by Piper Bayard
Artificial Intelligence. AI. With all of its many uses, some writers have embraced AI’s capabilities to hone their manuscripts. Others shun the programs altogether. Meanwhile, grifters are making a fortune with “scam books.” It all leaves me wondering:
It’s just a fact that AI has become an integral part of writing in today’s world. Corporate employees use it to take notes during meetings. Students use it to perfect and sometimes altogether write their compositions. With a few prompts, gamers use AI to produce detailed profiles of characters and objects.
A friend of mine at the CIA even uses it to clean up her emails, as in, she writes what she really wants to say to her colleagues and then gives her AI the prompt, “Make this polite, firm, and professional.” It transforms, “What the hell are you thinking . . . ?” to “Perhaps we should consider . . . ?” That sort of AI usage is all well and good for the general public, except the students’ cheating, of course, but at what point does AI use become unethical for professional writers?
In an effort to explore the topic, I conducted a little experiment on X a while back. I asked the X-verse population whether it matters to them if authors use AI in the writing and production of a book. I asked if they would like a notation of some kind on books to indicate whether the content was at all generated by AI.
Fifty-seven readers and authors responded. To a person, the readers said it does matter to them, and they would like a symbol to designate books that are free of AI content. A couple of authors, however, supported the use of AI for editing. One even argued with me that it is impossible to write a book in this modern world without using AI, pointing out that Spell Check is a crude form of Artificial Intelligence. The divide surprised me and left me with yet more questions about the ethical use of technology in writing.
In the December 8, 2023 edition of Literary Hub, Debbi Urbanski tells about her AI journey, in which she asked Large Language Models (“LLMs”) questions, gave them prompts, and evaluated what they turned out. She says that most of the writing was bad, but that eventually, with the right prompts, some of it was good. Urbanski even used a bit of the product in her own work. She encourages a collaboration between AI and authors to produce better books, and she cites to several AI/Author collaboration excerpts to show how chatting with Baby Skynet can actually produce a superior product.
Also, in a February 21, 2023 Reuters article, Brett Schickler openly admits to using AI to produce a 30-page, illustrated children’s book in a single day and putting it up for sale on Amazon. He says he plans to use AI to write and sell many more of these books.
Amazon’s position on this? In the process of publishing a book on KDP, the program asks if any part of the book was created by Artificial Intelligence. An author simply answers yes or no. To the best of my knowledge, Amazon does not follow up on this to find out if people are lying.
And what is creative product? AI programs like ChatGPT are only as good as the prompts they are given. Some authors will put in terrible prompts and get terrible results. Other authors will enter more sophisticated prompts and, like Ms. Urbanski, end up with useful text. Are the prompts, themselves, enough “creative product” for the author to claim the resulting text as their own?
That said, according to an article which appeared on The Authors Guild’s website on March 15, 2024, AI is fueling an entire scam book industry. The scammers are most prone to targeting new releases, publishing “companion” books in the form of summaries, workbooks, and guides. Many of these appear for sale on the site within 24 hours of a book release.
According to Fair Use law, companion books which provide substantial analysis and commentary without copying an abundance of the original work are within the law. However, the AI-generated companion books have little or no analysis or original content. While it is certainly arguable that they infringe on copyright, authors must prove that fact at their own expense. I don’t know how much you folks are making with your writing, but I know I certainly don’t have a “Copyright Infringement Lawsuit” column in my monthly budget.
Unfortunately, some scammers are so bold that authors cannot ignore the infringements, and there are currently several lawsuits that authors and screenwriters have brought against companies that were using AI to scrape their books and create AI-generated books based on the content they harvested. Some authors have added language to their websites and books forbidding the use of their work product for AI training. It is not yet determined how effective this language will be in an infringement case.
At least one author had a bit of success when AI infringed on her copyrights. According to an NPR article on March 13, 2024, author Kara Swisher published her memoir, Burn Book, only to have AI-created fake biographies of her popping up on Amazon. She immediately sent a note to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Amazon took the fake biographies down. However, for those of us who are not on such close terms with Andy Jassy, scam books, including the companion books, fake biographies, plagiarized books, etc., continue to be a major problem on Amazon and other publishing platforms.
