A couple of studies regarding AI writing

[Demesnedenoir]

They are also trained on a lot of slop. AI for writing at its current state might be a bit like millions of AI monkeys typing, but their training probably hurts their ability to get lucky.

AI is a genuine marvel for editing and catching oddball errors. I released Eve of Snows 8 years ago, and just today I thought... let's see what old errors an AI might catch in the MS! I've been over that book a couple of dozen times, with 3 professional passes at editing, and it was rated an A for editing by a professional reviewer, and I'll be damned if it didn't pull up errors that got by. I had a diacritic Istinjôln once in the book, and bam! Caught that little bastard. A total hangover from my first draft. Double spaced in one spot. One minor character's name got misspelled twice. And there were others far more WTF!? as far as errors go. I was floored. It also flagged things I left as is, because not every grammatical error is a mistake, heh heh.

The fact that I can tell a machine "Hard errors ONLY" and it skips almost all of my idiosyncrasies is amazing as hell.

Plus you can be very rude to an AI editor, saying things I'd never say to a living one, heh heh.

 

[Eduardo Ficaria]

Broadly speaking, and after all that has been said in this thread, it feels to me like we are going through our own version of the "Red flag law" days for AI as it happened with the automobile industry in the past. AI is still very new for the general public and evolving so fast that we're still figuring it out. By the way, Mad Swede , I think you are going to have a hard time avoiding AI altogether because it is essentially in everything now. You have to assume that all search engines run on it, tools like M$ Office already come with AI integrated in them, it is also found in popular design tools like Canva or Photoshop, online dictionaries and translator tools have it too, and I'm sure the number of book publishers using AI in some capacity is increasing (they have to remain competitive, no matter how niche they are). So, yeah Amazon can go and close accounts because some random "witch hunter" accuses authors of using AI tools in their fiction, until the day an author (or a group of them) sues Amazon (and the witch hunter) for damages. Also, there are alternatives to Amazon (Gumroad) that seem to work well enough.

To me, the question is not so much about using AI, is more about how you use it and the quality of what you produce with it. Before AI, we already had issues about creators ripping off other artists (art forgery has been around for a long while, and creators have been stealing from each other constantly—what was Star Wars originally but a flashy ripoff of Dune and Foundation in the Buck Rogers spirit?). Sure AI enables both slop production and IP theft, but also can empower the fight against both.

Regarding the matter of AI-detection tools, Anthropic has decided to apply a rather smart way (based on the SynthID-Text method invented by Google) to watermark its Claude outputs. The text the model returns is "poisoned" with certain randomly chosen words (which still fit in the output) that could be detected with a specialized tool, although Anthropic recognizes relevant limitations for this technique (check out section "Which specific method of watermarking do you use?" in the Anthropic article). This highlights the issues around AI detection tools, and also reinforces my posture regarding how to use AI properly in creative writing: never by just copying and pasting its output unless it is just for your own notes or documentation. On the other hand, those who run models locally may not be affected at all by this watermarking, although this depends if the open-weight models available for local inference end up also trained to watermark their outputs (which may very well happen and soon).

 

[Karlin]

Broadly speaking, and after all that has been said in this thread, it feels to me like we are going through our own version of the "Red flag law" days for AI as it happened with the automobile industry in the past. AI is still very new for the general public and evolving so fast that we're still figuring it out. By the way, Mad Swede , I think you are going to have a hard time avoiding AI altogether because it is essentially in everything now. You have to assume that all search engines run on it, tools like M$ Office already come with AI integrated in them, it is also found in popular design tools like Canva or Photoshop, online dictionaries and translator tools have it too, and I'm sure the number of book publishers using AI in some capacity is increasing (they have to remain competitive, no matter how niche they are). So, yeah Amazon can go and close accounts because some random "witch hunter" accuses authors of using AI tools in their fiction, until the day an author (or a group of them) sues Amazon (and the witch hunter) for damages. Also, there are alternatives to Amazon creators have been stealing from each other constantly—what was Star Wars originally but a flashy ripoff of Dune and Foundation in the Buck Rogers spirit?). Sure AI

Actually, star wars was inspiredby an old Kuradawa movie. The Hidden Fortress

 

[Eduardo Ficaria]

That's absolutely right Karlin ! It was another big influence on the movie, although I think Lucas just reused its plot structure and certain aesthetics from the japanese feudal period. I don't know the opinion of Kurosawa on the movie, but I think many on this forum are aware of how annoyed Frank Herbert was about it.

