Should we allow for AI-generated fiction writing?

[Mudd]

AI is a tool. It can "make art" the same way a screwdriver can assemble a piece of flatpack furniture,* Not only must someone wield the tool, someone has to design and manufacture the piece of crap using other tools.

The moral panic around generative AI with regard to art has caught fire and grabbed public concern to the degree it has primarily for economic, not aesthetic reasons: artists may spend years or decades learning the skills to use the tools required to produce most commercial art and therefore sustain some level of livelihood exercising their own artistic talents, however remarkable or meager those may be.

AI appears to be on the cusp of critically devaluing the mastery of those skills. It's going to start peeling away and reducing the demand for entry-level, generic and particularly practical illustration: ten sustainable incomes left for exceptional talents to design and render key art rather than ten thousand folks who may not be real inspired but know how to use Illustrator and Photoshop and who understand perspective, etc.

The folks drafting assembly drawings for IKEA? Trilobites, real soon now. Guys doing 'Shopped renderings of automobiles for slick product presentations? Whatever demand there still is for that right now will be decimated but not eliminated.

Oh, and coming back to the topic of writing...the Hemingways, Didions, maybe the Kings and Clancys** will still be visible above the sea of mush. But ChatGPT's a screwdriver's turn away from generating more useful cut-and-paste verbiage on how to assemble a bedroom end table than whoever the fuck's being paid to do it now.***


*Don't ask.
**Yes, the rhetorical use of the plural is certainly pretentious and perhaps offensive. Except for Clancy.
***Please have Boston Dynamics send a droid over here to screw the bottom drawer of this #@*! thing together.

 

[Cr0sis21]

As a practical matter, this is ridiculous.

You're talking about a common English phrase. "Took a walk." "Went to space."

You absolutely can't copyright that. You can not claim that your use of the phrase in a book entitles you to copyright on that phrase.

Why does everyone keep focusing on the nuts and bolts "you can't copyright common phrases".
Of course you can't. That's not at all what I'm saying.
I said "Write a story with 'went to space' yourself and put it in there. Don't take it from mine."

Here's the thing: If it really works like you guys say it does, you should not NEED my book. You guys are trying to convince me to let you use MY book to create something for YOUR use. But why do you need MY book, or anyone else's? If these phrases are so common, why can't you just use stuff from public domain?
Ah, here's why:

AI models can train on more than 500 million works.

AI needs a LOT of data. So, it NEEDS my books, and Steven King's, and George Martin's, etc, etc.
But they don't want to pay for it.
And there's why this is an issue. The AI companies are couching this in "Oh, it's so good for humanity, blah-blah-blah", but really it's good for their pocketbooks, at OUR expense.
It's like if we're at the grocery, and the AI creator wants me to do the shopping for him, because he doesn't know the difference between a good banana and a bad one. But then he doesn't want to pay me for doing it for him.
Essentially, we are programming those AIs, and they want us to do it for free.

 

[Mudd]

You guys are trying to convince me to let you use MY book to create something for YOUR use. But why do you need MY book, or anyone else's?

I'm not, and I don't. I don't even know who you are.

 

[Cr0sis21]

I'm not, and I don't. I don't even know who you are.

Pronouns, pal. I'm lumping in the people arguing this with the programmers themselves.

 

[Mudd]

Obviously, but not to particularly good effect.

 

[Cr0sis21]

Obviously, but not to particularly good effect.

You can argue semantics or substance.

 

[Mudd]

Exactly.

The NYT has a lawsuit against OpenAI that concentrates on copyright infringement; the defense being offered is "fair use." As the author of the linked piece notes, this kind of case is so unpredictable that it may be equivalent in its outcome to settling high stakes with a flip of a coin.

"Plagiarism" is the word being more generally and emotionally bandied about with regard to AI. It's too specific a term to be either accurate or useful in dealing with these challenges - even more so with regard to image generation than text.

 

[Cr0sis21]

Exactly.

The NYT has a lawsuit against OpenAI that concentrates on copyright infringement; the defense being offered is "fair use." As the author of the linked piece notes, this kind of case is so unpredictable that it may be equivalent in its outcome to settling high stakes with a flip of a coin.

"Plagiarism" is the word being more generally and emotionally bandied about with regard to AI. It's too specific a term to be either accurate or useful in dealing with these challenges - even more so with regard to image generation than text.

