AI written books

[Apache]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Agreed, absolutely. My lament (such as it was) may have been poorly crafted by me. I didn't mean it to sound like "woe is me!," I was more..."everybody, get up off your bums and realize, that was then, this is now so let's get on with it."

Hitch

I didn't even think that. I was agreeing with you and just pointing out to others that this is a fact of life.
Apache

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Apache

I didn't even think that. I was agreeing with you and just pointing out to others that this is a fact of life.
Apache

o(^ ∀ ^*)o

Hitch

[DNSB]

A couple of the authors I chat with are playing with AI as an assistant. You can almost see the hearts in their eyes when they talk about what AI makes easier (outlines, research assistant, etc.) and what it doesn't. Evidently AI does a lousy job of emulating an author's 'voice' and often writes very stupid paragraphs when brainstorming. As one author put it, they have now written two books where they didn't screw up a character's name or used the wrong homonym which were two of their bêtes noire. OTOH, the opinion is that it still their book. AI is simply a tool much like Word or LO Writer or Vellum.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DNSB

A couple of the authors I chat with are playing with AI as an assistant. You can almost see the hearts in their eyes when they talk about what AI makes easier (outlines, research assistant, etc.) and what it doesn't. Evidently AI does a lousy job of emulating an author's 'voice' and often writes very stupid paragraphs when brainstorming. As one author put it, they have now written two books where they didn't screw up a character's name or used the wrong homonym which were two of their bêtes noire. OTOH, the opinion is that it still their book. AI is simply a tool much like Word or LO Writer or Vellum.

Well, on that front, similarly, I guess, I have to say that something that I encounter, constantly, is the firm and unshakeable belief, by the authors in the matter, that the author of an illustrated kids book is the creator. That the book, in toto, is their book--that the illustrator solely works "for" him or her.

I've had any number of email discussions in my office, with angry kids' book authors who tell me that (basically) their illustrators tried to take credit for "their" book and that they'd forgotten their place, essentially.

Now...that's all well and good, but you cannot tell me, or anyone that does not have an emotional attachment to a kids' book, that the illustrations don't, by and large, sell the book. Sure if you're Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), you can probably say that (although he drew his own stuff too, so bad example, really); his written work was brilliant.

But the reality is, very few "brilliant" kids' books are out there. Most are pretty mundane. Johnny wakes up in his world; something happens; Johnny realizes that ZZZ is bad and then John takes steps and learns a good moral lesson. That's that and what makes people BUY, really, are the charm and charisma of the cover and the first few pages--and a huge percentage of that is down to the illustrator. NOT the author.

Now, financially, sure...if the author pays the illustrator, that's work for hire and all that entails. Not arguing that.

BUT, pretending that the illustrator's work plays no part, whatsoever, in the book's success? Cracked, IMHO.

I'm just thinking that this scenario--how the author views the illustrator--isn't totally dissimilar to how they may view the AI.

Hitch

[Quoth]

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...sold-on-amazon

I wonder is Dibbler selling sausage-inna-bun concessions for disillusioned human writers?
Not sure how the search here is accessed:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...gement/675363/
(Meta rather than ChatGPT).

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Not sure how the search here is accessed:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...gement/675363/
(Meta rather than ChatGPT).

here:
https://full-stack-search-prod.vercel.app/

(from this social media post)

[Quoth]

And
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/comi...d-mike-allred/

[John F]

My local channel (WFSB) had an interview with author Luanne Rice, and the anchor said that "... They (the AI developers) are taking your books and in this case pirated. So an ebook version that nobody has even paid for, inputting it into A.I. ..."

I had assumed that they were using legal purchased (or public domain) material. I was surprised buy this in that they would cheap out and expose themselves to litigation on this front.

The article goes on to say that they use the A.I. to generate material that uses the author's "voice". Could there be some other legal points to that. I thought that there was some sort of legal protections for using someone's "likeness" without permission?

[John F]

And another one from the interview. Paraphrasing: "Of the top 100 kindle books for teens, 19 were real books, the rest were A.I fakes."

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by John F

And another one from the interview. Paraphrasing: "Of the top 100 kindle books for teens, 19 were real books, the rest were A.I fakes."

Okay, question: how do they KNOW that? (And, why do I keep having to ask this question?)

Every article I have seen, thus far, every one, the Pronouncement of the Fakes, is the opinion of some author who's sure that these X books or those Y books or that there Book Z written by Fred Jones Xi, is "AI." "You can tell." Etc.

One woman--who shan't be named by me--is the leader of the entire BURN THE WITCH movement, and she's been quoted all over social media, benefitting all of us with her infinite experience and wisdom, about how this or that book is "AI." Doesn't work for Amazon; doesn't know the authors, doesn't know anything other than "the books are so bad they MUST BE AI."

Now, I said this in the early part of this convo and I'll say it again now, but in every single instance in which *I* have investigated, I'm actually pretty damned sure that the alleged AI fakes--are not. They are written in a third language, by someone with zero knowledge or experience at writing, half the time some alleged "how-to" of this or that (brewing craft beer, let's say), and then "translated" using Google Translate or worse and so on. The result? The same shitty books that I've seen now, on KDP, without any benefit of AI, for the last 15, coming up on 16 years.

Where's the proof? Where is her proof, that these 71 books are "fakes," please????? And if zero proof exists, other than her opinion (did she READ those 71 effing books, mind you?), why the hell would we repeat that drivel?

Hitch

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Okay, question: how do they KNOW that? (And, why do I keep having to ask this question?)

There's supposedly tools that can detect AIs. They're not actually that reliable - apparently the Founding Fathers were very forward-thinking, as the Declaration of Independence is often detected as AI-written.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

There's supposedly tools that can detect AIs. They're not actually that reliable - apparently the Founding Fathers were very forward-thinking, as the Declaration of Independence is often detected as AI-written.

The Bible too. Now we know that God is actually an AI.

[DNSB]

For what it's worth, one high school teacher I know ran about 5 years worth of student papers from 2016 to 2021 through a trio of AI detection tools. About 45% in total were flagged as AI created with much the same percentage for each year's papers. I hadn't realized that AI was such a big deal in 2017 which has the highest percentage at 48%.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DNSB

For what it's worth, one high school teacher I know ran about 5 years worth of student papers from 2016 to 2021 through a trio of AI detection tools. About 45% in total were flagged as AI created with much the same percentage for each year's papers. I hadn't realized that AI was such a big deal in 2017 which has the highest percentage at 48%.

Apparently AI has been a big deal since the creating of the world...

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DNSB

For what it's worth, one high school teacher I know ran about 5 years worth of student papers from 2016 to 2021 through a trio of AI detection tools. About 45% in total were flagged as AI created with much the same percentage for each year's papers. I hadn't realized that AI was such a big deal in 2017 which has the highest percentage at 48%.

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Apparently AI has been a big deal since the creating of the world...

Exactly. When this first started up, all this brouhaha, and hysterics were reporting these "obscene" percentages all over the various authors' forums and the like, I pulled out some doozies from my own history--files I've seen and LOVED over the years, right?

And I aside these mavens to identify the AI-written ones,etc. and in every instance, they Pronounced From On High.

And in every instance, the "doozies" were from 2010, 2012, etc. Not a shred of "AI" in the house.

Total malarkey.

Honestly, if anything has exposed the Hen House stupidity of the Internet, this boondoggle surely has.

Hitch