fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5973 ]

My objection to AI generated fanwork (or "original" work for that matter) is related to the issue I have with people buying their cosplay. While professional costumers/people who make a living selling their cosplay work create amazing things, and I would love to squee at them in admiration and pick their brains about their handwork and creative processes, I can't do that if I complement someone on their cosplay that they purchased.

But people who can't do handwork to make stuff can at least enjoy dressing up in premade or commissioned costumes; maybe they enjoy the idea of becoming the character by roleplaying/acting, or participating in group photoshoots or whatever.

But what's there to enjoy about posting bot-created work? If the posters tell the truth that the work was AI generated, people might still read it even though some fans won't, but any compliments or comments would just be, idk, "thanks for sharing" or "cool idea," because it's not like the poster had a hand in the work beyond at most stringing prompts together.

And if they lied and claimed it was their work? Idk, maybe I'm weird but it would fucking eat at me to be praised for work that wasn't mine. Like, my work may suck but at least I put effort into it. I could see using AI for my actual paid job before I'd use it in my hobbies, because I do my job to help people sure, but also to afford my hobbies and food and shelter. I do my hobbies to create stuff, and sometimes to share it.

Literary analysis; thinking about characters and how they interact, how where/when stories are set influences that, all the thought or emotion that goes into writing... that's gone, with AI. I don't want the answer to "why did you make this choice and not that one, why did you set your AU during the Napoleonic wars and not aboard a spaceship bound for Alpha Centauri," to be "Idk it's what the language learning model spat out based on my prompt and the dataset it was trained on."

I feel like people trying to sell fic commissions are the most likely to post AI generated stuff, because for them creating and sharing work comes second to making money. And in most cases I wouldn't call AI generated content plagiarism even if it does rest on a giant pile of stolen data, but it reminds me of that story of a romance novelist who actually just plagiarized a ton of other authors instead of writing her own stuff.

I'm glad Ao3 doesn't allow fans to ask for money on the site itself, but I feel like allowing AI generated work will only make that problem worse.

I don't disagree with what you're saying about AI and I don't get the point of AI fanworks (except perhaps in a case where someone can't write at all and wants some fic to read, and they keep it to themselves as drawerfic versus posting it as their own work.

My objection to AI generated fanwork (or "original" work for that matter) is related to the issue I have with people buying their cosplay. While professional costumers/people who make a living selling their cosplay work create amazing things, and I would love to squee at them in admiration and pick their brains about their handwork and creative processes, I can't do that if I complement someone on their cosplay that they purchased.

I don't get this, though. People like to dress up as characters they like, which is why Halloween and costume parties are fun. I don't grok your POV at all.

AYRT--I guess for me the people dressing up in premade stuff are like the people who can't write at all who use chatgpt etc to generate drawerfic. It's not the same as making stuff yourself. Dressing up might be fun, but making your own outfit is a separate hobby.

Idk, I know there's problems with viewing handmade/homemade stuff as more, idk, worthy/valuable than mass-produced, because that sets up an argument that people who can't/don't sew their own costumes/write their own fic/make food from scratch/whatever are somehow lesser than people that do. Which is dumb because people don't have to produce anything to be worthy of existing/being people, and also because no one can do everything themselves.

But there's still value in making things by hand, writing your own stories, cooking your own meals, even if you're not an expert or an artistic genius or anything. I'm certainly not; my very best work at any of my hobbies (and life in general) is maybe middling journeyman level and mostly not even that.

(One of the many things I'm only middling at is explaining myself, sorry.)

I'm with the commenter above. I don't get your pov at all. Writers aren't obligated to answer your questions or interact with you at all. Why would it matter if they don't answer you questions because they don't want to, as opposed to not answering your questions because they had a computer write it?

I think the whole AI thing is stupid on it's face because it's NOT AI. It's just an algorithm and, while there may be overlap (stupidest tourist/smartest bear, etc), no algorithm is going to write as well as a middling fanfic author.

I think the whole AI thing is stupid on it's face because it's NOT AI. It's just an algorithm and, while there may be overlap (stupidest tourist/smartest bear, etc), no algorithm is going to write as well as a middling fanfic author

I mean I don't see any reason this fundamentally *has* to be true. It's an article of faith.

(also, drawing a hard line between "AI" and "algorithms" seems.... difficult to justify, to me, to say the least)

I mean I don't see any reason this fundamentally *has* to be true. It's an article of faith.

Not... not really if you look into linguistics. Other human beings have a hard time differentiating the connotations of certain words and phrases (butt dial vs booty call), and it makes decoding ancient languages a pain in the ass. A computer doesn't even have the requisite frame of reference of being human.

(also, drawing a hard line between "AI" and "algorithms" seems.... difficult to justify, to me, to say the least)

Nor this either. To be an AI, as in to have it's own independent intelligence apart from what a human programs into it, is to have it's own desires. You could prompt an AI like you can prompt an author and it may or may not ignore you or tell you it doesn't want to, or that it doesn't like your idea, but if you're telling it to do something for you like a computer and it produces the requested results like a computer... that's not an AI, that's a computer algorithm.

Not... not really if you look into linguistics. Other human beings have a hard time differentiating the connotations of certain words and phrases (butt dial vs booty call), and it makes decoding ancient languages a pain in the ass. A computer doesn't even have the requisite frame of reference of being human.