Ok. Let's talk about fair use, then.
The USA has 4 factors for fair use.
1) "the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes." - Welp, the purpose is for profit, so there goes that.
2) "To prevent the private ownership of work that rightfully belongs in the public domain, facts and ideas are not protected by copyright—only their particular expression or fixation merits such protection." IE, you can't copyright this like the Zapruder film. Not applicable here.
3) "The third factor assesses the amount and substantiality of the copyrighted work that has been used. In general, the less that is used in relation to the whole, the more likely the use will be considered fair." An argument can be made here, but I believe that factually, we're talking about pieces of the work being divided and copied an unlimited number of times. Unlike thumbnails, it's not one single part being reproduced for reference, it's multiple pieces bring reproduced ad nauseum for profit.
4) "The fourth factor measures the effect that the allegedly infringing use has had on the copyright owner's ability to exploit his original work."
And this is where the AI argument falls apart. Essentially, AI is forcing the artist to literally compete against himself

 

[Mudd]

4) "The fourth factor measures the effect that the allegedly infringing use has had on the copyright owner's ability to exploit his original work."
And this is where the AI argument falls apart. Essentially, AI is forcing the artist to literally compete against himself

That's an interesting way of looking at it. It suggests that AI will generate narrative that's competitive with human fiction. Thus far, there seems to be little evidence that it can do that. AI can shortcut formulating structural things like plot outlines/game designs, but no better than a pack of cards or dice can - people have been making and selling mediocre plot-generators for ages.

Fiction writers are in far less direct danger from generative AI right now than artists are - I notice that there are a number of artists associations and resources that have become strident in organizing against it. A lot of AI art is getting sold, or used as advertising/packaging to sell other products. I'm only aware of a few instances of people claiming to make much money selling AI-written books.

The real immediate competitive danger from AI is simply the internet drowning in useless AI-generated content and making it much harder and more frustrating for people to find useful material produced by human beings who understand what they're making. AI-generated crochet patterns, for example.

In any event, we'll have to wait and see what the court decides about AI and fair use. I'm not a lawyer and am loathe to play one on the Internet. I don't think The Verge's equation of the likely consequences of ruling either way with what happened to Napster is particularly apt here, though. The corporate resources being mustered in the furtherance of AI technology are far more extensive than that music-sharing blip, and these folks will adapt and work with whatever restrictions they have to.

The really interesting question in response to the OP's query - "Should we allow for ai-generated fiction writing?" - is: Why? What's the point, if you're writing for pleasure (fanfic) as distinct from writing for market?

 

[Mudd]

I mean it's a pretty basic difference. A human brain is capable of creativity, a machine is not.

Well, the more basic difference is that we assume human beings to have conscious intention and therefore can knowingly choose to steal. A human being is morally responsible for plagiarism. An AI program does not "know" what it's doing; it's generating word patterns based on making connections from massive amounts of input training data. Any responsibility for the input lies with the folks who prepare the training data sets.

How ChatGPT works.

 

[Cr0sis21]

https://www.pcgamer.com/software/ai...ght-claim-against-a-subreddit-using-its-logo/

 

[Robert Bruce Scott]

And that screen capture sums up this entire thread.

 

[Galen4]

Ouch.

 

[Trek Writers Room]

I posted a few AI-generated fiction stories in a thread "Letting AI write a story" {https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/letting-ai-write-a-story.316184/} just to show what the AI author is capable of.


After talking with a co-worker, I think the subject of AI-authorship deserves some discussion.

In my co-worker's world (D&D / general fantasy), he said there are many people using AI to generate fiction on various website. Some in his group say it's okay to get the basic story down, and then for a human to edit it, but he told me doesn't feel that AI has any place in writing fiction.

Obviously, it would be in poor taste, if now down right unethical, to post an AI-generated story and claim it as your own work. I would consider that to be a form of plagiarism.

Opinions??

 

[Trek Writers Room]

While I will not weigh in on ethics... I do feel that if you are writing fan fiction one usually does this to tell their own story. If you use AI to create a story it's kina beyond the point. Why then are you writing in n the first place?

Certainly you can use it as either a pseudo editor and should always be used in one form or another to CHK for spelling or grammar, but I would say no to allowing AI to create and tell your story from nothing but prompts robs the reader of the human experience.
T.K.

 

[BillJ]

…but I would say no to allowing AI to create and tell your story from nothing but prompts robs the reader of the human experience.

Shouldn’t such determinations be left to the reader?

 

[Trek Writers Room]

Shouldn’t such determinations be left to the reader?

Well, sure. But unless you indicate that the story was written by or with AI assistance, most readers would be unaware.

 

[TheLoneRedshirt]

Re the OP's question: "No."

 

[pio1776]

I agree. I am presently working on a third book in my original military fiction series and have cheated a little, by using AI to write a scene or two. I regretted it instantly. On the other hand, it's good for prompts and as a thesaurus, but no way will I use it... no matter how much writing and rewriting is involved to finish the book.

I compare AI writing to premade frozen fast food pizza that lacks feeling of accomplishment and the personal voice of the writer writing a story from scratch.

My writing may not be the best, but I rather share my poorly written story than a perfectly written AI story that lacks my own voice and personal experiences.

Just like with the pizza, there is something special and fulfilling about creating something on your own, even if it may not be perfect. So, I choose to embrace my imperfect writing and continue to work on it, rather than rely on the robotic and soulless writing of AI to do the work for me.

 

[pio1776]

So plagiarism is ok if it's done by the living?

That's an odd stance.

there are so many versions of story types, tropes that we use as writers. Is it not plagiarism to borrow?