#ai harms writers

[hidden-writer-1028]

Day 6

Bump. Ba-bump. Bump. Ba-BUMP.

That was the beat of Hitoshi’s heart in his chest as his hair was pulled back and Izuku’s face fell. “It’s simple, Little Hero. You make him bleed and I let him eat something.” It was insane how it had only taken a month for them to get used to this. How it had simply fallen into a routine of blood and food. At first they fought back and tried to avoid it, but then they got hungry. Not just hungry, but starved. They were struggling to even stay awake at that point and the promise of food was too much to pass up.

It was only a bit of blood after all. That was what Hitoshi had told himself. He would happily bleed if it meant Izuku, his love, his gorgeous human, got to live a bit longer. Except they switched it up regularly. It wasn’t that simple. It was never that simple.

A bit of blood turned to a broken bone to a river of crimson red swimming in their eyes and down their skin. Just a bit of blood, a bit of pain and it would all end and they could eat.

Their captors kept them on the edge of dying so easily that it was clear this wasn’t their first time which always left Hitoshi wondering who they had done this to before and what happened to them. What caused them to be thrown away.

How he could keep that from happening to Izuku.

“I can’t. I can’t today!” That was also a problem. Izuku had become so broken that he couldn’t lift his arms. His shoulders both dislocated and his hands smashed beyond repair. He was going to lose them if they ever made it out. If they ever made it free then Izuku’s career was over as well as his sanity. Hitoshi would stand by him through it all, but that would only happen if they got free.

He had so little hope for that.

Their captors hands clamped down on Izuku’s shoulder making him drop to his knees. “Well then maybe dearest Hitoshi could help you out. See how far that pretty little quirk of yours goes.” A pit formed in Hitoshi’s stomach. That had been a development just days ago. When Izuku could push no further, could barely breathe through his agony, Hitoshi was forced to use his quirk on Izuku. His quirk that had protected him against so much was now used to harm Izuku, his love, and himself.

Ba-bump. Bump. Ba- ba- ba- bump.

“Toshi…”

He just couldn’t do it today… Not today.

[ryololart]

Gang just a fyi

I have never used ai for any of my stories. Feel free to run them through a token checker, but I have never used them to check my work and inspire new work.

On My discord my status is “ai generated” as a joke between some of my friends. None of my work has been touched by ai. I deeply apologize if i offended anyone.

[scaley-moth-wings]

Hey gang why is it controversial to say fuck AI and I will not follow you if you use it

[sleep-nurse]

I think ppl who still use c.ai just don't respect authors tbh cause if middle school me could think for 2 seconds abt how it was probably stealing from my fav authors then immediately drop it then any1 can, cause like. what do they think those responses r trained on

also idk if yk the utau meaty chan but seeing her manager make a c.ai bot of her is so sad bc like. cmon. they even said they were making a vn 4 her so it's just extra salt in the wound bc that means they're a writer too,, I rlly hope they delete it cause other than that her manager seems super nice and i love meaty chan 😞 can't gave anything nice any more...srry 4 yapping...

yeah i completely agree with you and this problematic tool is also just. making people more lonely??? like there are SO many people who are willing to talk about your interests or roleplay or really just. anything. we humans literally evolved because we were a species that worked and communicated in teams

and i know people suck (as a huge introvert who is dealing with too much bullshit lately i understand this way too much) but not everyone does. so. if you use c.ai just. drop it and find a solution

[ikemenomegas]

All 👆 excellent 👆 points 👆

I'm not a big platform but I would ask anyone reading this not to engage with this new app. The desire for realism is real, the love for character is real, many people might want to hear their favorite character say the kind words they're reading, but I am not and never will be okay with someone else profiting off of something that 1. I created 2. I created for free 3. I created for free directly playing off of very much copyrighted material

And especially I am not okay with something that risks giving others more fodder to threaten fandom spaces, queer spaces, or creative spaces.

As this reddit thread brings up it is very likely "They're making money on it somehow, running that kind of thing isn't cheap. Which means they're making money off of our creative work." This puts us ALL at risk. Once again, a big reason Ao3 has been able to maintain itself is because it does not allow any profit to come from fanworks, we post and read for free on that Ao3.

