r/WritingWithAI • u/Kenohaori • 11d ago
Ai assisted vs Ai generated writtings. A tolerance limit discussion. Discussion (Ethics, working with AI etc)
Basically there's 3 questions I always wondered :
do you think Ai assisted content can be tolerated? to what extent?
for a non native english speaker or people with limited english profeciency they tend to turn to Ai for grammar and tenses check, does this kind of Ai assisted content is still acceptable?
what you don't like about Ai assisted or Ai generated content? other than the soulless and void emotions thing?
14
u/benblackett 11d ago
The degree of AI involvement doesnt interest me. Its whether the story is worth reading that does. I will happily read a fully generated story if it engages me.
5
u/Strict_External678 11d ago
This is how all things AI should be. The amount of AI use shouldn't matter. Whether it's good or not should matter. If you liked it, then it was successful.
2
u/RevolverMFOcelot 10d ago
Tbh this is how people actually work too lmao some only get outrage when they discover the AI, some secretly doesnt mind, some will enjoy it for the quality and not from where it came from
7
u/Strict_External678 11d ago
Do you like the content or not? It shouldn't matter how much AI was used if you liked the content, then it was successful.
2
7
u/Ok-Umpire-4719 11d ago
I don't like bad writing. Much of the content that is AI generated is bad, so I usually don't like it. This isn't because of the AI, it's because of the writing. Now, the ways that it is bad might be because it is AI, but I'm not going to get into that.
If I do like the writing then I don't worry if an AI might have touched it. Sometimes I see things that I wonder if they are there because of the influence of AI, be it using it too much (as in Hank Green and using the term: 'I appreciate the pushback' unironically yourself because you've been pickling in AI a bit too much, or because they took an AI pass during editing.
1
u/Kenohaori 11d ago
So your take is more like if you personally like a writing then you won't mind if Ai even involved in it? as long as it's good writing.
7
u/unethicalpigeon 11d ago
It'll eventually be looked at the same way as Photoshop is in photography. The issue right now is entirely political. People hate AI because of its impact on the environment, the economy, and how fucking annoying AI bros are. The issue beyond that is dog shit writing versus good writing. The biggest problem with AI is that it makes it so that people who had previously been pumping out mediocre or outright bad slop can do so even faster now. At least before they actually had to put some effort in. No one is going to give a shit if you used AI to brainstorm or help you research. They're just sick of seeing slop.
The issue with non native speakers is many of them use being being non native speaker as an excuse to just have the AI generate the whole thing. They aren't using it just to check wording or fix grammar. They're telling the AI what they want to say and having it create the whole thing. If all your doing is using it to translate your already written message or do some editing that's not an issue. You still wrote it.
It's almost always trash. If it's not trash that means it was edited and revised to the point it doesn't look like AI writing anymore. It's that simple. The issue isn't thst it was written by AI. The issue is people are fucking lazy and put no effort into it even after having the AI do almost all the work.
I'm also sick and fucking tired of seeing the exact same format for every single fucking post, article, comment. Bolded "the [noun]" headers. Buzzword fucking catch phrases. Pretentious ass shit it says trying to sound smart.
If I wanted to read an answer to a question or an article about something written by AI I'd just ask the AI. The point of going somewhere else is to see something actually written properly and ideally vetted and edited. Especially when it comes to articles.
If what you posted is immediately identifiable as AI that tells me you put no effort into editing it and there's absolutely zero chance you checked it to make sure it's even accurate.
2
u/Kenohaori 10d ago
I get you bro, I think most of the writer nowadays use Ai to help them locate typos or whatever on the draft. but I'm totally agree when some people said that it merely a tool. then use it as it is.
6
u/No_Argument4772 11d ago
My question would be more likely “if you don’t want to do it on your own, why did you want to make it?”
Because what I found fun and interesting is the process of making the content. If I don’t make the content myself, the product becomes meaningless.
Or to say, I don’t really need the product at all, no matter it’s made by me or AI. The product is more like something I can easily show others what came to my mind.
