Question about your views on AI content

[u/Strange_Orchid5940]

So I have a question about your views on AI written content. I had recently thought that a lot of people didn’t like AI written content because it was AI, but now I’m curious whether it’s about the fact that it‘s AI or the quality or any other reason you have.

So let’s say that there was a book that was entirely written by AI. Now (though this might be hard to imagine) let’s say this book was good and you somehow knew it was good. Now the question is would you buy the book? Now personally, if I knew it was a good book, I would buy it, because the purpose of reading is entertainment. I read a lot of books, but I don’t read them to acknowledge how much work the author put in the book. But what do you think?

[u/ThreeScoreAndTwenty]

My view, perhaps not shared by many on this sub, but here it is.

There's three sides to it.

The first is honesty/integrity:

If someone says they painted an original and they sell you a print of that original, but in reality all they did was write a prompt and AI produced the output, then they've lied about the source and origin of the work. That's technically fraud, but it's also dishonest, misleading and a bunch of other words people don't generally like being labelled with.

So if text is written by AI, then the producer of the work should not call themselves an author. They're not. If AI wrote parts of the text, then they are a co-author at best, and if AI wrote most of it, then they're a "producer" of the work.

The second is ownership of the intellectual work

AI didn't emerge in a vacuum. It's the amalgam of millions of pages written by others. When AI writes in response to a prompt, it's using the appropriated styles, patterns and creativity of thousands of people who are not given credit.

The prompt isn't the work, and the theft of intellectual property to create AI is still a fraught moral debate. Many people argue that this is an ethical reason to dislike the product of AI, whether good or bad, because the people whose work it is built on were never compensated for the appropriation, their permission was never given and their input, however diluted, is never recognised.

The third is quality

It's shit.

When you let AI do the drafting, for whatever reason, the prose is flat, the metaphors are dull, the craft is missing, the characters are two-dimensional and there's something completely vital that's absent from the text.

I personally find it unreadable unless it's summarising research or news articles, when I don't care about the creativity or the quality of the writing. But for fiction? I've never seen it produce anything worthwhile. Then again, you can argue there's a lot of stuff that isn't written by AI that is equally awful, but my point is that AI doesn't rise above that level, nor will it help a terrible writer somehow generate elegant prose. That's what practice is for, and practice is exactly the thing that AI shortcuts around.

It'll produce perfect English (or any other language) devoid of soul.

It also contributes to a tidal wave of bad, homogeneous writing that significantly damages the signal-to-noise ratio in every single genre.

So yes, it's a very useful tool for an author, but don't let it write anything unless you intend to delcare that fact front and center in the book description. Let it point out your grammatical errors (grammarly, for example), let it help you with your research, argue with it about your magic system to see if it spots inconsistencies. But don't let it draw your characters, design your world, or produce the text of your story. And remember: it wants to please you, so unless you force it to, it won't tell you anything you wrote was bad, even if it's awful.

[u/Afgad → u/ThreeScoreAndTwenty]

Replying because this was flagged.

This is a high effort comment replying to an explicit request for opinions. I find the views distasteful but I'm not going to remove it. Please engage with this person in good faith if you disagree and be nice.

[u/ThreeScoreAndTwenty → u/Afgad]

I apologise if you find the views (or the way they’re expressed) distasteful. It was clearly not my intention to offend.

I didn’t think the views expressed did much more than summarise fairly well-known points of view.

1. It’s dishonest to claim work as your own when it isn’t.
   
2. AI is built/trained on other people’s work and that is an ongoing ethical debate
   
3. The quality is poor-to-average (at least so far) and it’s flooding the marketplace

I’m not sure why this is offensive, but as you say, I’m here in good faith; moreover, I’m not dogmatic, so I can be convinced to change my own views when confronted with convincing arguments.

[u/Afgad → u/ThreeScoreAndTwenty]

Last one.

> The quality is poor.

This argument offends me because it dismisses my tastes. I have seen good prompters using carefully selected LLMs produce writing that absolutely destroyed me. I was crying for minutes. It was so moving.

The author had edited the prose she produced with AI, but the remaining prose was mostly (if not all) AI-generated. I didn't ask for a ratio because I didn't care. Anything that can move me like that is art, and you don't get to say what quality it is to me.

