The problem I see with this-AI-generated versus human-written isn’t a binary, it is a continuum.
One person gives an AI a brief prompt, the AI writes a whole novel, person publishes it without even reading it first
Another person spends weeks tinkering with prompts, producing dozens of outputs for the same prompt and deciding which to keep and which to cut, editing numerous AI outputs together - that’s still partially AI-generated, but with vastly more human input than the first case
A third person does all the writing themselves, but uses an AI for review, copyediting, as a source of ideas or suggestions, as a brainstorming partner… maybe the AI suggested a few turns of phrase here and there, or gave them some story ideas
No AI period. As soon as you feed your writing into the slop machine it starts telling you how to make it more like slop (I know someone who's cowriting a book with ChatGPT - this is exactly the result.)
I'd rather read things with typos and bad grammar than read something copyedited by AI.
I hope this is successful. Fake books are flooding online stores and if this was widely adopted I would certainly refuse to buy anything without it.
But unfortunately I think that's unlikely. Most authors will likely never hear about this. I assume there will be some kind of fee to participate, but this will discourage people from using it. And even if it takes off, the fake book authors will just slap it on anyway as I'm not sure what enforcement mechanism would be effective.
Looking to create an "AI detector" is like asking which organelle in a cell contains the "soul". It's a fool's errand and uncomfortable truth that there is rarely a magic watermark of any sort. Honesty and integrity in authorship is a social problem.
The problem I see with this-AI-generated versus human-written isn’t a binary, it is a continuum.
One person gives an AI a brief prompt, the AI writes a whole novel, person publishes it without even reading it first
Another person spends weeks tinkering with prompts, producing dozens of outputs for the same prompt and deciding which to keep and which to cut, editing numerous AI outputs together - that’s still partially AI-generated, but with vastly more human input than the first case
A third person does all the writing themselves, but uses an AI for review, copyediting, as a source of ideas or suggestions, as a brainstorming partner… maybe the AI suggested a few turns of phrase here and there, or gave them some story ideas
Where do you draw the line?
No AI period. As soon as you feed your writing into the slop machine it starts telling you how to make it more like slop (I know someone who's cowriting a book with ChatGPT - this is exactly the result.)
I'd rather read things with typos and bad grammar than read something copyedited by AI.
I hope this is successful. Fake books are flooding online stores and if this was widely adopted I would certainly refuse to buy anything without it.
But unfortunately I think that's unlikely. Most authors will likely never hear about this. I assume there will be some kind of fee to participate, but this will discourage people from using it. And even if it takes off, the fake book authors will just slap it on anyway as I'm not sure what enforcement mechanism would be effective.
Looking to create an "AI detector" is like asking which organelle in a cell contains the "soul". It's a fool's errand and uncomfortable truth that there is rarely a magic watermark of any sort. Honesty and integrity in authorship is a social problem.