Clarification regarding AI policy

[spktr alpha]

I'm kinda ambivalent to this as well. So far no AI has managed to wow me as a co-writer, only as a proof reader.

Though to be honest it feels kinda hypocritical to say AI is theft when we're all writing fanfic and oggling R34 of licensed works.

One sore spot for me is generated images. Because the art community in general is ridiculously toxic in the first place and the common joke for antis is 'Kill AI Artists' and targeted harassment of perceived users of AI whether true or not. Letting that flavor of chronically online persons is not going to make QQ a healthy community.

 

[klassekatze]

Even when it's noticeable that it's AI-assisted for anyone with experience, you see plenty of fics in this very site with people enjoying them just fine. Obviously I'm not going to point them out both because I may be wrong and out of respect for them.

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TBH I've suddenly become unable to unsee certain patterns in some pretty long and popular fics and it's lowkey annoying that apparently no one, including the author, sees it?

I don't understand why the authors look at a prospective chapter or edit and see this shit and are just like "yeah that's the good shit give it to me baby." Or inappropriate or awkward descriptive babble, like "Kestrel smiled with the economy of someone who rationed expressions.", "Arthur rubbed his chin, feeling the grit of regolith still lodged in the pores.", `I'm wiping the same spot again—counter gleams like the Belt's last clean glacier—when the tentacled stranger lands on the stool in front of me. The dreads twitch like sleepy metacuttlefish, and a faint smell of ozone drifts off the coat that used to be white. "Vega whisky, neat. Better make that a double," they say, voice low, the kind of low you only get after screaming for three days straight.`

Despite arguing otherwise earlier, it is kind of hard to criticise this kind of incoherency constructively without either implying they used AI editing or implying the author is on drugs, you know?

The fucked thing is you can absolutely mitigate it with prompt engineering, but the fact that people post it suggests they don't see it as a problem to be fixed in the first place.

 

[doll]

the fact that people post it suggests they don't see it as a problem to be fixed in the first place.

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That just suggests that they can't write, though? I don't really see what that has to do with AI. Serials that are long and popular and absolutely not worth reading is nothing new. You're right that there may be no real constructive feedback to give, but nothing is stopping you from just dropping the fic without a word.

The AI slop is just a regurgitation of existing, human slop. What are you going to do, ask authors to tag their works as poorly written?

 

[tacobowl8]

Enough. If you want to snipe at each other, take it to High Noon in rants. If you want to debate AI usage etc. go to one of the other threads about it.

 

[Reman Septim]

Oh, we're not doing the Butlerian Jihad here. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[XF Factor]

Don't have anything against AI, but in my experience its just generally used by trolls who can't draw to mock and harass actual artists.

The only times I've seen it used constructively was the occasional cover art for a fanfic.

 

[FlyingChurro]

AI text generation is in a weird place right now. On the one hand, it's miraculous that it can make something even approaching a resemblance to human writing at all. On the other hand, it's still completely godawful at it!

Anyone who thinks of themselves as a bad author, I promise that you can write five times better than ChatGPT, easily. EASILY! It'll take you more time, sure... but it would take you more time to coax the robot to make something of similar quality, so it actually takes LESS time to just write it yourself.

It's funny, I'm always hearing English professors and copywriters and other humanities people doomsaying about AI already being better than them, and they're right in ONE way: if you want fast, cheap mush, I guess it's alright. But if you want anything with ANY level of quality, you've still gotta go to a human.

I can usually tell something is AI generated within the first 10 words or so. Idk how to describe it, but it just doesn't feel right, y'know? Like, it's got the same tone you'd write with as when you're trying to pad your 1000 word essay out to 5000 words. It's definitely possible to fool people with it, but to do that you either have to edit the output manually, or spend a LONG time prompting it and re-prompting and RE-prompting; both of which require a decent understanding of good writing, to know how to make it to fool people; in which case, why not just write it yourself in the first place?

The answer is most people who post AI text don't put in more than the bare minimum effort, because they think writing is a waste of time to begin with. These people are, obviously, not worth anyone's consideration.

Anyways, this seems like a good clarification, I approve.

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I been curious about this for a while. Mainly because I have felt like my writing has steadily declined since spending more than a decade out of school. I know that you can take classes, but I am pretty time limited due to my job. I rarely have time to do more than a rough draft.

So I always wondered if there was a way to have an AI trainer. Where I could feed it my work and have it make suggestions for it. I mostly just feel that my writing has gotten stale from a sentence structure perspective. I feel like my sentences are boring even if I am still confident in what I am attempting to write.

 

[BronzePlaceWriter]

I been curious about this for a while. Mainly because I have felt like my writing has steadily declined since spending more than a decade out of school. I know that you can take classes, but I am pretty time limited due to my job. I rarely have time to do more than a rough draft.

So I always wondered if there was a way to have an AI trainer. Where I could feed it my work and have it make suggestions for it. I mostly just feel that my writing has gotten stale from a sentence structure perspective. I feel like my sentences are boring even if I am still confident in what I am attempting to write.