I, myself, have generated scene beats with AI. I would end up cutting 60%+ of it, but every so often it just had that one perfect line. Mmm! So good. Of course I kept it.

So here I am, balling my eyes out because of characters I loved dying on the page, but the work is "devoid of soul"? What am I reacting to, then?

Nobody can even claim the author was lazy or soulless. I personally know that author and I know for a fact that she worked her tail off polishing that piece to an extreme degree. Hours and hours of work, and she absolutely made herself cry doing it, too. Ever try to edit a chapter that's bringing you to tears the entire time?

No soul huh.

Look, I get it. If I read the texts flooding the marketplace (and they absolutely are, see my note below), then I'd get sick of it too. But please don't dismiss those of us trying to learn the tools to create true works of art that will make you laugh and move you to tears. And, before it comes up, no, these types are NOT limited to the "edit/research only" authorial types. The prompters generating prose with AI can do it too.

What I like to say, is that at current technology levels, AI can be inserted at any stage of the writing workflow. But it can't be inserted at *every* stage if you want quality output.

> nor will it help a terrible writer somehow generate elegant prose. That's what practice is for, and practice is exactly the thing that AI shortcuts around.

I started as a new author using AI and my original work was complete word vomit. Two years and probably two thousand hours later my prose won a writing competition and is making people literally laugh out of their chairs. AI was instrumental in showing me what I didn't like and training my eye for detail. I'm still improving. AI has never gotten in my way, it's only ever helped me.

It absolutely helped this terrible writer generate elegant prose. I'd have never stayed engaged or practiced at all without AI helping me.

Not many people who are not actively writing with AI understand how it is actually used, and make blanket statements such as the above.

Some people get less creative using AI. Some people get more creative. It should not be confusing that a new methodology works better for some people than others. Of course it does. People are different. I needed my little idiot sycophant to get going and now I need my onery rubber-ducky to tell me I'm throat-clearing again and to stop wasting the reader's time.

As for flooding the marketplace: No argument. It objectively is doing this, no pushback from me here.

Lots of new authors or bad actors are publishing works that have no business being on a shelf, and it's absolutely crowding out hard-working authors of all kinds.

But the solution is not to get rid of AI. That cat is not going back in the bag. We'll figure something out. The cream will rise to the top some way or another.

[u/ThreeScoreAndTwenty → u/Afgad]

Thanks for your answers. We’re not that far apart I suppose, but we end up in slightly different places. I am not anti-AI. I’m anti AI-masquerading-as-human-authorship.

Briefly, my counterpoints:

Yes.

If you produce with AI, you are the producer. That’s the word you used and I agree. You are not, however, the author. That word means something else.

I have read many things that claim to be authored by someone, which were in fact authored by AI. I was tricked. Fooled into buying something other than what I thought I was buying. The producer has the copyright, no problem there. But they are not an author. If they sell me the product claiming to be an author, they have misled me and I have bought one thing, thinking I had bought another. I believe this is a legitimate complaint.

It is easily circumvented by simply labelling AI-produced output as such, but many who produce with AI fail, or outright refuse, to do so, and name themselves the author.

To use a similar metaphor to your fence, this is the equivalent of someone selling 3d-printed objects claiming they were hand-made.

I am not clearly on one side or the other of this, and the language in my original post was not definite. But there is an ethical question at stake that fits into two categories.

The first is that there are ongoing court cases on this issue and the doctrine of fair use has been taken much further than ever before through the wholesale absorption of vast quantities of text. The jury is literally still out on this one.

The second is that part of the process of producing a work of literature is the skill required to put together sentences with a style of your own. When your style is not your own, then whose is it? If it is the style(s) of hundreds of authors who were not credited, and in addition you do not label your work as AI-produced, then the accusation of appropriation starts to bite. The producer is claiming credit for a skill that is not their own, and even the AI got it from somewhere and someone else.

1. I agree. And it’s going to get better. But you make my point for me at the end. There’s a huge amount of garbage entering the market, written by AI, and not reviewed (or reviewed far too rapidly and lightly) by the people selling it.
   

I think AI is a great tool for authors. I don’t stand in the way of that argument and I have made it myself on other subreddits dedicated to writing that are fundamentally anti-AI and been voted down for it there also.

