And while this may have started with art, authors need to get into the trench right alongside illustrators and actors on this one. Because people are already trying to steal our work, and feed it to these bots in an attempt to instantly produce books they can then turn around and sell, regardless of the harm said books may do to authors, or even to those who rely on a text for more than mere entertainment.
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| Because this is not a fight we want to let corporations win. And they are trying like hell! |
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What The Hell is Going On!?
This whole crisis is precipitated by a single fact; creators are seen as an obstacle to getting a product by those in charge. It's why studios don't want to pay actors and scriptwriters, it's why companies attempt to pay designers in exposure, it's why YouTube demands you provide them thousands of hours of free content before they'll share ad revenue with you, and it's why a lot of unscrupulous publishers will attempt to cut royalties to the bone all while encouraging writers to keep putting words on the page. Despite the fact that creators are the ones doing all of the work, the idea is always to ask how a company can pay them even less without losing out on the amount of creative work it has to sell to the public.
From that perspective, this software is the answer to their prayers. It allows them to take all the work that exists (if they're willing to completely ignore copyright law, morality, etc.), feed it into a big hopper, push a button, and have the machine spit out a fully complete work on the other side. Best of all, they can then turn around and start selling that machine-created product without paying a single author, or waiting for a living, breathing human being to finish the job.
And it's not just the big wigs who are acting like this is the death knell of authors as a species. Because while tech bros are strutting around like the fox that got the chicken, those who take an inordinate amount of pleasure at kicking down at creatives while simultaneously building their identities around fandoms and properties, have been braying that now we'll all have to, "Go get real jobs."
Unfortunately, the paint is already peeling off this rusting dream of theirs, and the wheels are making a decidedly awful sound as they get ready to come off.
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| I predict this going up in a fireball any day now. |
The reason is, quite simply, plagiarism software isn't intelligence (artificial or otherwise). It is, in fact, rather stupid. All it can do is regurgitate what's been fed to it, and rearrange that information, attempting to predict what order would make it work best. While it might be able to mimic the style of a particular author, it doesn't have the ability to truly plot a novel, make realistic sounding dialogue, or create anything truly new. These programs are great at doing technical tasks (predicting shopping lists, figuring out based on past data whether a given property warrants a remake, etc.), but they aren't some kind of magic button that produces solid-gold novels that will fly off the shelves (despite some people trying this exact tactic, according to CNN).
This is bad enough when it comes to fiction, but as college students have found out, these programs aren't capable of thinking; they just spit out what they think you want to hear. As such, they'll confidently mess up facts, but write it in a way that seems legitimate. This is what makes things like foraging guides produced by chatbots so dangerous... because sure, a company didn't pay an author to write that guide. They're also trusting in an extremely unreliable collection of 1s and 0s to tell people which mushrooms are safe to eat, and which ones will kill them.
A Note on The Troglodytes
Generally speaking, you're supposed to be even-handed with people. You're supposed to try to see things from their perspective, and to try to reach a middle ground. This is particularly true when you are an author, and your brand is just as much about who you are and how you act as it is about the work you create. However, there are a lot of people out there who aren't actually interested in this conversation, nor do they care about how authors, artists, and others are routinely exploited. They just show up in the comments section to jeer, sling mud, and to howl at you to stop whining and pull yourself up by your bootstraps instead of trying to get paid for doing a hobby.
I will not mince words here. These people are troglodytes, and though they've certainly come out of the woodwork thanks to plagiarism software taking center stage, they've always been here. And, in a practical sense, their opinions have always been irrelevant to creators for one, simple reason.
They have never supported us. They have never cared about us. And no matter what you offer them, or how cordial you are, they are no different than the corporate overlords when it comes to exploitation; they just don't bother putting a pleasant face on it.
I'll give you an example that I feel is relevant, here.
As my regular readers know, I write a lot of TTRPG supplements to pay my bills. Whether it's things like my recent release 100 Sci Fi Bands, filled with musicians to set the scene in your cantina, 100 Superstitions For a Fantasy Setting to help you add a little extra detail to your next DND game, or even something like the popular 100 Merchants to Encounter so you aren't scrambling to make up characters at the drop of a hat, this is where the bulk of my earnings comes from.
And holy shit do troglodytes love to accuse me of being a bot!
It happens at least a couple of times a month, but it has shifted and changed over the past year. At first they accused me of building a bot to promote my work, which I'm not tech-savvy enough to do. As these programs have gained popularity, though, they instead claim that I'm just generating lists using this software and tossing them out there, hoping people are stupid enough to buy them. However, when I point out that a lot of my supplements pre-date the existence of these programs, their tune changes, saying that if they wanted a list like this for their game that they would just download a program and hit the button because it's free.
Could you mimic some of my supplements with a chat bot? Probably. As long as it didn't have to keep certain sets of world rules in mind, build balanced magic items, create unique plot hooks, or even maintain proper grammar, I'd say a bot could make a knockoff of the kind of work I do. And for some people, that would be good enough. They'd rather get bot slop for free, than pay a creator even a few dollars.
Because, and I feel this must be stressed, they do not care. If they couldn't get this resource via a plagiarism chat bot, they would attempt to pirate your content so you didn't get paid, or they would start some kind of forum posting war to try and get the community to do as much work on their behalf as possible. These are the same people who will sneer that they're not going to buy your novel because there's so much content available online for free that they don't need you on their to-read pile, or who will loudly demand that you provide free work for them to somehow prove you're a "real" creator.
There is nothing you can do to convince troglodytes to re-examine their biases, and to empathize with creators. What we can do, though, is try to find people who may not understand the issue, and explain to them what's happening. Showing them how a given issue affects all of us, and how the decisions they make can have repercussions, is possible. Winning hearts and minds on this issue is important, since too many folks just don't get a glimpse behind the scenes when it comes to the life of creative professionals.
Have meaningful, useful conversations with you can, but don't bother with the troglodytes. Stay vigilant, stay loud, and don't give up!
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Very good and timely piece. I have written on Facebook that copywriters are in danger of becoming obsolete due to AI. Their bosses would rather use a free program like ChatGT and have it produce the copy they need. This might be good for making say an instruction manual on how to put a desk together, but if you want true originality then you need an author. One problem with Hollywood is that they have gotten away from the writer ideas that gave them blockbusters all in the attempt to monetize the blockbuster and keep churning them out. Not understanding that it was the originality of the work that first attracted people and few sequels do as well as the original did because they often lack originality. I think the Guardians of the Galaxy series of movies avoided that, but that was because they were inspired by the comics and were able to take some of the best ideas out of the comics to bring to the big screen. Which is the crux of your argument; AI is not and never will be original, it is plagiarism plain and simple, and the worst kind of plagiarism since it is impossible to tell what came from other works or to credit those authors.
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