The battle continues and honestly, I’m past being exhausted and now just think it’s a huge joke. I read an extremely long post on Facebook from an “author” (self-proclaimed) who went on this huge temper tantrum how just because she used a tool for her writing does not mean it’s AI slop or that she is not an “author”. She went on and on justifying her case, with others applauding her outburst. I sat there and had to laugh at the audacity.
Usually I am a firm believer of live and let live, unless your actions inflict pain/hurt on another soul. Then the gloves are off. Using generative AI is stealing the hard work of true authors to fake a story or piece of art (I hate even using that term because it is not art) for someone else. There are multi-faceted points here so lets break it down.
Generative AI is available because it stole work from true authors and artists without their permission. Why the corrupt courts did not shut these systems down and allows them to continue using stolen work is beyond me, but we are living within a corrupted system. So the basic ethics of humanity is violated right there. You are using stolen work to build an object for your own benefit. Selfish and self serving, plain and simple.
Two: The definition of an author is ” a person who writes a novel, poem, essay, etc; the composer of literary work, as distinguished from a compiler”. As an authentic author, and being friends with authentic authors all over the world, I know what goes into writing a novel. The plots, the storylines, the ever-changing characters as they decide where your story is going instead of how you planned, waking up in the middle of the night because that loophole you have been stressing about finally gets resolved and you have to write it down immediately before you lose the idea or the concept. The ego check when your editor comes back and explains that something isn’t flowing and you need to rewrite a scene that you thought you had down. THAT is an author. THAT is a writer.
The person using AI to write is a fraud. They type a line and a program spits out a garbled blend of stolen work that they then pass off as their own. They may alter, they may edit, but it is still the combination of someone else’s hard work that they are wanting to profit on. They are not an author, they are an elementary school typist who comes up with one or two lines of an idea and has something else do the work. That person wants a participation ribbon in a field that they didn’t have to work for. They are no more an author than I am a computer programmer.
That’s my author’s point of view. Now here is my reader’s.
I have been a reader for far many more years than I have been an author. My first big book, Sacajawea by Anna Lee Waldo, when I was twelve years old. It then led into Stephen King and Dean Koontz. I was (and am) a voracious reader, gobbling up anything I could get my hands on. The library knew me well and often allowed me to check out more books than the limit because I was in there so frequently.
If I had to choose between reading and writing, I would choose reading. Though it would kill my soul as I have so many incredible stories floating in my imagination demanding to be put into words, I have to read just as much as I have to breathe, eat and sleep. It feeds my soul, and my mind. So as a reader, I’m downloading books to my Kindle and buying my physical books to keep up with my appetite. The books I have been running into lately are the AI slop I’ve mentioned above. Books that I cannot even get halfway through when I disgustedly swipe to the end just to leave a 1-star and find the next book. There’s no meat to these stories. The characters jump all over as if they have schizophrenia, the writing is flat and it’s all “tell” and no “show”. AI can’t show you the story, can’t make you forget that you are reading and instead a part of the world. It truly is slop.
It’s becoming so prominent, that I’ve reached out to Amazon and currently searching for an attorney to force booksellers to disclose whether a book is created with AI or not. I know that Amazon requires the “author” to disclose if AI was used in the writing or the cover work before they publish your book. The reader deserves that knowledge as well, so they can choose whether or not they want to spend their money on an AI book or an author written book. I know many support AI authors and that is fine. I, however, choose the hearty, fleshed out stories of the writer who has lived, cried and laughed with their characters.
I want the human.