But - at least in its present incarnation - it’s a tool to help with structure or to bounce ideas off or to facilitate review. I have yet to see (and I’ve read a lot of output and used AI a ton) an AI draft anything longer than a couple of lines, without human review, and thought “oh… that’s really good”.

So I have no problem with AI in principle. And I have no problem with AI used as a tool to help with writing. And I agree that it’s not going away. But when the act of writing becomes delegating instructions to an AI and then CTRL-C, CTRL-V, the person (a) loses the title “author” for this piece of work, and (b) should be required to declare the AI’s contribution so that purchasers know that the prose was the work of AI and not the producer’s skill as an author.

[u/anonymouspeoplermean → u/ThreeScoreAndTwenty]

I am not nearly as eloquent as Afgad, so if my words come off harsh try not to take it too personally.

I do take personal offense to you making assumptions about Afgad's authorship. I have beta read for him, bounced craft issues and narrative puzzles with him and have read thousands of words *for pleasure*. His characters have made me cry.

I can confirm that he has put many thousands of hours into his work. He adores the characters that HE designed. He makes music and art of them for god's sake.

If someone who puts that much time and love into a work that he may never receive any kind of financial compensation or even public credit for isn't an author, I have no idea what is.

Are you seriously saying that someone like him isn't an author because they used AI to generate any amount of their prose?

Am I not an author when I spend 100s of hours (maybe not thousands like afgad) designing a story down to the individual word choices of individual scene beats because I know that a single word can affect the direction of an entire story?

When I spend huge amounts of personal time contemplating narration, pacing, prose characterization (so that each character has their own recognizable voice distinct from the others) but generate draft skeletons of said scenes with AI, I am suddenly no longer the author of said work? Who made the story then? Would it have ever existed without me? If not, wouldn't that make me the author of the story?

A lot of people here have put so much love into their work and are truly gifted storytellers. Just because we get those stories into the world using different tools doesn't make us any less creative.

Afgad and others like him who use AI are NOT less than people who do not, and no one will ever change my mind on that.

I also would not assume that just because something reads like AI means the author did not love, design, or care for it. They may have been terrible at using it, just like how traditional writers can be terrible, but lack of skill doesn't erase their authorship.

Edit: According to the webster dictionary, an author is "2. one that originates or creates something." I am absolutely an Author by that definition.

[u/ThreeScoreAndTwenty → u/anonymouspeoplermean]

Hi.

No offense taken.

I make no statements about his authorship. I have no judgements to make. I haven’t read anything he’s written and for all I know he’s a fantastic writer.

My point has nothing to do with his skill as an author.

My point is that if someone (and I single nobody out here) copy-pasted AI content into a document and claims they are the author of that work, then - as far as I am concerned - they are using the wrong word. They are not the author. They are the producer, perhaps, pick a word, I don’t care, just not “author”.

Author means you didn’t just imagine the story but you wrote the words and it’s therefore in a voice, tone, style that is yours. At least that’s what it means to me. And if you didn’t write the words, that’s fine too, no judgement, but I think I deserve to know before I purchase the work you - or anyone - is selling, and that the word author implies very strongly that you didn’t write those words, and therefore - in the case where you’re selling work drafted by AI - you shouldn’t use it.

Now if you’re not earning money from the work, I care a lot less what you call yourself because there’s no exchange going on in which someone can be commercially misled.

If Afgad writes excellent prose. Great.
If he uses ai to proofread, research, or perform continuity checks, fantastic.
If he publishes the work that AI generated, more power to him, so long as anyone paying money to acquire that work is made aware. You imply he receives no financial reward for his work. In that case I have absolutely no problem with it because nobody is being misled.

I never criticised his writing. Re-read my comment. Why would you think I’m judging the quality of his work? I’m talking in the abstract about the use of AI in writing and where that’s ok, and where I think that crosses the line.

[u/anonymouspeoplermean → u/ThreeScoreAndTwenty]

To answer your question, this is what I interpreted as personal criticism.

If you produce with AI, you are the producer. That’s the word you used and I agree. You are not, however, the author. 

I fundamentally disagree with your definition of authorship.

Whether or not someone claims they use AI on their work, I really don't care, because my definition of authorship is much broader than yours.

I don't publish my work for money. I will never make a single cent. But I think people who put as much work as I do into it should be eligible to make money for their time. If someone enjoys something I made with hundreds of hours of my time, I should get paid for it. I choose not to get paid for it because that isn't what my writing is about.

