The Rise of the AI Sherlockian

 Perhaps I just stayed up too late last night and I'm cranky this morning. But then again, no.

When the first thing you see on the internet for your morning look-see is an AI generated ad for what is surely an AI-assisted book by someone who has already published an AI-assisted book THAT YOU BOUGHT. You tend to go -- and excuse the language, but here it is well deserved -- "Well, fuck that guy."

We all know driven Sherlockians. Those who love Sherlock Holmes so much that they just can't stop the Sherlocking. Once upon a time, that meant someone who read the Canon and read the Canon and read the Canon, taking copious notes, developing a specialty for a time,  then moving to another area of Sherlockian interest or just remaining the expert in that field. That was every Sherlockian of a certain level, once upon a time.

But it's 2026 and the devil runs on servers now. It's in our searches, in our emails, listening in on meetings, actually moderating meetings, working with doctors, making movies, acting in movies . . . well, I could go on all day.

And that devil LOVES a driven fan-boy. Well, all the devils love a driven fan-boy, because we're easy to tempt into bad things since the bait is pretty obvious.

It's too easy to go "just this once." 

Last fall, I was looking for a December activity for the John H. Watson Society and went "just this once" to see if Google's AI could produce a reader's theater adaptation of "Blue Carbuncle." And it did. And I was open about it, immediately AFTER I had folks read it, which made the actors feel a bit tainted, like they'd just found out their date was a prostitute. A bland and boring prostitute, too. 

Because here's the thing. When AI is your co-author, it's not your work. You can claim "Oh, I had the idea!" but your work is going to look the same as everyone else that used your co-author, the same way we all know that not-quite-painted art of that certain style that AI uses. And chances are, a hundred Sherlockians have had that same idea that you had, because there are only sixty stories and thousands of us, so anyone else could have done that same thing. Except that the real champion on that topic did the actual work and actually wrote the book using their actual words in their own actual voice.

Everybody's got ideas. Everyone. Even the AI has ideas. 

But if you're not going to take the time to actually do the work, why should I waste my own precious time on your non-work? If it takes me longer to read something than it took you to write it, that's just sad. I'm sorry you didn't learn the skills needed to do the thing. The problem is that we've just gone from the information age into the slop age, and we don't need you to create slop. The AI can and will do it without you. Maybe we'll invite it to the BSI dinner for being such a great Sherlockian.

Learn a skill. Check your sources. Be an actual human.

End of rant.