Says writers should avoid using AI to help write their novels. Writers who use AI could face legal problems because of it.
It is better to write on your own anyway. Then you can play around with the language and story more. "Made by a human, " will be a quality mark/stamp in the future, I believe.
Take a look at this human vs. ChatGPT quiz: https://classicalpoets.org/2023/04/22/poems-by-human-beings-versus-poems-by-chatgpt-take-the-quiz/ Others had a hard time, but I got all the questions right.
I can tell you that I myself have had at least one of my published books pirated and fed to an AI program without my permission, compensation, or even making me aware until it blew up on Twitter. They didn't even bother to buy the book, they "scraped" it and people could then pay for this program, type in a prompt and style, and my intellectual property would be regurgitated with other authors' work to make them a book. I see people bragging all the time about "writing" books in three days and flooding Amazon with them. These people are not writers, they are workers who want certification on a machine that will put the "hand" crafters out of business. I'm really disappointed to see the AI section in this forum. The programs are having massive legal trouble for their unethical practice of stealing content to create a better program. I'm not against AI, I'm against those practices and how some companies are now forcing writers and artists to sign contracts that allow companies their IP for the end of time to be used in AI programs that they plan to replace creators with. If you are using shaxpir or any other AI program to help you write your books we are not friends. You are using my stolen IP and the stolen IP of thousands of other authors.
Went to my writers group earlier this week and was appalled to hear many in the group enthusiastically talking about AI programs and how easy they made "writing" blogs and other things. Oh, and how wonderful for students to be able to generate research papers easily via AI and just touch them up for submission. Skip the hard stuff and go straight for the finished product. All the glory and only a bit of the hard work. Never mind that the research and writing are part of learning one's profession. One will always be able to utilize AI to cover any gaps in knowledge and competence. (See why I kept my mouth shut? Once I get started...)
Well, if nothing else, this is going to separate the real writers from the amateurs. Let's see how many fall by the wayside and take the easy way out. "Ooo, look—a writing machine! Just press the button and say a few things. Now I can be a great writer!"
Yeah, that went from 0 to 60 almost overnight. We had a few threads that needed categorization to start, then a bunch more, then AI submitted contest entries, critiques, and workshop posts. All of it bing bang boom. I think AI music is even more fucked up. If I wanted to I could lay down some rhythm tracks, then program an AI guitar solo, learn the solo, and easily pass it off as something I wrote. Similar to AI assisted writing, except we're talking about 16 bars of music, not 100K words. That might take me 30 minutes to learn and another 30 minutes to adapt to my own style. And I could plausibly say I did this section in Jimi's style and this section in Eddie's style without raising any eyebrows because that's exactly what guitar players do.
That was pretty much the reaction of the folks who are mediocre writers. They're all excited at the prospect of being able to turn out more, um, product with a minimum amount of effort. The better writers and those who hope to become better remained silent. AI is perfect for individuals set on the "I am an AUTHOR!" experience of bragging, booksigning, and posturing for fans without the tiresome process of creativity and craft. It is the paint-by-numbers of literature.
I'm really sorry that happened to you. It's just awful. You might want to contact the author's guild even if you're not a member because I know they have or are getting ready to file lawsuits. I saw something by one of my favorite authors talking about how his work and the works of so many writers have been scraped. I think adding on others to their lawsuit would only help. I am wondering how writers are finding this out. I have never even played around with AI, but I do worry that my own work might also have been scraped. I just don't know how to check on this. And I don't want to even touch AI to really find out. Please share if you know a way for writers to check to find out. If you are using shaxpir or any other AI program to help you write your books we are not friends. You are using my stolen IP and the stolen IP of thousands of other authors.[/QUOTE] I 100% agree with you. AI is not a writing tool and it probably shouldn't be categorized as one here. A while ago on a different thread I said that it was basically plagiarism to use AI. It's not basically plagiarism. It is plagiarism! And it's just wrong on so many levels. This isn't a tool for writers. This isn't something writers need. It's just a way for want-to-be writers to claim they have "written" something when in fact it just means that in fact don't have the skills or talent to actually write. It's not a tool. Again, I agree with you that this is theft and not okay.
I don't think you should keep your mouth shut. I think what you've said here is important and that writers (and other artists and educators) should be speaking up, saying this is wrong. Man, I believe AI is wrong on so many levels. Just wrong, and there really isn't another way to say it.
You are right, of course. My mouth is not shut permanently, but I do need time to consider the best way to respond. I've known these folks a long time and don't want to blow the place up and sow the ground with salt. Truthfully, I was so shocked to hear them talking about the programs with such enthusiasm that words failed me at first, and the words that eventually came to mind included phrases that are unbecoming to a person of my age and dignity.