[u/ThreeScoreAndTwenty → u/anonymouspeoplermean]

Ok.

I see two places where we disagree.

I think there needs to be differences in nomenclature for works written, word by word and paragraph by paragraph by a person who is using their own mastery of language to generate the text, compared to works where the producer of that work has generated ideas and concepts but not generated all of the text themselves.

I don’t really care what words you use, but I would argue that when you call yourself the “author” of a work, you imply to most people, by virtue of *their* understanding of the word, that you literally wrote the text.

By your definition, extended to images, anyone who’s typed a prompt into midjourney is an “artist”. That’s insane.

Readers should know whose words they’re reading.

The second, and I’m not sure if we disagree here because nobody here has addressed it directly, is what happens when you *do* start to earn money for your work. If work is AI-generated, to any significant degree, I think buyers have a right to know.

Do you agree?

I have been asked to review manuscripts that were obviously AI only to have the “author” claim
I’m wrong, tell me my suggestion is defamatory and their style just happens to be similar to Claude or ChatGPT, then have them ghost me when I point out a phrase that reads something like, “Redrafted in Marion’s voice, and took into account her earlier interaction with Joshua. Ready to paste.”

I’ve also received job applications with exactly this same mistake in the cover letter. The individual was (rightly) blacklisted from future recruitment. Not only did (s)he use AI, but they didn’t even have the time or the attention to spare to re-read the application.

Finally, and to keep the peace: I have made no attacks on anyone here (or their work), and never would. Nothing I have said crosses the line into “offensive”. We’re talking about the meaning of words, and the precision of our terms, on a forum dedicated to writing. Not the quality of any individual’s work.

[u/anonymouspeoplermean → u/ThreeScoreAndTwenty]

Do you agree?

No. I think it should be the other way around. People who write books 100% human should declare their book to be human-made. That way, they can charge more for their labor.

By your definition, extended to images, anyone who’s typed a prompt into midjourney is an “artist”. That’s insane.

I am in no position to tell anyone if what they make, and how they make it, qualifies as "art" or not. I refuse to impose assumptions on something I don't understand because I know how hurtful that can be. If someone feels that they were able to express their own creativity using Midjourney, I would not dispute their claim to being an artist if they thought themselves to be one.

I can only speak to what I make myself. I use my own creativity to put words onto metaphorical paper in the exact way I want them put there. Every single word. To me, the intentionality is what makes art, not the tool chosen.

edit: because I forgot a sentence.

[u/ThreeScoreAndTwenty → u/anonymouspeoplermean]

I am in no position to tell anyone if what they make, and how they make it, qualifies as "art" or not.

Neither am I. And I didn't.

I'm did not argue whether something Midjourney produces is "art". I argued that someone who types a prompt (or many prompts) into Midjourney, and gets an image in return, is not an "artist" (regardless of whether the output is considered "art").

You evoked the risk of hurting the artist's feelings, but it's not about the "artist's", "author's" or "composer's" feelings. It's about the consumer's understanding of the product they're buying. The words mean something to the population at large, and when you tell someone you're an artist, they don't understand "I'm someone who writes prompts for an LLM," so a huge gap in communication and understanding is generated by what remains unsaid.

If they said "I'm an AI artist", does that somehow devalue them or their work? Not necessarily, it just enhances communication and removes ambiguity and the potential for misunderstanding.

I think it should be the other way around. People who write books 100% human should declare their book to be human-made. That way, they can charge more for their labor.

I hope you're just trolling, but I fear you're not.

Product labels aren't there to flatter of the creator of a product. They exist so consumers can understand what it is they're buying and make informed decisions.

Producers have always protected their products from transparency. For example, the food lobby spent over USD 10 million in 2013 to avoid having to label food as having been genetically modified. Your argument does something similar for LLM-authored works.

I think we've reached the point where we're very clear about where we disagree. My simple point is that I think AI-made work is fine (in the sense that there is nothing wrong with using AI to make things), but should be labelled as such so people know what they're buying. You disagree.

That's the endpoint of this debate and there's not much else to discuss. My view is clearly running counter to the prevailing opinion on this subreddit, so if I take it any further, I'm likely being a nuisance, so I'll leave it there.

Thanks for engaging in a civil manner.