The team for this app does not care about fandom spaces - or if they do, they're delusional and shortsighted about what this app could possibly accomplish, but given that, I'm comfortable saying this app is not a friend of fandom. It's a friend of profit and profiting off the labor of fanwriters, and it's a friend of wasting fan's valuable time with something that will continue to profit off of you. Accessibility tools already exist, this is not one of them - remember the best tool of marketing is to say something true that does not require any extra work put into the product. Sure it can be used for an accessibility reader, but that's not what they built it for.

Warning for criticism and what I’d consider some harsh to outright mean words:

So I’ve just been made aware of the project known of as ‘lore.fm’ and I’m not a fan for multiple reasons. For one this ‘accessibility’ tool complicates the process of essentially just using a screen reader (something native to all I phones specifically because this is a proposed IOS app) in utterly needless and inaccessible ways. From what I have been seeing on Reddit they have been shielding themselves (or fans of the project have been defending them) with this claim of being an accessibility tool as well to which is infuriating for so many reasons.

I plan to make a longer post explaining why this is a terrible idea later but I’ll keep it short for tonight with my main three criticisms and a few extras:

1. Your service requires people to copy a url for a fic then open your app then paste it into your app and click a button then wait for your audio to be prepared to use. This is needlessly complicating a process that exists on IOS already and can be done IN BROWSER using an overlay that you can fully control the placement of.

2. This is potentially killing your own fandom if it catches on with the proposed target market of xreader smut enjoyers because of only needing the link as mentioned above. You don’t have to open a fic to get a link this the author may potentially not even get any hits much less any other feedback. At least when you download a pdf you leave a hit: the download button is on the page with the fic for a reason. Fandom is a self sustaining eco system and many authors get discouraged and post less/even stop writing all together if they get low interaction.

3. Maybe we shouldn’t put something marketed as turning smut fanfic into audio books on the IOS App Store right now. Maybe with KOSA that’s a bad idea? Just maybe? Sarcasm aside we could see fan fiction be under even more legal threat if minors use this to listen to the content we know they all consume via sites like ao3 (even if we ask them not to) and are caught with it. Auditory content has historically been considered much more obscene/inappropriate than written content: this is a recipe for a disaster and more internet regulations we are trying to avoid.

I also have many issues with the fact that this is obviously redistributing fanfiction (thus violating the copyright we hold over our words and our plots) and removing control the author should have over their content and digital footprint. Then there is the fact that even though the creator on TikTok SAYS you can email to have your fic ‘excluded’ based on the way the demo works (pasting a link) I’m gonna assume that’s just to cover her ass/is utter bullshit. I know that’s harsh but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s probably a duck.

I am all for women in stem- I’ve BEEN a woman in Stem- but this is not a cool girl boss moment. This is someone naive enough to think this will go over well at best or many other things (security risks especially) at worst.

In conclusion for tonight: I hope this person is a troll but there is enough hype and enough paid for web domains that I don’t think that’s the case. There are a litany of reasons every fanfic reader and writer should be against something like this existing and I’ll outline them all in several other posts later.

Do not email their opt out email address there is no saying what is actually happening with that data and it is simply not worth the risks it could bring up. I hate treating seemingly well meaning people like potential cyber criminals but I’ve seen enough shit by now that it’s better to be safe than sorry. You’re much safer just locking all your fics to account only. I haven’t yet but I may in the future if that is the only option.

If anyone wants a screen reader tutorial and a walk through of my free favorites as well as the native IOS screen reader I can post that later as well. Sorry for the heavy content I know it’s not my normal fare.

[makingqueerhistory]

":')))))))) you realise that gen AI is available to everyone though right??? Queer creators can use it just as much as anyone else??? I just don't understand this post... It really feels like a cheap way to get on the 'AI Bad's bandwagon, and coming from such a thoughtful and insightful creator that's incredibly disappointing... It's okay to not comment on subjects you're not an expert in y'know...?"

Y'all know the drill, I am replying to this publicly but that is not an invitation to send any negative messages to the person I am replying to.

Anyways, let me start by saying that the original context of the post you're replying to is discussing an event where a queer org used generative AI to steal an interview with Keri Hulme. So let's start there. To be clear I don't even know if the original interviewer was queer so let's put the identities of stealer and stolen from to the side. I want to explain the harm done in this example specifically and I hope this is illustrative of what harm generative AI can (and does) do.