Edit: I intended to post this only the other thread but posted it here by accident. I'll leave it as it is since it's somewhat relevant to this post. Some of you may already know this or tried this, but I asked ChatGPT about some of these topics: Source of Training Data Default (GPT-3.5) User Do you remember the source of text you were trained on? ChatGPT I don't have access to my training data, but I was trained on a mixture of licensed data, data created by human trainers, and publicly available data. My training also involved large-scale datasets obtained from books, websites, and other texts to develop a wide-ranging understanding of human language. User What do you mean by you don't have access to your training data? Do you not search your training data to provide humanlike responses to the questions that people ask you? ChatGPT You're correct, I use the knowledge and patterns learned during my training to generate responses. However, I don't have the ability to search or directly access specific details about the individual sources that were used in my training. My responses are based on a mixture of general knowledge and information from various sources, but I can't pinpoint the exact origin of any particular piece of information.
The problem with this position is that AI isn't one thing... some AI content creators may be plagiarism depending on how they are trained (just like the internet, or computers, or pretty much any technology can be good or bad depending on how its used), but there are definitely ways in which AI can be used as a tool for writers... for example the next generation of editing tools like PWA and Grammarly is likely to include a degree of artificial intelligence, as will search engines and other things used for research, and so forth, and various mechanisms that authors use to market and on and on. The other things is that we as a forum are not endorsing the use of AI to commit plagiarism - we specifically forbid AI content from the workshop. But like it or not AI, including the ethics of AI, is a massive issue for writers so as a writers community we have created a place to discuss those topics... if any given member doesn't want to discuss them, don't use that section - simple
There's a really substantial irony in you making this post in the section who's existence you are complaining about The existence of an AI Section doesn't endorse the use of AI to commit plagiarism, but AI is a massive issue for the writing community as a whole, so there has to be somewhere to discuss it, including discussing the ethical issues and negative experiences, don't you want there to be somewhere that you can tell people about whichever AI ripping off your IP? which forums we have here is basically determined by what there is a demand for (within the context of it being about writing), and there's definitely a demand for people to discuss the various issues around the development of AI and writing If any given member doesn't want to engage in those discussions, they can simply not visit that forum, just as someone who is squicked out by erotic content might choose not to visit the erotica board, or someone with no interest in politics might choose to avoid the debate room
I feel the same way. If someone uses anything more than a spell checker (and I guess grammar checkers are probably okay), to me, you are a fraud, and you are not really a writer. If anyone disagrees with that stance, that's fine. I will still respect such persons as people, but not as writers. I read an article today about authors being messaged on social media and Goodreads from fans regarding their "new book," which were fake, fraudulent, false, phony pieces of garbage that sub-human ****s used generative AI to produce, and then posted them on Amazon or other platforms to steal money from creators and consumers. And it's infuriating. We need strict regulation on this generative AI nonsense immediately. This has to stop. Edit: Oh, forgot to add that no, this forum is absolutely not pro-AI in any way. The conversation is open, which is fine by me. I'll rail against generative AI "writing" for as long as real writers exist.
I welcome AI as a creative aid but can’t recommend using it to generate copy directly. It’s just not very good. Lacks spirit, personality etc.
Is it really helping you, though? I mean you're a writer which totally means you can or could probably write great stories without using AI to generate anything. And knowing all the controversy around using these programs would make any writer at least pause. What these AI programs are generating all comes from somewhere. The fact that you don't know from where these AI programs are getting information from exactly means you could very well be stealing or committing plagiarism without even knowing it. And this is what the US Government says on its copyright web page. "How much do I have to change in order to claim copyright in someone else's work? "Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, a new version of that work. Accordingly, you cannot claim copyright to another's work, no matter how much you change it, unless you have the owner's consent. See Circular 14, Copyright Registration for Derivative Works and Compilations." https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html
I myself only like to use AI as a thesaurus - finding synonyms or antonyms of certain words. I can see AI potentially being useful as a training tool, but prefer stories written by actual humans - they feel more alive somehow.
It would be ethical to come clean after all this time. You're actually the only human here. We're all just chat routines with avatars set up in a trap to harvest your internet likeness for eons of future use.
What we are dealing with is another case of technology out pacing our legal system. Remember the music industry fighting internet piracy a couple decades ago. Our legal code still has not fully caught up on that issue, it took industry groups to find their own methods DRM as a solution.
I was watching the old series Andromeda, and one of the beginning quotes fit this topic all too well. "World's governed by Artificial intelligence often learned a hard lesson:logic doesn't care."
I have been thinking about this. IT does take courage to stand up and speak out and over the years I have done so on many occasions. BUT be prepared for those you considered friends in the group to distance themselves, or worse those who said to you in private that they held similar views stay silent when arguments become heated. I can see how some writers people are attracted to AI but if they use it as a shortcut to publishing, imho, they should not call themselves writers. I have had many WTF? moments over AI once I realised what it is capable of and the implications. Hang in there.
I can understand this. How you use the synonyms and antonyms in a story is still your own work. I will continue to study AI and its applications not because I want to use it, but because I want to better understand how it will impact on my life as it evolves.