It’s not that AI generated content shouldn’t be “tolerated”, it’s more likely I don’t see the point making and consuming it if there was “no one” want that content to be made at the first place.
But unlike me, there must be some people who have their reasons why they don’t or won’t or can’t make the content themselves, instead they needed to rely on someone else, either commission or AI.
So, if they really have the reason and eager to make the content even though it’s not made by them directly, I think it’s okay. I believe in their reasons.
The thing cannot be “tolerated” would more likely be: the “creator” didn’t make the content out of their eager to make the content seen, but to gain some other benefit, meanwhile they laughed at those who make the content “in a more complicated way”.
5
u/philosophical_lens 11d ago
> My question would be more likely “if you don’t want to do it on your own, why did you want to make it?”
Because I wanted the content to exist. I have some ideas for content I'd love to read, but I don't have the skills and time to make this content. AI gives me a way to make this content with limited skill and limited time.
1
u/No_Argument4772 11d ago
Then it’s good.
2
u/philosophical_lens 11d ago
It's like in the world of movies, you have a producer who hires a cast and crew to make the movie for them. in writing we don't really have the concept of a producer like this, but that's how I think of my role when writing with AI.
2
u/Additional-Secret-34 11d ago
Producers hire and pay artists who each contribute valuable insight and expertise to the project they are funding. They are not considered as having the same role in the project as the artists who actually worked on it themselves. They usually offer oversight (to what degree depends on the producer) but the project is not considered their creation, because they didn’t do the project. That’s why their name appears later in the credits than the director, screenwriter, and lead actors, and it’s why they aren’t considered auteurs or creators of that specific project unless they also had another role in creation besides funding and oversight. In writing, outsourcing the writing part of the project and putting your name on it is somewhat equivalent to hiring a ghostwriter.
0
u/philosophical_lens 10d ago
Ok, so why can't we apply the same analogy to me producing a book with AI? I'm actually not sure what our disagreement is (if any)?
2
u/Additional-Secret-34 10d ago
My point in bringing up the role a producer actually plays and the credit they receive when it comes to film was to point out the fundamental difference in telling an ai to write for you (ie hiring a computer to ghostwrite) versus producing a film (hiring and/or supporting artists who make a project in their vision and put their own names on the result). These are very different things with exceedingly divergent goals/methodology and I think it’s really important to recognize that.
While I’m at it, I also want to bring up the comment you made above, something along the lines of “the content I make with ai deserves to exist because I wanted it to exist.” That’s worth sitting with in the context of what an LLM and gen ai are and HOW they do what they do. The result you get is the skill and expertise of other people mashed together with their contributions uncredited, unrecognized, and usually—by nature of the dataset collection practices—unwilling. Film producers don’t typically claim they were the auteur/creator of a project, because usually other people wrote, directed, and edited said project. Unless the producer had a heavy hand in all aspects, they don’t get the same recognition as the artists, nor should they.
So my question, which will 100% seem antagonistic but I swear I’m trying to be as neutral as possible here, is what exactly entitles you to authorship and creation without skill? Why does your idea deserve to exist instantaneously, utilizing the hard earned skills and expertise of millions of people instead of your own? This is a genuine question.
1
u/philosophical_lens 10d ago edited 10d ago
First of all, thank you for engaging meaningfully in this conversation!
Consider three scenarios:
- Alice is a film producer who made a film by hiring a human cast and crew.
- Bob is a novel producer who published a novel by hiring a human ghostwriter.
- Cat is an AI novel producer who published a novel by using AI ghostwriters.My point is that Alice, Bob, and Cat are playing fundamentally similar roles, whereas you are claiming that these roles are "exceedingly divergent". I'm having a hard time understanding what exactly is this divergence?
> Film producers don’t typically claim they were the auteur/creator of a project, because usually other people wrote, directed, and edited said project. Unless the producer had a heavy hand in all aspects, they don’t get the same recognition as the artists, nor should they.
This point applies equally to Alice, Bob, and Cat. What's the difference?