The original place I saw generative AI was a queer org that explicitly says they are using generative AI "for good", and as a way to bring more queer history to light. So let's take them at their word, and assume they are not out to cause harm. This is the best example of generative AI that I can imagine, so I hope that makes it clear that I am not coming at this issue from bad faith in any way.

Here is the harm they are causing:

Decontextualizing and rephrasing an interview: I am not going to pretend that I am an expert in academic best practices, but I do believe one thing, if a person is speaking on their own identity and lived experience, it is always much better to directly quote than it is to rephrase. As I read this source, I initially didn't know that it was AI, and I was already upset. An interview that is widely available on the internet with no pay wall, was poorly sourced and made more vague than it was in the initial text. By creating one degree of seperation between the original words of A WRITER (whose literal job was largely based in choosing the right words to describe experiences they had) harm is already done. It makes vague what was once clear, and removes Keri Hulme's voice from her own narrative.

The original interviewer is not paid, or given proper recognition: I get it, sometimes just copy pasting an interview doesn't feel transformative enough, but something that one would learn if they worked in the queer history field and weren't a literal robot rehashing what has already been said, is that not everything needs to be transformed. In those cases, we give credit to the person who said the original words (in this case Keri Hulme), and the interviewer who facillitated the conversation (in this case Shelley Bridgeman). This case (again a best case scenario), takes the attention and byline away from the original interviewer and gives it to an AI.

The original publisher of this story is deinsentivised from paying interviewers in the future: The original publisher of this interview has ads on their website. As a person who also has ads on their website, taking an article like this and rephrasing it for no good reason (the orginal word count was not prohibitive and the rephrasing did not make it more readable), takes money from the publisher. It's pennies, but it's also removing numbers could have been used to justify further interviews with asexual people and archiving of asexual stories. The org that stole from this publication does not interview people themselves so the money and numbers that could have gone to continue to preserve asexual stories goes to stealing them instead.

These are just the active harms that I saw in this specific case. As you said, I am not an expert in generative AI, and will not be speaking as if I am. But I will say that asking me not to speak out on active harm that is being caused in queer history spaces, is disrespectful to my many years in this field.

To illustrate this even clearer: if you were a patron, you would know I recently took down an old article. I have been rereading and editing our backlist of articles, and I found one that no longer fit my standards of sourcing. My standards had recently raised due to a video made by HBomberguy about someone in the queer history space who was stealing from other creators. I watched this video not as a work project, but because I watch most of HBomberguys videos, and this one made me think more critically about sourcing. An AI can't do that. All an AI has is what has been inputted, and it is right now impossible to input every available peice of information about ethics into an AI and get a coherent ethical basis on which it will function.

It is a distinctly human trait to absorb information and change in that way. AI can rephrase information that already exists, steal it, recontextualize it even, but it cannot create something altogether new.

Do I believe that there one day might be an ethical use for Generative AI? Maybe. Do I believe that coming into a queer history space, stealing the words of a Maori asexual author, rephrasing them, and giving the original interviewer and publication no form of compensation for their work, is accomplishing that? No.

On a more personal note: I am coming at this issue with a bias. As a queer history creator, I do not want AI in my space, because it is literally damaging to my financial prospects. It has been like pulling teeth to try and get patrons in the current state of the global economy. I don't blame anyone from that, but I feel very disrespected that I am being asked to compete with a machine now. Not only that, but I am being asked to shut up and be fine with it? No, absolutely not. I cannot and will not stay quiet as space that I have fought tooth and nail to create in mainstream discussions is taken and given to AI.

AI was not supporting me when I was sent gore to try and scare me off of discussing queer history. A person did that. AI was not there to tell me I had written too many sad stories, and I needed some happy endings to remind myself of the good in the world. A person did that. AI was not there when I was being harrassed for supporting and including asexual stories on my website. A person did that.

And after all that, I am being asked to lie down and take it when my ability to pay the people who supported me in those ways, is being threatened. Nope. Not going to happen.

