As the guy who upthread claimed that:
I should note that one of America’s top playwrights disagrees with me. 
(In between rambling with Robert Downey Jr.)
Hey, Puffy Stuff is the substrate for delicious Cheetos.
Cheetos are disgusting, but if you disagree, pick whatever point you get off the edible Styrofoam train.
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Please! I nearly coffee’d my laptop!
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Yeah, well, so’s yer old man!
innocently wipes orange dust off her phone screen
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I will live by the chee and die by the to. It’s not a phase. You just don’t get it 
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I’m not sure if this is the type of discussion I should be starting here, so I’ll happily delete this post if it’s not. I just want to vent a bit.
Lately I’ve found myself wondering more than once, reading new WIPs posted here, if I was reading AI generated content. It’s been very disappointing, and honestly, it’s staring to turn me off reading WIPs, which was something I used to like even more than reading completed works, lol.
The worst part, I think, is that it’s kind of impossible to do anything about this. There’s no sure way to prove an author has used AI on their work, is there? AI detectors aren’t 100% correct on their detecting, and I don’t want to use them, anyway. If someone used one on my work it would make me feel awful.
I miss when those things didn’t exist. It’s actually really sad, reading something and wondering if it was made by a robot.
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Since the important portion of the headline is cut off:
Study: People dislike stories they think were written by AI… even if they were written by humans
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I can understand feeling concerned generally, but what’s going to be far more likely is just regular human authors who are still developing their writing.
Personally, I’d rather err on the side of trusting creators than not because I’d like people to extend that same trust to me and, as you said, there’s no actual way to verify the use of AI outside of an outright admission anyway. If we start “crying AI” it could cause harm, like you said yourself, and erode trust in a community that needs it to thrive.
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Definitely. I’ve never even thought about naming works I was a bit suspicious of, because I do not want to start a witch-hunt and possibly harm an innocent author. That would be the worst.
I hope I’m wrong about everything, really, because it would be really sad if I weren’t.
It’s just really annoying, this AI thing, isn’t it? I remember when I was called annoying by my classmates for not wanting to use ChatGPT for an essay. 
College is fun.
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Yikes, I’m sorry. I have a BFA in Illustration and I can’t decide if I’m glad that gen-AI wasn’t really a thing back when I was in school, or if it would have actually been interesting and constructive discourse; I can only imagine how that would have gone at this point.
A local artist I was briefly acquainted with (we just fell out of touch because of regular life things) put a show on last year that was entirely pieces made using gen-AI. It felt very in-character with how I remember her to explore using gen-AI as a medium. Don’t ask me what she used, though - I can’t remember anymore.
I don’t care for AI as a creative tool myself (especially if you’re leaning on gen-AI as a total substitute for developing your own knowledge and skills), but I can’t fully begrudge people experimenting with it, either.
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Same. I used to roleplay a lot as a kid, so when ChatGPT and those chatbots came out I used them a lot for a while for roleplaying haha. I don’t really care about people using AI for personal reasons, even if I don’t use it anymore, but when there are so many others who use it to “cheat” or for profit, it’s really upsetting.
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This is an odd stance for Nano to take given their whole MO is to write 50k words. If I’m allowed to ask ChatGPT to write me a novel it’s not exactly any kind of challenge. They even admit that’s the case in their statement. I could understand them saying they’re not going to police it, but to fall back on it being classist and abelist is an odd choice especially as tools that are not generative AI like Grammarly/other built in grammar/spelling checkers and voice to text programs exist. You can also set your goal lower than 50k.
No I agree. You can to a point get away with free checkers like OpenOffice’s spelling/grammar checker. It’s not as sophisticated as grammarly, but you can get by in many cases. (I used OpenOffice extensively during my undergrad as I couldn’t afford the Microsoft licence for word/excel. I am a native speaker though which I know does give me an advantage over others where ESL for this sort of thing.)
I reckon that’s the way they see it. More people completing goals = better for them. I suspect this will backfire though. (Could be wrong.)
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That’s certainly an angle that hadn’t occurred to me and I see it, but I was actually referring to the fact that NaNoWriMo is in part sponsored by a company that offers a suite of editing tools utilizing AI - that company had recently released a new product as well. So NaNo has a financial incentive to not alienate their sponsor, regardless of leadership’s personal feelings one way or the other (although I do believe leadership has at least one foot in the pro-AI camp, as far as there can or should be “camps”).
To speak to your additional point, I suppose they also don’t want to alienate people who might choose not to participate if they took a strong negative stance on gen-AI (although that seems less likely, but not impossible).
There will unfortunately always be people who choose the grift over anything else, but I think they are in the minority. We just have to stay sensible in the “if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is” type situations.