Actual law regarding the use of AI in publishing is quite new and still shaking out. Meanwhile, AI tech companies are reveling in the Wild West of legal uncertainty. It will take years before the lines are clear, and then, no doubt, some other new technological development will be challenging them.
Many of the current legal questions regarding AI writing center around the concept of “authorship.” The US Copyright Office only recognizes copyright in works “created by a human being.” AI product is dependent on prompts given by humans. Therefore, does a human being “create” the work of an AI program?
In 2022, Dr. Stephen Thaler was denied copyright by the US Copyright Office when he tried to register a visual artwork created “autonomously” by an AI program called the Creativity Machine. He sued, and the US district court upheld the denial of copyright, saying that “human authorship is an essential part of a valid copyright claim.” At this point, according to the Congressional Research Service, the Copyright Office is unlikely to grant copyright for text produced from feeding prompts into AI.
This raises yet more questions. Can authors even legitimately claim copyright if they partner with AI in their writing? How much is too much?
As for the legality of scraping copyrighted work to train AI, the jury is still out, with many authors and their attorneys waiting to find out if big tech can appropriate their work for this use. Have a seat and put your feet up. It could be a while.
In using authors’ works to train AI, some authors say tech companies are literally using us to train our own replacements. Many authors seem certain it will never happen, and that AI will never be good enough. For example, AI translations of books get pronouns wrong, particularly when translating from Chinese. AI text is often stilted and unnatural, and it rarely flows like it does from a human, making the current AI books too obvious.
Some authors argue that we will never be replaced by AI because the books are just plain bad. It’s possible, but then, we have all seen 50 shades of literary abomination occasionally top the leading bestseller lists. AI text is only as good as the prompts given to the programs, and people are getting better and better at their prompts. At this point, LLMs can, indeed, be used to write entire books, and dumping AI fiction into Amazon has become quite a cottage industry.
Speaking from my personal experience, I do see cause for concern. As the writing partner of a 50-yr veteran of military and intelligence field operations for the past fifteen years, I have daily watched AI become more sophisticated in social media. Back when I first made accounts and announced my writing partner was a broadly-experienced participant in the Shadow World, China, Russia, Iran, South Korea, and others flooded our website with hits, comments, and even threats. At the time, it was mostly actual humans, but there were some AI accounts even then. They were clumsy and easy to spot.
Over the years, China and others have used the information harvested from the electronics in our homes and businesses, as well as hired language trainers, to create more sophisticated AI social media programs. At this point, I would say a substantial percentage of the social media propaganda accounts are actually AI. They have become so polished that what was once laughably obvious now makes me pause to consider, and I’m not always certain what I am looking at anymore. They really are that good. I personally believe it is only a matter of time until the same is true of AI-generated books.
For myself, I do not use AI to create any of my written content or visual art, and I put this symbol on my books to indicate that. Feel free to copy it and use it if you like. Perhaps it’s because I’m tired of learning new technology. Perhaps it’s because I’m extremely literal in my perception of what constitutes writing that is “created by human beings.” The fact is that we all have our positions on this topic, and we must all fight our way through the shifting sands of technology, copyright, and publishing.
What is your position on the use of AI in copyrighted works by authors? Do you use AI in your writing? If you do, how much do you use it? What seems fair and right to you? Thank you for sharing your human-created answers.
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Piper Bayard and Jay Holmes of Bayard & Holmes are the authors of espionage tomes and international spy thrillers. Please visit Piper and Jay at their site, BayardandHolmes.com. For notices of their upcoming releases, subscribe to the Bayard & Holmes Covert Briefing. You can also contact Bayard & Holmes at their Contact page, on Twitter at @piperbayard, on Facebook at Piper Bayard, or at their email, BayardandHolmes@protonmail.com.
Though crafted with advice and specific tips for writers, SPYCRAFT: Essentials is for anyone who wants to learn more about the inner workings of the Shadow World.