On the bright side of things, many years later Spielberg and Lucas would help Kurosawa in the funding and filming of his 1990's movie Dreams.

 

[Mad Swede]

By the way, Mad Swede , I think you are going to have a hard time avoiding AI altogether because it is essentially in everything now. You have to assume that all search engines run on it, tools like M$ Office already come with AI integrated in them, it is also found in popular design tools like Canva or Photoshop, online dictionaries and translator tools have it too, and I'm sure the number of book publishers using AI in some capacity is increasing (they have to remain competitive, no matter how niche they are). So, yeah Amazon can go and close accounts because some random "witch hunter" accuses authors of using AI tools in their fiction, until the day an author (or a group of them) sues Amazon (and the witch hunter) for damages. Also, there are alternatives to Amazon (Gumroad) that seem to work well enough.

No. If you buy the standalone version of something like Office you don't get the AI capability. Admittedly Microsoft and opther software suppliers would rather you didn't do this, because they make more money from a subscription service like MIcrosoft 365 than they do from standalone licenses.

You can avoid using AI-tools in things like Photoshop, and you do this by not letting the software improve images for you. You do the editing old-style, by hand. This is what I do with GIMP. It takes more time but...

It's the same with search engines, you can ignore the AI-tool suggestions.

My translation software, like my specialist dyslexia software for spelling and grammar checking, does not use AI. As with Office, I have standalone versions of these packages.

And no, my publishers do not use AI-tools. No Swedish publisher does.

 

[pmmg]

To me, the question is not so much about using AI, is more about how you use it and the quality of what you produce with it.

Yeah, and to me, the question is are you using it at all. If you are, you are not a writer.

 

[Eduardo Ficaria]

No. If you buy the standalone version of something like Office you don't get the AI capability...

Yes, fortunately there are still many options out there that are AI-free. A few months ago, I finally switched from Windows to Linux Mint in part due to this obsession by M$ of pushing AI onto its users. I'll have AI only if I want to have it and can find a real use case for me, not because someone forces me to. I also use GIMP, Libre Office, VS Codium, and some other non-AI tools. The models I run locally are just another separate tool, not some unwanted shadowy entity lurking in my system and sending my data to some Big Tech datacenter for their sole benefit. About the detail of ignoring the AI-tool suggestions, I think that the search engines themselves now are all some sort of AI systems. I mean, being part of them is probably one of the strongest use cases for LLM models.

Yeah, and to me, the question is are you using it at all. If you are, you are not a writer.

Fine. Then to me the question is if you are using anything machine-based at all. If you are not just using quill, ink and paper, and sending your drafts to publishing houses by wax-sealed mail, you certainly are not a writer at all! Further even, and given the name of this forum, you are not a scribe if you are not using clay tablets and stamping cuneiform signs in them. Ok, ok, we can upgrade that a bit to use papyrus and whatever they used to write in them in ancient Egypt. Is that purist enough for you? Or maybe are you trying to be the man waving the red flag in front of the automobile as they did back in the nineteenth century? I do not want to come across as offensive, but judging people like that only leads to pointless conflict.

 

[pmmg]

Fine. Then to me the question is if you are using anything machine-based at all.

I am sorry, but this is weak. The leap from clay tablets to quills is not the same as something else doing the work for you. We are in a creative endeavor. AI is doing the creating. You are not needed. If you are not doing the creating, you have no voice. You have no place in art.

 

[Karlin]

I would rather spend my time creating and writing than worrying about whether other people are real writers or not.

 

[pmmg]

I would too, but the issue repeats, what are we to do?

Ultimately, I think it is a losing battle. AI will over-power the art and something will be lost. But...just as there are diamonds in the ruff, there will be stalwarts, and holdouts, and every once in a while, John Henry will beat the machine.

Personally, I cannot know if one is using AI or not. I may never know. But if I do know, I think less of the artist.

 

[Karlin]

I would too, but the issue repeats, what are we to do?

Ultimately, I think it is a losing battle. AI will over-power the art and something will be lost. But...just as there are diamonds in the ruff, there will be stalwarts, and holdouts, and every once in a while, John Henry will beat the machine.

Personally, I cannot know if one is using AI or not. I may never know. But if I do know, I think less of the artist.

What are we to do? Cuss, move on. Write.