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Ohhhh, ok. I haven’t been keeping up with the dramas going on at Nano recently. (Too busy to think about it.) Wandered past their reddit to take a look and wow ok. That organisation has really managed to implode hasn’t it? I heard about the predatory publishing sponsors from last year but it’s just spiralled since then. The AI stuff is the tip of a very large iceberg. Sounds like they no longer even have a working forum anymore. Not sure I’ll bother with it. Looks like a mess.
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I have used different ai tools and I have a few opinions on this.
I don’t think someone should upload commissioned art pieces into an ai generator without permission. If it is something they seek to do it should be upfront before hand what it is for. If I was allowing someone to use my art to stick into a generator then I would expect compensation and revenue from that. Of course if you are an artist being paid to make art for a generator, increase your pricing. With that said though ai ‘art’ generators are imperfect and in my opinion will never truly replace artists.
I have heard of ai story generators and touched them such as Ai Dungeon but they are more of an open sandbox roleplaying kind of thing. I am not worried on the writing front because AI tends to write in a generic way or even possibly a restrictive way. I have used AI to organized document info which its very good at but creative wise as a writing tool not so much its only as good as your input. I am not necessarily against it if it can be done ethically. Its a case by case basis.
It would personally bother me if COG touched Ai Art! I would say though always double check the source of it etc.
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How much does AI put pressure on writers and authors? I have noticed that those who write the current crop of novellas that eventually turn into YA or new Adult boxed sets are under more and more pressure to get the next episode/novella out before the previous two are published, and some are resorting to AI to help them keep to what must be a killing schedule.
If this helps them sort out their ideas into some sort out outline on which they can build, its got to be helpful, but just how much pressure can the publishers (heres looking at you Bezos) and the influencers on TikTok put them under before the whole thing collapses in on itself when the authors realised they have been horribly exploited, and people who have nothing to do with them are making more money out of their writing than they are?
This has to be killing off many writers who have talent enough that in pre-internet days they might have had a best seller on their hands, and its surely not helping those who try and rise above this and produce works that are good literature and worth adding to one’s library. Its sometime hard to tell the difference between the rubbish and the good books with the pricing. And I presume very few would have the confidence and be willing to admit they use AI. Reviews and ratings are no longer an accurate indicator of the reading quality.
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I will admit certain companies will use AI if they think they can get a cash grab.
One thing I will say AI software like chatgpt when it writes, the language it uses tends to be more elaborate and not always natural speech or may not even use slang correctly.
AI tends to be generic with plot lines, character names and backgrounds. If you use AI as a writer, it can be a tool but should not be a crutch. Another note AI tends to have memory lapses and it can be shown the further you get into a story. I will take the example of how for example ai dungeon or novelai is, It will stay on a subject until you prompt it to move on and will likely repeat the same point over and over. (Even forgetting something that majorly happened at the beginning) and this impacts chatgpt and other models to a degree. Thats why there is memory caps mentioned etc.
Young Adult books will be written more likely by Ai though since there is censorship on most ai platforms in place that have strict guidelines in place. Horribly written books that were made with AI are more likely to be cheaper with generic tropes, names and settings.
If a writer uses ai as tool and not a crutch then it should be fine but if they wrote an entire book off of AI it is more likely to be horribly written. AI tends to tell the player rather than doing the show not tell method in writing. It also doesn’t under nuances of context within scenarios.
I think ai can’t kill off human authors simply because a Human has to put in an input to those tools for it to even put stuff out and it will not generate original content unless you feed it that info.
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To be fair, people inexperienced in long-form storytelling and with no one to offer meaningful critique will probably publish work like this as well. This is one of the really sticky things about identifying when AI has been used. Some authors just really, really love their purple prose and often use words incorrectly or in unconventional ways as they learn their craft. If I had a nickel for every time someone’s use of the verb “ooze” felt way off… thanks, I hate it
I know this is a bit of a divergent point, but I think we need to be careful with how much certainty we speak on the “hallmarks of AI,” since many of the things that get listed time and again are often common with people inexperienced with writing in general, or maybe the language that they are writing in.
I agree in that gen-AI will not “kill off” human writers because it’s just not going to be what the dreamers want it to be anytime soon. My hope is that the continuing conversation on AI might continue to rally more creatives across various industries to unionize, because humanity has always needed the arts, but it’s never wanted to pay for it.
I know that you meant that these programs rely on people to function, but I do hesitate to call people inputting prompts “authors” or “writers”; it’s been posited before in this thread, and I agree, that prompting is its own, unique skill, separate from writing. Of course, a person could utilize both of those skills, but they’d need to write as much as they “generate text” to gain that writing experience.
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Yea I meant as in authors / writers not that the ai can be an author.I think at this point people need to realize AI is more than likely here to stay. Its not gonna replace people but there will be a surge of books and written works that is basically like hallmark films.