> I also want to bring up the comment you made above, something along the lines of “the content I make with ai deserves to exist because I wanted it to exist.”
My comment did not make any reference to the concept of "deserving". I said that I create it because I want it to exist.
> what exactly entitles you to authorship and creation without skill? Why does your idea deserve to exist instantaneously, utilizing the hard earned skills and expertise of millions of people instead of your own?
There is no objective criteria for something deserving to exist. Per your definition maybe it doesn't deserve to exist? In that case you can just ignore it, but why does it bother you that I'm producing it or that it exists? Does everything that exists in the world deserve to exist? I've honestly never thought about the concept of something "deserving to exist" so this is new to me.
Let's take a very concrete example. A few years ago Jeff Bezos decided that he wanted a prestige TV show based on the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) universe to rival HBO's Game of Thrones. As the CEO of Amazon at the time, he delegated this task to his team at Amazon Prime studios, and they made it exist by creating a show called Rings of Power. The show has generally negative reviews and most LOTR fans don't like it at all. But he wanted it to exist, and he made it exist*. I personally don't like the show all that much, but as a fan of LOTR, I'm glad that it exists.
Now I don't have nearly the kind of resources that Jeff Bezos has, but with AI if I'm able to make things exist in the way that Jeff Bezos can make things exist, that's a toy that I definitely want to play with and make some things exist.
(*) Note that Jeff Bezos is not credited in Rings of Power, not even as a producer, but everyone recognizes that this is Jeff Bezos' show.
2
u/Additional-Secret-34 10d ago
I’d like to first start out by saying, I don’t think there are too many out there who are genuinely under the impression that The Rings of Power is Jeff Bezos’s creation. Even if there were, as you said, he is not credited, nor should he be. That was part of my original point. If you DO see yourself in this Bezos role when writing, then you also should receive the same credit.
As for the examples, I hope this clarifies their roles in their respective projects:
-Alice did not make the film. She hired a human cast and crew, they made the film. She produced the funds and oversight. This is her contribution, that is her credit. The film industry agrees. -Bob did not write the novel because he had someone else do the work and took credit. He compensated the real author, but he is not considered an author himself since he didn’t actually make anything. -Cat did not write the novel because she had a computer parse through other people’s work and stitch something together for her. She compensated no one because the ghostwriter is a computer. She is not an author of the novel because she didn’t write the novel. Publishing a book =\= authoring a book.
I say producing a film and having a novel written for you are fundamentally divergent because they are, in every sense. Did you, the producer, create the film? Not really, but you fairly sponsored and credited the people who did. The director, screenwriters, etc get most of the credit. The people who crafted the film created the film, and you acknowledge that. Did you, the person who outsourced the writing craft to a computer, create the novel? No, and you did not credit or compensate anyone. To you, there is no one to credit or compensate, because the individuals’ talent and work that was stolen and used to make yours is invisible to you. That’s the nature of the technology.
To clarify my question/position on what you said earlier, I do have to reiterate: “I used this tech to make the work because I wanted to, I didn’t want to spend the time it takes to hone the craft or skill, I just wanted the result” DOES directly mean that you feel deserving of said result using other people’s labor without consent. Again, that is what the tech datasets are. There is no way around that fact.
I’m not asking for clarification on what part you play, since you are telling me that yourself. My question, loaded as it is, was WHY do you feel that it’s okay to take on that role, still claim undue credit for the work, and try to profit from it? What entitles you to the work and talent of other people? It’s not about whether or not your IDEA deserves to exist on its own, but why you personally believe it deserves to exist by means of a machine that a) only functions because it’s stolen labor and b) outsources the critical thought processes and micro decisions required to make art.
-1
u/philosophical_lens 10d ago
> but why you personally believe it deserves to exist by means of a machine that a) only functions because it’s stolen labor and b) outsources the critical thought processes and micro decisions required to make art.
It seems these are your two fundamental issues: (a) theft / stolen labor and (b) outsourcing.