“For any author, this is the new bible for crafting stories of espionage.”
~ James Rollins, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Demon Crown
All post photos purchased from DepositPhotos by the author.
Belanger, Ashley. (2024, March 11). “Nvidia Sued Over AI Training Data as Copyright Clashes Continue.” ARS Technica. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/novelists-sue-nvidia-to-stop-spread-of-ai-models-trained-on-copyrighted-books/.
Bensinger, Greg. (2023, February 21). “Focus: ChatGPT launches boom in AI-written e-books on Amazon.” Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-launches-boom-ai-written-e-books-amazon-2023-02-21/.
Limbong, Andrew. (2024, March 13). “Authors Push Back on the Growing Number of AI ‘Scam’ Books on Amazon.” NPR Morning Edition. https://www.npr.org/2024/03/13/1237888126/growing-number-ai-scam-books-amazon.
Staff. (2024, March 15). “AI is Driving a New Surge of Sham ‘Books’ on Amazon.” The Authors Guild. https://authorsguild.org/news/ai-driving-new-surge-of-sham-books-on-amazon/.
Staff. (2023, September 20). “The Authors Guild, John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, David Baldacci, George R.R. Martin, and 13 Other Authors File Class-Action Suit Against OpenAI.” The Authors Guild. https://authorsguild.org/news/ag-and-authors-file-class-action-suit-against-openai/.
Urbanski, Debbie. (2023, December 8). “Why Novelists Should Embrace Artificial Intelligence.” Literary Hub. https://lithub.com/why-novelists-should-embrace-artificial-intelligence/.
Zirpoli, Christopher T. (2023, September 29). “Generative Artificial Intelligence and Copyright Law.” Congressional Research Service. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10922.
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AI is definitely the Wild West. I have a problem with your CIA friend using it to polish her emails. Can you say, security risk?
The use of AI is pervasive. I feel like it's more of a parasite. Did you know Microsoft Offices takes your data (read: your hard work) for its AI? They don't tell you. But you can find it deep in the settings. And when you turn opt out, they turn off some functionality in their programs--this is not software we use for free, but by license. Now they've introduced Co-pilot. Many don't read the fine print. So now Co-pilot's in your email. And if you try to turn it off, you get a notice that it wipes out your other privacy settings. So what are we to do? Some of us do not want to use AI, and we need to protect our data and our work.
I see AI as an excuse for laziness. People will think they no longer need to learn to write a cohesive sentence or even go to school. AI is definitely a parasite. Technology is good AND band. Have you seen the movie "Wall-e"? All the humans are in a space ship because the earth is a dump. And they lounge on these chairs and tech does everything for them. They're huge, and can't walk anymore. This is how we're going to end up--dump and unhealthy. God help us!
An excellent question about security risk, Mary. Thank you for pointing it out. The CIA has its own secure internal AI, and pretty much everyone in the building uses it for one purpose or another.
Thank you for the information about Microsoft Office. I personally use a download rather than the subscription, but I'm not sure if those are even available anymore.
I have seen Wall-e. I agree. Prophetic.
Thank you for your comment.
To me what's the point of using AI to write for you, beyond the obvious lack of talent. Does that mean using spell check, or Prowritingaid to help smooth out you draft along the way isn't yours. Hmmm? We had this arguement in the Blacksmithing community. What constitutes blacksmithing. To some if it isn't all done at the anvil you are cheating. In europe they have used welders and other non-traditional means of joinery for years with no one questioning their work. The argument still comes up, but we all use a welder sooner or later for some aspect of our work, but the bulk of it still depends on our personal originality. I think it is the same or will be with AI. Unless 2525 becomes a reality, but it won't matter then.
Some excellent observations. Personally, I think there is a difference between using AI for production elements, such as spelling, and using AI for creative elements, such as sentence structure, dialogue, and plot ideas.
Thank you for your comment.
AI takes all the available knowledge and access it faster, both truth and lies. More concerning is that AI treats fact and fiction with equal value; no morality exists in the AI world. Problems are already being discovered with this aspect. I'm baffled how so many refuse to understand that AI is stolen work from others, all of it.