Again, I don't see any reason that it *has* to be true that artificial systems are incapable of dealing with those obstacles. It's definitely *difficult* but I don't know what the argument is supporting the idea that artificial systems are philosophically incapable of understanding certain forms of language, or theoretically incapable of producing fiction that is as good as average fanfiction writers. It's true that they aren't capable of doing those things *now* but I don't get what the argument is that they will *never* be able to do those things. More advanced and well-developed systems could well be able to do that at some point in the future.

To be an AI, as in to have it's own independent intelligence apart from what a human programs into it, is to have it's own desires. You could prompt an AI like you can prompt an author and it may or may not ignore you or tell you it doesn't want to, or that it doesn't like your idea, but if you're telling it to do something for you like a computer and it produces the requested results like a computer... that's not an AI, that's a computer algorithm.

I don't see why volition is the necessary criterion for describing something as intelligent. And in fact, I would argue that it very much *shouldn't* be the criterion, because it's fundamentally unknowable in human beings. I do think it's at least philosophically possible to imagine an algorithm that can produce outputs that are indistinguishable from the output of human biological intelligence. That's the kind of thing that I have in mind that makes me think drawing a hard, bright line between "AI" and "algorithm" is difficult.

AYRT

That's fine if you don't see the reason. Not everyone is an expert in all things and I really don't want to take the time to hash out philosophy of mind and why all this is actually impossible. I wrote and defended a whole-assed thesis and I'm not looking to do it again.

if you wrote a whole thesis, you should have better arguments than this

Their arguments are fine. You're just talking about two different things.

This. And "well, but will it EVER be able to do this thing that I've had to concede it actually can't currently manage at all?" is actually a pretty weak argument.

DA You're waxing poetic about the potential future of technology and nature of identifying intelligence, which is not relevant to the ChatGPT-esque "AI" being discussed. Currently, there IS a hard line, and there will be for a great deal of time to come (and I say this as someone who adores philosophizing about AI in fiction).

It's a fun exercise, but not remotely helpful to present situations.

AYRT--I don't expect every writer to answer my questions or respond to my comments, any more than I expect everyone who reads my fic to ask me questions or leave comments about it.

But up until recently, I could at least be certain that a human did the bulk of the work that I was asking questions about and leaving comments on. If they only wanted to share their work and weren't looking for further interaction from their readers afterwards, they could just ignore any response they got, and (I think?) on Ao3 they can turn off comments.

The bulk of my fic is drawer fic I haven't posted for a variety of reasons; I can hardly expect anyone else to want any particular level of interaction with readers/other fans.

But for writers who do want feedback, whether sheer admiration, questions, concrit, whatever, bot-generated fic has all the usefulness of wooden decoys to ducks. And there are plenty of other writers who don't just want kudos/likes/views on their work, but to discuss it with other readers and writers.

As for AI, I know it's still a misnomer; there's no minds churning out those prompt fills. If there was, I could ask about their creative processes, heh, and not have to understand statistical analysis and computer programming to make sense of the answers.

But I'm using AI in the context of this discussion, which is about language learning models fed massive amounts of often unethically sourced (because it was fed writing not yet in the public domain) and censored (because actual, poorly compensated humans had to set limits on what the AIs could spit out lest they run afoul of corporations and advertisers, by reading and looking at not work/sanity safe writing and images to exclude them) and spitting out statistically common word orders in response to user-generated prompts, not anything self-aware.

AYRT

I really think this is making a mountain out of a mole hill. I've already seen "AI" generated fic in one of my fandoms and it's quite obvious that's what it is. All it's generated are discussions about how to use "AI" to help with the process of writing (e.g. experimentation) but that the actual output from the computer is crap.

AYRT--yeah, but that's the current state of AI writing.

Assuming it follows the trajectory of AI art, it will at some probably not too distant point improve enough to at least generate reasonable pastiches of, say, James Patterson or Dan Brown, with a couple human writers and/or editors to fix the written equivalent of six fingered, many jointed hands.

Certainly that's the hope of a lot of CEOs and venture capitalists and the fear of a lot of people who make at least some income by writing.

I don't, but I have seen my workplace lose about a third of our staff to various forms of automation over ~20 years, with paycuts and higher workloads as well. And even as a hobby writer, it makes me sad to think that professional writers, whether screenwriters or fiction writers or journalists or whatever else, may soon have even less (and less well paid) work because their bosses think machines are cheaper and complain less, even if quality and people both suffer for it.

AYRT

But that's exactly my point. It's not AI. It has limits, it's not going to improve that much because of the inherent limitations of the programming (the fact that it HAS programming). You can automate a lot of stuff but you can't automate language. Language doesn't work like that, especially the longer the content.

AYRT--if ersatz AI writing improves even half as much half as quickly as ersatz AI art has, a lot of people will lose their jobs and a lot of hobbyist writers will have their work buried by sheer volume of AI output.

These fancy algorithms don't have to actually be intelligent or self-aware for their output and the people who own/fund them to fuck over a lot of people.

They don't have to produce groundbreaking novels or treatises on the human condition to screw creators over. Just be cheaper to pay and faster to produce content sludge than actual people.

People argued for a long time that - while engines might have exceeded the best human players in chess - the same would never happen in Go, because it couldn't be automated and because it relied on non-computable intuitive qualities.

Engines conclusively passed human players in Go 6 or 7 years ago.

DA

The way I see it is that big corporations are in charge of SYNTHETIC language generators and wish to produce synthetic writings for profit, in the same way that robot arms are programmed to make the “intelligent“ cars of the future or something.

[ SECRET POST #5973 ]

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