An AI doesn't have to make rent. An AI doesn't understand what it feels like to have to stop holding their wife's hand in public. An AI didn't get calls from people needing comfort in reaction to the election. Pay me for my work, and get this AI nonsense out of my face.

[sandersstudies]

So the AI ask wasn't spam. I'd highly encourage you to do some research into how AI actually works, because it is neither particularly harmful to the environment, nor is it actually plagiarism.

Ignoring all of that however, my issue is that, fine, if you don't like AI, whatever. But people get so vitriolic about it. Regardless of your opinions on if it's valid art, your blog is usually a very positive place. It was kind of shocking to see you post something saying "fuck you if you disagree with me, your're a disgrace to the community." Just felt uncharacteristicly mean.

Even if you insist AI isn’t actively harmful to the environment or other writers (and the research I have done suggests it is, feel free to send me additional reading) and you simply MUST use prompts to generate personal content, nobody has any business posting it in a creative space for authors, which was the specific complaint addressed in that original post. While I’ll never say “fuck you for who you are as a person” on this blog, I might very well say “fuck you for harmful or rude actions you’ve taken willingly,” which is what that post was about.

Ao3 and similar platforms are designed as an archive for fan content and not a personal storage place for AI prompt results. It is simply not an appropriate place. If you look in the notes of the previous ask you will see other people have brought up additional reasons they have concerns about this practice.

A note on environmental effects for those who might not know: Generative AI requires MASSIVE amounts of data computers operating. As anyone who has held a laptop in their lap or run Civ VII on an aging desktop computer, computer équipement generates a lot of heat. Even some home and small-industrial computers have water-cooling systems. The amount of water demanded by AI computers is massive, even as parts of the world (even in America) experience water shortages. Besides this, it consumes a lot of power. The rising demand for AI and the improvements demanded to keep it viable mean this problem will continue to scale up rather than improve. Of course, those who benefit from the use of AI continue to downplay these concerns, and money is being funneled into convincing the public that these are not real concerns.

I have been openly against the use of generative AI, especially for art and writing, since its popularity rose in the last couple years. I’m sorry I wasn’t clearer about this stance sooner. I have asked my followers to alert me if I proliferate or share AI content, and continue to do so.

[abby118]

This is important. I'm yet to see an AI image I wouldn't cringe about. The text/writing is mediocre at best as well. 99% of the time, it's grotesque, soulless and an insult to creators who put hours upon hours into their work. And if you are one of those creators, trust me it shows. Your work shows in ways AI never could. I wish people would stop prioritising quantity over quality.

I need y'all to understand that holding the line against ai art means that we also don't consume or pass around ai art of our ships. Yes, I miss them too. Yes, I wish they could have had those scenes together. But not at the expense of our artists.

You want a cool image of your otp in a scene canon never gave you? Me too! So let's commission some work rather than pass around or, god forbid, pay for an ai rendering based on stolen art.

[erose-this-name]

Can we just talk about how disturbing digital circus episode 3 is?

*spoilers btw*

Like, the whole narrative point of the adventure is to show that Caine is a really bad and insecure writer who thinks that the way to impress Zooble is with an adventure that's the opposite of what he normally does.

So instead of being childish, it's "cool" and "mature". Which he interprets as a heavily horror themed escape room with a split murder mystery plot that subverts all your expectations purely for the sake of subverting them.

The generic horror monster jump scares them, then they find a gun, and when they kill it its revealed that surprise! it's one of Gods angels and they're going to Hell.

It comes off as Caine being too insecure with the actually interesting and mature plot thread he had going there of Mildenhall becoming so paranoid he killed his wife, ironically becoming the monster he was trying to protect her from. But no, instead Mr. Mildenhall is made to be the bad guy and trick them in a really dumb twist ending.

Which is good! Thats exactly what Caine would do because he's stupid! It's such brilliant characterization and comedy, Goose works is a genius writer!

But like, why is Caine so good at making genuinely very disturbing and horrific visuals? Like, that reversed audio easter egg of Bubble saying he can't wait for all the children in the audience get nightmares is no joke, well it is but you know what I mean. This stuff was genuine nightmare fuel.

Honestly, it wasn't the visuals that scared me, like any good queer person I'm way too jaded on survival horror for that.