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I would not suggest using an AI to teach you creativity in writing. It'll do the opposite. Most Ais are not actually good at creative writing or sentence work, or exciting word play or building tension and drama. They are good at being technically correct, but a lot of AI writers will make boring scenes because they fail to be engaging.

 

[FlyingChurro]

I would not suggest using an AI to teach you creativity in writing. It'll do the opposite. Most Ais are not actually good at creative writing or sentence work, or exciting word play or building tension and drama. They are good at being technically correct, but a lot of AI writers will make boring scenes because they fail to be engaging.

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I have not used any AI since its not really applicable to my job. So I am mostly coming at this from a place of ignorance on it. I was very dismissive of it at the start, but now I see a lot of people like friends I havd who're teachers or just about every every corporate desk jocky friend of mine using it to write stuff. Its an odd place to ask tbh, but I really only find the time and passion to write smut these days so I'd thought I'd ask here.

 

[Biigoh]

I been curious about this for a while. Mainly because I have felt like my writing has steadily declined since spending more than a decade out of school. I know that you can take classes, but I am pretty time limited due to my job. I rarely have time to do more than a rough draft.

So I always wondered if there was a way to have an AI trainer. Where I could feed it my work and have it make suggestions for it. I mostly just feel that my writing has gotten stale from a sentence structure perspective. I feel like my sentences are boring even if I am still confident in what I am attempting to write.

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To be honest, the only way to get better writing skills... is to read and write. The more new things you read for accumulation, the more you write for practice (doesn't have to be long, but has to be frequent and on a schedule)... the better your writing will be.

 

[BronzePlaceWriter]

I have not used any AI since its not really applicable to my job. So I am mostly coming at this from a place of ignorance on it. I was very dismissive of it at the start, but now I see a lot of people like friends I havd who're teachers or just about every every corporate desk jocky friend of mine using it to write stuff. Its an odd place to ask tbh, but I really only find the time and passion to write smut these days so I'd thought I'd ask here.

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Just because people use it doesn't mean that it's good at what it does. Don't get me wrong, AI can write a story. But it can't really write a good story. It tends to create low energy sentences, it doesn't always plan ahead. Its signature is work that is technically correct without actually being able to invoke emotions. If you just want a story, AI can deliver that. But you don't want to use Ai as a teacher because then you'll end up writing like an AI in a world where a lot of people are directly targeting AI and people who write like one.

And yeah, corporations are forcing AI pretty hard right now, but they're also regretting it a lot, and it's causing issues. AI is a powerful and potent tool, but it's not the solve everything option that it's currently being pushed as. I get why corporations are doing that, but a teacher who is relying on AI is imo, pretty suspect. But I won't get into that here.

 

[Shaddow0]

After reading so many Ai works the last few years, and having spent 12 years reading so many other books and fanfictions. I have found that the best way in my mind to describe Ai vs "Organic" writing is that everyone has a "Voice" and not just a verbal one but a written one as well. Each author sounds(reads) different from the next and this gives each story its own voice distinguishable from any other author even when written about the same topic. It is especially noticeable to someone like me who reads way to much.

However for Ai this is different. Ai generally train on the same sources this means that even different Ai all end up having the same Voice. Even if Ai is only used for editing the result is that the Authors "voice" starts to become muted or even replaced by the Ai. This makes Ai written story's all sound the same. Generally they can be described as Story's with no character or world depth. With strange comparisons that have no meaning or sense.

Personally I wish Authors were required to tag Ai works, Even though I read some anyway.
Naturally enforcing such a thing would be very time consuming, mostly impossible, filled with errors and probably not worth the effort.

 

[joesmith1999]

I mostly just feel that my writing has gotten stale from a sentence structure perspective. I feel like my sentences are boring even if I am still confident in what I am attempting to write.

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The unfortunate reality of being a creative is that you develop taste LONG before you develop skill. Trust me; I've published a few incredibly mildly successful books, and I STILL struggle with that a lot! "This is shit from a butt," I lament about a paragraph I wrote, "and nothing I change makes it good!" Though, after a while, you DO learn to just chuckle distressedly and move on.

I'd recommend reading "On Copia," by Erasmus. It's basically all about how to zhuzh up your writing with an abundance of variety, and has a boatload of excellent advice. Here's a video to introduce you to it: https://youtu.be/JwQcRC-RH38

(As a side note, Writing with Andrew is a fucking incredible youtube channel that every writer, aspiring or not, should watch every single video of. Treasure trove of info right there; honestly he's horribly underrated!)

In Copia, Erasmus rewords the sentence "Your letter pleased me greatly" around 200 times, as an example. My favorite is "What laughter, what applause, what exultant dancing your letter caused me." Imagining Erasmus opening a letter from some dude, and it makes him so excited that he jumps up and starts fucking hooting and hollering and shit, made me laugh so hard the first time I read it that my abs started to cramp.

If you pick a random sentence every night before bed and write just 5 or 10 variations on it, then, soon enough, YOU'LL be the one dancing with ecstatic joy. It made me a thousand times more confident in my writing.