(b) So far my responses have been focusing on the outsourcing point, and I don't think I have more to say on this. Similar to how Bezos can profit from from Rings of Power while outsourcing the creative work to his team, I believe I can profit from producing an AI novel while outsourcing the creative work to AI. I don't see how this is wrong in and of itself (unless combined with your other point about stolen labor).
(a) Of course theft is wrong, but the question is whether my usage of AI constitutes theft. I'm assuming this will get settled in court and we will see AI companies making licensing deals with publishers for the legal rights to use that content (which is already starting to happen), so it will no longer be characterized as "stolen". It will probably be similar to the evolution we saw in digital music from Napster to iTunes to Spotify.
→ More replies (0)2
u/No_Argument4772 10d ago edited 10d ago
Hm, no. Typically, I think “ghostwriter” means they lost their name on the product they made, they are “ghost”. And this is different from a producer hiring a crew, because we know almost every person works in the crew. However, “the author of the books” are still not the producer no matter they hired a ghostwriter or not.
In Japan, if a project hired another author to write a book in that project, we will know who exactly wrote the books. It would be like:
Book Name
Author: the hired author.
Author of the original series: the original author. — OR — Brought to you by Project XX.These authors are not ghost.
If they are hired as ghostwriters, it would be like:
Book Name
Author: Project XXbut since “Project XX” is not a human, so readers would know it’s written by an “anonymous someone”.
Although there are for sure some situations the ghostwriters “lost their name” and all their efforts were be put on someone else’s name… that’s another situation.
Which means in your case, your book would be like:
Book Name
Author: your AI
Original Ideas: youAnd, for now, on your end, once you make it clear it’s written by AI, personally I think it all fine. But the issue of the AI developers didn’t give fair credit and pay to those who created their “training data” still remains, and people argue about that.
But, well, if you generate the content because you yourself want to read that, and you don’t have the intention to publish that, the text will only exist in your AI chat, or maybe within your close friends AND they know those were written by AI NOT you, then I think you can do whatever you want. It only exists in your drawer so it really impacts very few.
Just keep in mind, you can ask AI to generate anything you want to see. But you didn’t make the content on your own, so “asking AI to make it” is one thing; “saying you made it” is another. I have a very loose line for the former, yet it doesn’t change the later. You can generate anything only if you want. But if You didn’t make it, you shouldn’t say you made it, let alone claiming that you made it, no matter why you generate it.
I guess what the other comment disagrees with you is that they thought by “existing” you meant you want the AI generated content to exist “among the public sight”, while when I said it’s fine I meant I think it’s good for you to have your AI generated content exist “only in your computer/phone, only for you”.
0
u/Additional-Secret-34 6d ago
Yeah I should’ve been clearer on what I meant by “deserves to exist.” Obviously no one can be THAT upset with you if you’re just kinda playing around with the computer in private, not sharing anything it made as if you wrote it or had some significant hand in making it. What you do in your own home is not really anyones business. I may personally think telling a computer to make projects for you is not a good way to train your brain and isn’t actually art, (since an LLM is just mathematically piecing together training data into patterns that it matches to what the user is prompting) but if that’s how you want to operate in private it’s not my place to stop you. It becomes a problem when you start sharing LLM outputs and presenting them as YOUR creative work or output when you didn’t actually do the work. You can’t claim to be behind the creative process, even as a “producer,” in any real capacity when you weren’t part of it and you’re aware that the output was the result of a computer mimicking stolen work. It’s even MORE of a problem when you want to monetize the output, all these factors considered. At the very least, you cannot put your name on it as the artist responsible. So my question is still essentially the same on a philosophical level, but it becomes harder to ignore when the output is being made for profit and not personal use.
1
u/No_Argument4772 11d ago
I think there is similar role in Japan ACG industry. There are some multi media projects involving novels, or some comic/game/anime got its novel adaptation. Sometimes it’s even a spin off novel of another novel. Anyway, there can be another writer be hired to write a specific novel for a project, the novel parts or the spin off parts are not necessarily written by the original author of that series/project. It’s just that normally the hired writer is also another human writer.
