There is a lot of talk about Artificial Intelligence in the writing community. On Twitter, there is growing controversy around a new AI tool called Story Engine designed to help with long-form writing. Story Engine uses Sudowrite (which uses ChatGPT) to help write novels. The suggestion is that the novelists who helped train this AI were unaware or did not give their permission.

https://twitter.com/ScottJCollette/status/1659477064494485506

One of the Sudowriter devs interviewed in a related article denies the accusations but admits that they do not know what content ChatGPT mines. Some writers have proven this includes FanFiction sites by experimenting and catching the AI red-handed with smut, of all things!

https://www.wired.com/story/fanfiction-omegaverse-sex-trope-artificial-intelligence-knotting/

Just like with Midjourney scraping from images, AIs are using billions of words without permission. Words written by people trying to break into the industry, or folks who wish to share their passion with their online community. Some argue, therefore, they are nothing but plagiarism machines. And anything they produce cannot be subject to copyright protection.

Don has always encouraged us to put a copyright notification in all our scripts on this site but we've no idea if AIs are scraping the content. You've also no idea what an AI is doing with any content you feed into it. At the very least it's using it to learn, and maybe passing your words onto someone else.

There is nothing stopping anyone from self-publishing a novel or selling a screenplay written by AI. And there are a growing number of tools which provide such services for a fee. This will cause court cases, I am sure.

Let the buyer beware is an age-old saying. AI can be great for brainstorming, making content more readable and speeding up the creative process. Be wary of those who seek to profit from selling automated content creation services without complete transparency. Also, be aware that the market will flood with stories and scripts written entirely by AIs. Resist the FOMO urge to join in. I believe genuine articles will still stand out.

This emphasises for me the urgent need for legislation and the WGA’s demands for writers’ rights in this area. We also need free tools (probably AI lol) to identify content created by AI, and to highlight plagiarism.

I'm curious, Mark. Do you mean some Novelists have deliberately helped to train AI?

You've obviously seen the thread we had going yesterday and I take your point regarding every little thing that is fed into AI expanding its ability and knowledge base, and work being open to plagiarism. Scary stuff...

Can it really at this point make content more readable? At the moment I see AI examples that are quite obviously not written by a person and easy to distinguish but I suppose it's just a matter of time before it gets better and better. I suppose it depends on the existing skillset of the writer too, to how much improvement can be made. I can see students for example being very attracted to AI completing their home work assignments.

But really how good can it get at originality and exploring the human condition, not to mention cultivating an original sense of humour and political correctness too.

How would legislation work? Who would be allowed to access it and who would not be able to access it?
Goldmine for some, litigious minefield for others.

I need to read up on it more.