"AI treats fact and fiction with equal value." When a very lazy lawyer got AI to write a brief, the AI made up the legal cases, and the lawyer was popped for it in the courtroom.
As for understanding that AI is stolen work from others and the morality of that, I would point out that society NEVER develops a conscience about a moral issue until it becomes convenient to do so.
Thank you for your comment.
Well, technically what we call “Artificial Intelligence” is not “intelligence” at all. It is merely an elaborate and superficial calculation based on probabilistic statistics, linguistics and heuristics. But there is nothing “intelligent” about it. (I have been a computer scientist for 25 years and still work in the field).
To put it even simpler: AI is just copying other people's content. Different kinds of data are taken (from users using certain software, from social media use, but mostly from web content) and they are all thrown inside a huge cauldron, but that is where AI then takes its answers from. It cannot generate ideas, it simply lines up concepts and words that it has already read somewhere.
A year ago I migrated my blog hosting and you have no idea how many AI crawlers (software that “sweeps” the Internet), not officially declared, exist. The problem is that AI, when using someone else's idea, doesn't recognizes the source nor the copyright.
Reason why on my blog (as several newspapers have also done) I have closed the doors to crawlers. In addition, I have joined the NO AI ICON program (https://no-ai-icon.com/). I do not use AI either for writing or for generating images, because even then it is to break copyright of designers, illustrators, photographers and image artists.
That is why content written with AI cannot be recognized under copyright, unless you are certain that you have not infringed any copyright of others. But it just so happens that all AI platforms do not want to expose the sources used for AI education themselves.
So no, AI cannot be a writer's friend in any way, because asking AI means being conscious of risking infringing on others' ideas. Not to mention that if all drawing on AI to write their content, the content will become the same, with no value anymore.
AI will still not be able to replace a real writer. AI cannot generate a narrative text on its own (a Math or Science essay perhaps can) simply because it completely lacks the fundamental factor of being human: the emotions attached to existence. AI does not cry, it can describe tearing (taking it from the encyclopedia), it can describe a man crying (copying from others), but it can never really write on its own about the reasons why a man cries.
Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge of AI.
Looks like I'm not the only one to come up with a no-AI symbol. 🙂
As somebody who doesn't have access to a writing group or writing partner, I find AI to be helpful when doing research or sounding out plausible scenarios for a new direction whenever I get stuck. Unlike a real writing partner, AI doesn't get irritated if I keep asking it the same question and spits out hundreds of plausible loglines for a book, character arc, or scene, until I find an idea worth development. On the other hand, a live writing partner or group has a synergy about it that often helps spark ideas with just a few back-and-forth conversations, not the hundreds (often thousands) of bad ideas that AI generates before you get something you can develop into a viable plot.
Its also great for doing research into obscure topics, settings, or movies / books / biographies that you can look to for inspiration. For example, my current WIP is set in 3,500 BC. Sumeria, right? Easy-peasy. Earliest civilization. Except... turns out, it is not. Not by a long shot. When I expanded the AI search parameters, it led me to discover obscure open zoom sessions published on YouTube between archeologists doing digs in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey of 13,000 year old stone temples. Huh? Arsenic bronze, in 3,500 BC? Double-headed bronze war axes? The "golden fleece" is not a Greek myth, but a MINING method still in use in former-Soviet Georgia? I'm now using AI to translate archeological journal articles into English from obscure languages so I can cherry-pick "pretty shiny things" to weave into my epic fantasy. Using AI for research is, I think, a legitimate writing tool which can make our work more interesting.
AI-generated "books" on the other hand, are still laughably bad. It depends on the genre, though. There are certain genres, such as romance, where there is a LOT of content that was digested by the LLM's, so AI can be used by artful prompts to generate "scam" books where the reader doesn't quite get sucked into the story, but are hard to differentiate by someone who isn't an avid reader of that genre. I think this problem will only get worse as our Tech Overlords digest more and more data to figure out what makes their digital slaves tick.