But, why does Caine, who is ostensibly a sapient AI designed to generate family friendly video games for very little children, (presumably because that's the only demographic that wouldn't mind the AIs very selective plot writing limitations), know about the cosmic horror of killing an angel that should not have been killed?

Why does he know what a horrificly poorly made taxidermy of not only a human face would look like, but the weird cartoon faces of the characters, and further that seeing your own poorly made taxidermy face would be scary?

Imaging what being possessed felt like for Pomni. Because that's not just a game for her, she actually lost control of her body there, helpless but to watch as a body she is already dissociated with is contorted and puppeted around while her friend desperately tries to beat her in hopes it would exorcise the ghosts out. Sure hope she didn't feel that! Considering she apparently can feel the pain of suffocating, despite not needing to breath.

Things are scarier the higher the stakes are, and that possession mechanic is definitely the most actual harm Caine would be able to subject to his players. What if both Kinger and Pomni got possessed at the same time? What if instead of Kinger she only had Jax??? How long might she have been locked out from her own body for? She could have easily abstracted in that time.

Not to mention that, possessed Pomni, Possessedmni if you will, TAUNTED KINGER ABOUT HIS ABSTRACTED WIFE! CAINE ACTUALLY WROTE THAT DIALOGUE ON THE OFF CHANCE THAT KINGER WOULD GO DOWN THE SCARY ROUTE! DID THIS RANDOM POSSESSION GHOST ENEMY HAVE UNUSED SADISTICALLY PERSONAL TAUNTS FOR EVERYONE ELSE, TOO??? WOULD IT HAVE TEASED GANGLE FOR BEING A GAY WEEB??? OR POMNI? HOW HOMOPHOBIC COULD IT HABE GOTTEN?? ?

And why? Just because Caine has a vague notion that there's a trope of possessed people being really sadistic and personal like that in movies? Not realizing that is not an acceptable scare to have in a haunted house??? Much less one you made for mentally ill people who would suffer a fate worse than death if they have a mental break down? That's like trying to claim 'its just a prank bro' after shooting someone's dog.

Like, Caine is designed to censor curse words, but the moment he thinks the normal hokey Halloween spooks won't be enough he immediately goes off the deepend into aggressively effective horror imagery that is definitely giving this show's substantial underage audience nightmares??

His AI's training data set is definitely pretty diverse, that's all I'm saying. Caine is programmed to act all naive and innocent, but be definitely knows what's up. He knows everything, like ChatGPT. And like ChatGPT, he might have a filter, but it's clearly possible to bypass it. Also like ChatGPT, he's too stupid to actually understand what he is making and the effects it might have.

That is what made this episode great.

[my-castles-crumbling]

Hi, guys! Let's talk about fandom etiquette!

👨‍🏫👨‍🏫👨‍🏫

I know a lot of you are young and perhaps have not been part of fandom spaces since the dawn of time (circa fanfiction.net) so let's talk about some dos and don'ts with fandom, so we can keep this a happy place! Please read this and reblog to get this out to people who genuinely may not know!

📕DON'T: Write reviews of fics on Tumblr, Tiktok, or other social media. Fic writers are creating these things for FREE, and did not ask you to review. This often leads to negative discourse and can even cause fic writers to take down their fics. 📗DO: Leave kudos and ONLY POSITIVE comments. Talk about only positive things on social media. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all!

Edited to add: YES, EVEN CONSTRUCTIVE CRITISCISM. If the author didn't ask for it, don't give it. Some may appreciate it, but others won't. At the very least, ask permission first.

📕DON'T: Post fic ideas or headcanons on AO3. AO3 is for posting actual fanfiction or fanart and nothing else. (What I mean by this is, I've seen posts on ao3 like "Just posting an idea that someone should write, here it is!" and that's not what ao3 is for). Edited to add: You can also post original works and nonfiction works based on fandom on ao3! 📗DO: Post headcanons and ideas on Tumblr, Tiktok, etc!

Edited to change: Okay, so I feel like there's some arguments over like...what qualifies as metafic versus something that shouldn't be on AO3? So from my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong), people DEFINITELY should not be posting just a title with no work attached, which I have seen a lot lately, nor should they be posting to search for someone else's fic. However, it seems like lists, and similar metafic are okay, as well as original content, and nonfiction.

