.
It plants a seed.
We watch something.
It shapes how we think.
Then later… sometimes years later… we create something of our own.
But is it ever created in complete isolation?
I doubt it.
That is why I find some of today’s outrage around AI a little hard to swallow.
Not because the concern is fake, but because the outrage can sound awfully one-sided.
Writers, artists, photographers, musicians, educators, and creators have every right to care about how their work is used.
Ownership matters. Credit matters. Consent matters. Compensation matters.
But the broader habit of borrowing influence?
That is not new.
AI may not have created the problem.
Maybe AI made the old human habit harder to ignore.
And maybe that is what makes people so uncomfortable.
Because AI’s process is easier to point at.
Human influence has always been easier to hide.
A human can read ten books, watch five documentaries, follow three experts, listen to a dozen interviews, absorb years of other people’s thinking, then sit down and write something “original.”
And sometimes it is original enough.
Because the person added something.
Their judgment.
Their memory.
Their lived experience.
Their point of view.
Their humour.
Their frustration.
Their grief.
Their clarity.
Their own way of connecting the dots.
That is where the real difference lives.
The issue is not whether something was influenced by what came before.
Of course it was.
The better question is:
- Did the final result add anything real?
- Did it add lived experience?
- Did it add judgment?
- Did it add context?
- Did it add honesty?
- Did it add a point of view?
Because that is where useful content still earns its place.
This is also where business owners need to be careful.
Using AI to help write content is not automatically dishonest.
Using AI to produce empty, generic, copycat material and pretending it came from deep personal expertise?
That’s where credibility starts to weaken.
The same would be true if a human did it without AI.
Generic content is generic content.
Exaggerated content is exaggerated content.
Borrowed thinking without personal judgment is still borrowed thinking, whether a human typed it alone or used AI to help shape it.
That is why I do not believe the smartest conversation is “AI versus human.”
I believe the smarter conversation is:
What did the human bring to the work?
Because when a business owner uses AI well, they are not asking it to replace their thinking.
They are using it to organize their thinking.
Challenge their thinking.
Clarify their thinking.
Put structure around their thinking.
Help them say what they meant to say.
But the truth still has to come from somewhere real.
A lived story.
A tested opinion.
A lesson learned the hard way.
A customer conversation.
A business mistake.
A moment of doubt.
A belief that has been earned.
That is why I keep coming back to that thick Harold Robbins novel my father handed me when I was a teenager.
That book stayed with me.
The conversation in the restaurant stayed with me.
The later comparison stayed with me.
And now, decades later, all of it helps me explain why I do not buy the idea that AI suddenly introduced borrowing, blending, influence, or remixing into the creative world.
Humans were already doing that.
We have always done that.
AI simply made the process more visible.
So maybe the better question is not, “Was this influenced by something?”
Maybe the better question is:
“What did you add that made it worth publishing?”
AI is not the credibility problem.
Empty content is.
Credit for Images: created with ChatGPT Images by OpenAI, with prompting and direction by the author, Trish Parr.