On the other hand, AI has a notorious problem that it is NOT sentient, and over time, when deprived of a human handler, "goes insane", i.e., devolves into self-perpetuating loops that eventually degrades into gibberish. While fast, and clever, AI is not "alive".
Like it or not, writers are one of the classes of "useless eaters" the tech overlords have targeted for extinction, along with replacing auto workers with robots and fast food workers with self-serve kiosks. We can fight this individually by refusing to use AI, but the "market" wants cheap books, and we are competing, not just with other authors, or even AI, but with other forms of distraction such as YouTube, podcasts, social media time-sinks, video games, and countless other forms of "entertainment."
The die is cast. I don't like it. I don't have a solution. But unless a solar flare wipes out the electrical grid, writers really need to start emphasizing more with the blue collar dude whose job just got outsourced and less with the "literary elite."
I have heard before that AI is great for research. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Interesting about the AI devolution when it is deprived of a human handler. It sounds like the same devolution when a human is in isolation too long. Just an observation.
Sadly, I don't have any solutions, either. Thank you for your comment.
Like anything else, I think we have to be informed consumers. I'm not sure how many of us are truly informed about AI or just reacting to it. It certainly has been around a lot longer than we may realize.
And how is using 'AI' different than Googling for information? Personally, I find AI more efficient, because I think AI has a greater capability to be informed---good, bad, or ugly. But just like reading the newspaper (Whatever that is 🙂 it's the reader's responsibility to identify 'good, bad, and ugly'.
I too have no access to writer or feedback groups and could not write at all if it was necessary to pay for feedback and editing. If AI can provide unbiased feedback based on my appropriate query, I am thankful.
But I am not blind to the hazards---everything can be hacked, and probably is. This is nothing new, but it seems many of us writers are treating it is something new. 'Hacking' is cool, isn't it? {she said sarcastically] But how many articles appear daily, writing and otherwise, that teach us how to hack?
The alarm about AI is somewhat confusing to me, but I get it. I think the answer is just to take responsibility for our individual actions, because we can't control everything. Naive? certainly. Hopeful? Of course.
I can only respect the wonders and limitations of AI and hope it respects me back.
No matter what, AI will never replace real writers, IMHO. Writing requires soul and sentience. And as much as I appreciate ChatGPT, it's not sentient or soulful.
Thanks for letting me share. And thank you for sharing with me!!
Thank your for sharing your experience. I hope, as well. 🙂
What about the “AI summary” now at the top of any Google search? It’s helpful, pulling the answer out of all the stuff out there. But I don’t trust it, because it pulls that answer from ALL the stuff out there—without, as far as I know, any vetting for quality of the source.
As for my own writing, I will use a grammar/spelling checker, because it’s a helpful editing step (Definitely will call out my worst writing tics). But it’s incredibly obvious to me that those things might be artificial, but they sure as hell aren’t intelligent. Some of the suggestions had us rolling on the floor laughing.
LOL. Love that. "They might be artificial, but they sure as hell aren't intelligent."
Good question about the summaries. Condensed information that may or may not be correct. Perhaps they are useful as a place to start researching, but they could be dangerous if depended on overmuch.
Thank you for your comment.
I use AI a lot in my day job for market research -- basically making an ideal client profile and trying to fine down that person's top concerns in their financial life. AI is aces at this, and really helps companies market better.
Using it for writing fiction? Never.
But using it to help non-writers get over the fear of the blank page in an email? Using it to shorten or polish a poorly written corporate bio? Get a quick piece of code for website design? Remap data into a usable import set for reporting? Turn a multi-page report into a slide deck?
All YES!
There really are good uses to be found...just not in writing a compelling original book.
Great points about the use of AI in business writing. Thank you for your comment.
Several years ago, the web editor of a large Midwest Plains newspaper visited my college classroom and dropped this nugget: "Figure out what you suck at. Don't do that." That was back in the days of writers thinking they could create their own book covers because they owned a copy of Photoshop or GIMP or something else with no graphics skills or training.