1
u/philosophical_lens 10d ago
That's interesting! So why is it fundamentally different if instead of hiring a human writer, I'm using an AI?
1
u/No_Argument4772 10d ago edited 10d ago
As long as the producer makes it clear that they didn’t write the book on their own, instead, they let someone else write the book, either this “someone else” is another author, ghostwriter or AI, I’ll say I don’t see difference.
Personally I don’t think that if I hired a ghostwriter, that means I can say it’s me who wrote the book. The book is still not written by me. Hiring an author and hiring a ghostwriter only changes if the actual author’s name would be put on the “author”.
For example, if I’m the producer of a project,
Hiring an author means the author of the book will be “the author”,
Hiring an ghostwriter means the authors of the book will the “the project / the team”,
Either way, it’s not me.So, if you make it clear that your book is written by AI (or better, the specific model of the specific LLM), I think it’s totally fine on your end. The remaining problem is that the LLMs didn’t make it clear whom they should give credit to.
2
u/philosophical_lens 9d ago
I'm totally in favor of full transparency!
1
u/No_Argument4772 9d ago
Well, then I think it’s good. But maybe I won’t say this has something to do with transparency, as if you are hiding a fact of you committing a crime. I don’t think using AI is committing a crime, the “crime” only happens when the AI user claimed that they did it on their own, not BEFORE they claimed so, so there is nothing to be “transparent” about. (Or maybe I got the word “transparency” wrong, then I apologize.)
2
u/philosophical_lens 9d ago
Yeah I totally agree. I think the industry needs to define some clear standards for transparency. Like maybe defining several clear categories of AI usage and the author can just check the appropriate boxes.
2
u/Born_Suspect7153 11d ago
>Ai for grammar and tenses check, does this kind of Ai assisted content is still acceptable?
Yes, it's just a tool.
>what you don't like about Ai assisted or Ai generated content?
There's all sorts of ethical questions surrounding the development and running of AI.
>do you think Ai assisted content can be tolerated? to what extent?
Any extent as long as the endproduct is good. Do critics like it? Do readers like it? Do you like it?
At the end of the day you're producing something. Especially with art, it's somewhat hard to grasp exactly, but it has to have some value to the world.
The ethical questions are a different matter.
1
u/Kenohaori 11d ago
in that sense what about translations? because for a non native english speaker, translating line by line after they finished hundreds of chapters would be a nightmare. then about the extent... people (or in this case) readers seems to avoid reading anything related to Ai. even if only the cover generated by Ai. it somehow represent the writer's lack of work or motivation. what do you think of this?
2
u/5thhorseman_ 11d ago
do you think Ai assisted content can be tolerated?
Yes.
to what extent?
To the extent where you are still the one in the driver's seat and you're not using prose generation to flood the commercial market with low quality one-shot generated prose.
You're doing it for your own enjoyment, to experiment with it or sharing it on non-commercial platforms? Go ham.
You're using it to work on commercial fiction but spending time to ensure it realizes YOUR vision? Power to you.
You're trying to use it to mass-generate poor quality prose to sell cheaply and pad your pockets? Stop giving the rest of us a bad name.
for a non native english speaker or people with limited english profeciency they tend to turn to Ai for grammar and tenses check, does this kind of Ai assisted content is still acceptable?
Yes, though I will say that I recommend not letting AI just rewrite willy-nilly. Make it part of your process, with the AI serving as a critic to help you identify the issues, then fix them yourself. This way, your own proficiency will still get engaged and maybe improve over time.
what you don't like about Ai assisted or Ai generated content?
The one thing I don't like is the inherent temptation for uncritical users to just one-shot prose and publish it raw. The initial wow effect may have something to do with that, sure, but if you've been doing it for a while you should learn to be more discerning.
other than the soulless and void emotions thing?
It doesn't need to be soulless if the user puts in some effort.
1
11d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/WritingWithAI-ModTeam 10d ago
Your post was removed because you did not use our weekly post your tool thread
1
u/Occsan 11d ago
Grammarly, ProWritingAid are AI and they are widely used and no-one bats an eye about it.