I've tried to remember that when it comes to other things. I've found I don't do well creating titles and headlines for my blog posts. Granted, I don't do my posts in an SEO kind of way. I write the post, then worry about choosing a keyword and so forth. So I will write the post, then feed it into ChatGPT and ask it to create headlines and social media posts. I have a disclaimer about this in a couple of places on the blog, so I feel like I'm about as ethical as I can be in this use.
I don't think creating whole posts or books is an ethical use. I don't even understand how you could "write a book using generative AI." By the time you've tweaked the prompts and edited the output, you could have written it yourself, so why not do it that way?
I don't think using generative AI to create artwork is an ethical use either. Generative AI is only as good as the training the algorithm received, and much of that is subjective interpretation of existing images from other people.
I think generative AI will always come up short when compared to human-created art. Generative AI has never held the hand of a dying parent, or driven up to the house as the coroner is removing your baby sister who just died from an epileptic seizure. It's never witnessed a sunset or an eclipse. It's never marveled at a soaring hawk. It's never truly experienced life so how can we expect it to create art?
Thank you for your thoughtful response. I have also wondered why anyone would put the time into using AI when they could just write it themselves much faster.
I hope you're right About AI never creating art.
Hi Piper,
Thank you for your excellent, thought-provoking post. I strongly object to people using AI to write an entire book, such as the children's book that you reference. My position is that the prompt is the person's idea, but the book is an AI creation. I enjoy creating images with AI and, as someone who draws and paints, I've experienced the difference between the two.
The images can be pretty amazing, but I don't consider them my art since I literally didn't have a hand in forming them. The images are a reflection of my ability as a writer to create a word picture that the computer then turns into an image.
I have used AI for feedback on my writing and that can be useful. If a computer can understand my characters' subtextual motivations and emotions, there's a good chance they will come through to a human reader. Still, I take the feedback with a grain of salt. The 'critiques" sometimes sound like generic writing advice. And I never take the AI program's advice on how to revise. I just use it to flag areas in the writing that need improvement.
I also would not ask AI for ideas, such as "What would be a good YA story about a teenage fairy and a dragon?" As a former writing professor, I consider that plagiarism.
Will AI replace writers? As a reader, I passionately hope not. Perhaps the writing--which is poor and often cliche at present--could be improved by AI programs being exposed to more good writing. Even so, based on AI content I've read, computers really do not understand the complexity of human emotions nor can they quite capture true poetry. I think humans are needed to give writing a soul.
Here's a dread thought I've had: what if AI replaced all literary agents and publishing editors? Imagine a world where computers decide what we write--and read.
All the best. 🙂
My apologies for being Debbie Downer, but I believe computer algorithms and computer-enforced speech modifications already decide what we write and read to a large extent.
Algorithms decide what we get to see in our social media feeds, which leads us to what articles cross our pages.
Google redefines the meanings of words to align them with political narratives. Now, when we look up words that have any political interpretation, they often have entirely different meanings and connotations than they did only one or two generations ago.
I'm glad I still have a dictionary from the 80s if I want to look up the actual meaning of words and not the words that have been politically revised. For myself, I hope somehow this trend will be reversed.
Thank you for your comment.
Great article. Thank you. Also, please restore your Like button. Thank you, A. C. Cockerill
Thank you, A.C. I'll let the Blog Queens know about your Like button request.
Thank you for writing a clear and documented article on the AI invasion.
I feel guilty because, as a graphic artist, I frequently use AI for graphics. It makes illustrative changes so much easier. But the definition of AI is so difficult to pin down. If I tell Photoshop to generate a different gradient background, is that really AI? I used to do the same thing manually. The lines are blurry.
As an author who was on the original list of books used to train ChatGPT (not that anyone asked my permission), I find it repugnant and discouraging. The flood of half-baked AI-produced books on the market is confusing for readers, and I believe it turns many readers off to books altogether.
The whole thing makes me feel like throwing up my hands and quite writing.
Oops, 'quit' writing. Oh, crud, it looks like I needed a grammer AI.
LOL.
Great point about the definition of AI. The lines really are a bit blurry. Is a spell checking program AI enough to matter? Or is it just a dictionary? We can all agree on the extremes, but just how much is too much dependence on the computer for our own creative product? I think different people have different thresholds.