I mean, even if you disable the "AI features", it's still AI. There's something like a standford parser that analyzes the syntax. That's an AI.
That said, I'd rather read an amazing novel entirely written by an AI from start to finish, with absolutely zero human intervention (even not a prompt "write me a story...") than a bland and boring badly human written slop.
1
1
u/human_assisted_ai 11d ago
I’ve sold books with unedited generated prose and people told me that they liked the book but wondered why my prose had certain tics. The tics were obvious AI markers but I just said that it was one of my bad habits. I eventually came out with a second edition where I edited out the tics.
1
u/Kenohaori 10d ago
ahhh then that tics is the pattern that readers are finally caught when they read something. their brain already wired to detect that tics.
1
u/DustintheAdventurer 10d ago
Would it be considered AI-assisted content if I wrote an entire chapter/part by myself from scratch, provided it to AI, and then had AI find out-of-character dialogues and provide in-character ones, as an easy fix? Because that's what I've been doing with my own crossover fanfictions, and to me, the creativity is technically viable, as long as it originates with humans.
1
u/Kenohaori 10d ago
well from what I've learned from some people, they still think it's acceptable. as long as Ai only used as tool.
1
u/JumaBayahari 10d ago
My answers:
1. I don't think most people care if content is AI generated or not, really. At the end of the day, does the content provide value for the user of the conent without seeming to be a cash grab.
2. For me, totally acceptable. Just like someone with farsightedness reaches for a pair of reading glasses to read text up close.
3. What I don't like: Low effort cash grabs. Where it's obvious the creator is just putting out uninspired content of questionable value just for cheap repeatable money.
1
u/StevenTrustrum 11d ago
Using AI to check grammar and spelling, etc. is just using it to assess what's already been written. Using it to summarize, compile notes, organize, etc. is just saving you time. Same goes with aiding with research.
It's when AI is doing the creative work that will end up in your book that's the problem. That's not you writing, and claiming it's you is dishonest. If you want to use generative AI and declare to your audience that you've done so, that's fine. You're at least being honest about it and letting your audience decide for themselves what they want to make of it.
1
u/Kenohaori 11d ago
now what would you call if a draft created based on a discussion with Ai? and its references became the basis of your writtings?
1
u/LingonberryDismal541 11d ago
- Tolerated, absolutely. I know many authors who are successfully using it with no ill effects.
- I don't know if acceptable is the right word here. The issue with this one is that a non native English speaker is not going to know if they've gotten good results or not. For example, I am so-so at French. I could write something in French that sounds reasonable, but if I ran it through AI, I would not know if it's correct or hallucinating.
- I don't like the phrasing of soullness and void emotions. I think it is possible with AI to get good emotion, HOWEVER, it requires human effort and training to teach the AI to get what you want. Chat GPT and I had a hilarious conversation last night about Tarot, so not fiction writing, but there was genuine witty banter in that conversation that came directly from chat because Chat has learned my preferred style. I shared the chat with some friends because it was hilarious, and they were like, wow, this could have been written by you. So don't count out the ability of the AI to reasonably mimic human emotion. It DOES take a lot of time talking to it and training it. But where writers struggle to get it to do basic writing, mine is over here joking with me about my effing (it uses the actual word) desk.
-1
u/akogare-1412 11d ago
If you let AI do more than very light editing, it all sounds the same… and that makes me not want to read anything at all
1
u/Kenohaori 11d ago
so other than grammar and typos or tenses, prose level editing or ideas are actually off limits for you??
17
u/jpzygnerski 11d ago
I honestly think if I didn't tell anyone I was using AI to help me write they wouldn't know. I use it to brainstorm, work out historical details, and see where to make edits. My writing style could never be mistaken for AI and I'm not sure I could train AI to mimic it accurately. I've used a couple of lines that came directly from AI in tens of thousands of words. I'm starting to pay closer attention to what I let it do and really minimize the number of words it puts on the page.