I completely understand and feel how discouraged you sound when you say it makes you feel like throwing up your hands. I'm right there with you.
Thank you for your comment.
I've played around with AI for ideas where I'm stuck. But--The ideas are bland and and somewhat boring. So I may take on idea and keep it and scrap the rest. By the time my book is written, that one idea is not what AI gave me. So it depends on what you do with it. As for using Grammarly/Prowritingaid, I don't take their "ideas" for how to fix my writing. I just need to know if my punctuation, spelling, and grammar are correct. If I want suggestions on verb and phrases, I'll ask my writing group to do a critique of it.
I'll admit to being tired of the "documentaries" or "stories" that are done with AI and how they keep repeating the same descriptions and words ad nauseum. I'm not a fan and will only use it minimally when I can't get my writing group together.
I don't use AI.
Personally, I've never felt the need to use AI when writing and editing my books. I never would use it, I think it would take away a lot of the enjoyment. However, I have to admit to using it when I want a specific image to illustrate my blog posts.
Recently, Barnes & Noble temporarily unpublished most indie books and then re released the ones they felt were by actual authors. I've been hearing rumors that these companion books are going to be pulled as well.
I think part of the problem is that in some cases it can be hard to tell. Some are obvious, but in the B&N sweep, a lot of real authors got caught up in the net.
I love your Wild West comment because that's exactly what we're dealing with. A gold rush in some ways where people are risking everything for a chance to strike it rich.
I have an AI model trained on my own writing. I find it useful for brainstorming and early editing, especially some of the mundane bits. But in the end, I still craft every word and work with a human editor to make sure to bring something of value to the page.
As you've said, one of the real risks with AI is that everything begins to sound the same.
The invasion of AI into most aspects of life is very troubling to me, and nowhere more so than in creative fields such as writing and art. Our society focuses almost exclusively on money and ambition as measurements of success, and to say "creatives" are undervalued is the understatement of the century. AI only serves to devalue us even more than we already are.
It's also troubling that more and more people rely on AI for common tasks (such as crafting a proper business letter, writing an essay, etc) rather than knowing how to do it themselves. It feels like a slippery slope, one where someday soon people won't know how to *do* anything, but will instead be wholly dependent on technology. I've never seen WALL-E, but it does indeed sound prophetic.
I can't imagine using AI to write my stories, and have never done so. Beyond obvious concerns such as privacy (I don't want my hard-crafted words teaching it how to imitate me and other human writers, thank you very much) and security (even if AI isn't actively spying on us - and I'm being charitable there - it would be far too easy for unscrupulous people or groups to use it for such) it literally bypasses the creative process, rendering the "writer" nothing more than a client to a digital aggregator. As maddening as the writing process frequently is, it's also magical and exhilarating, and ultimately the reason we put ourselves through this.
I'm an artist as well as an amateur writer, and AI has devastated the online art world. For over a decade I shared my paintings on a very popular artshare site, until it was revealed that 1) all of the artwork on said site was scraped by several different AI image generators without the users' knowledge or permission, and 2) said site decided to launch its own AI generator based off the database of one of those very image generators, literally cannibalizing its own users, and 3) there was nothing any of us could do about it. I pour my heart and soul into each and every painting, no matter how great it is or isn't, and the thought of all of my work reduced to ones and zeroes to be regurgitated at anyone's whim is upsetting to say the least. The field of human illustrators and artists is vanishing before our eyes thanks to AI image generators. It's wildly discouraging, and leaves me feeling there's no way forward for creatives.
It's here to stay and because of that we need to figure out how to work with it, instead of against it.
AI is a tool. No different than a wrench for a plumber. The wrench cannot locate the leak or figure out the problem but it can help the plumber get the job done.
To me, that's AI. If I feel I've written way to many adverbs I'll tell it to find them and fix them. That's not writing the story, it's fixing a problem. Cue the wrench example.
AI can help us with the little things so we can go on do what matters: Write a great novel that, hopefully, entertains.
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