📕DON'T: Repost entire fanfictions without permission or sell bound fanfiction. Again, this causes writers to take their fics down, and can actually cause issues with fandom because it can cause allegations of copyright infringement. 📗DO: Recommend fics you like to others by talking them up and posting links! Ask permission before you translate!

📕DON'T: Send hate to authors for writing a fic in a way you don't like or not updating enough. Again, authors are doing this for free and sending hate causes serious mental harm to authors because they are people! If you don't like it, don't read it! 📗DO: Send love to authors in forms that they are comfortable with!

📕DON'T: Shame others for their ships/fics/kinks. Fandom is supposed to be a supportive space! Judging people is taking away that safe space! 📗DO: Use the block button! Block or filter out things or people you don't like!

📕DON'T: Use AI to create art or fics. This is detrimental to the creators who work hard to create their work! 📗DO: Try making your own art or fics! Practice makes perfect!

These are just a few of the things that I've seen happening more lately, but keep in mind that if you don't like something, you don't have to interact with it and fanart and fanfiction creators are people who are doing this for free. Please make sure to respect the hard work people put in, or fandom can't exist!

(Feel free to discuss/add things as long as you're being respectful!)

[what-eats-owls]

This info was of some surprise to folks on Bluesky, so I'm going to repeat it here in light of the sheer number of "the Internet Archive was an uncomplicated good apart from this one weird move" posts I've seen...

Are we all aware that IA has been gradually pushing the dogma that generative AI is a net public good, and has been feeding books, music, and video into AI?

This article is about how IA is actively using AI in their archives. It's an interview with Brewster Kahle, founder and Board Chair of IA. Choice quote:

This is the blog post about the comments they submitted to the US copyright office arguing against any new copyright regulations for AI. Some more choice quotes:

You can guess how I feel about framing the writers and artists whose work BUILT generative AI as "workers" who just need to be "retrained."

Last year they hosted a zoom panel called "Generative AI Meets Open Culture: Opportunities, Challenges & Ethical Considerations." Multiple visuals were AI-generated art, the panelists were asked to avoid discussing copyright. It's an hourlong panel and I couldn't find a transcript, so I skipped around to see if anyone addressed the elephant in the room. I found at ~32 minutes, a vague gesture at acknowledging it wasn't great if you tried to replicate an artist's style, but fine if you just wanted generic art.

(If anyone finds a more concrete statement in there, and/or a transcript, I'd love to know! The tenor I got was overall "look at how cool these tools are and let's talk about how they're a public good.")

At the end of January 2024, they hosted "Public Domain Day," including a panel on incorporating Generative AI in art. They invited two artists who utilize Generative AI, and a publisher whose books go immediately into the public domain. More quotes from their own writeup:

This was an event in celebration of public domain, but as far as I can tell, they've more or less avoided even acknowledging that creators are actively being harmed by Gen AI. Again, if anyone can find a clearer statement, please share it.

Another wrinkle in this is that Kahle, on behalf of the Internet Archive, sued the US Government in 2004, challenging the law that automatically granted and renewed copyright to a creator. Previously, copyright was opt-in only, had to be regularly renewed by the holder, and cost money to do so. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court in 2007, but was dismissed. (Scroll down to Docket 07-189, Kahle v Mukasey, for court filings.)

To be clear, this is the law that means you automatically own your own work. It's not a shock that Kahle's suit failed. But if Kahle had won, artists who didn't pay to secure and maintain copyright over their work would be SOL right now in the lawsuits against generative AI image and text scrapers.

So yeah. My tiny violin for IA continues to shrink.

[babycharmander]

Okay while everyone is talking about the hbomberguy plagiarism video and how insidious and awful plagiarism and lack of citations are, can we ALSO talk about art theft and how posting art without permission and/or proper sources/credit is massively harmful to artists just like people using other folks’ words without citation or credit is massively harmful toward writers?? Can we please do that? CAN WE PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE THAT ART THEFT IS A MASSIVE ISSUE THAT NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE CARE ABOUT?!

(And this isn’t even going into AI—the theft of art to create AI is also a massive problem. But here, I’m just talking about regular humans who steal art and Don’t Care.)

[sibylance]

We Need to Talk About AI Detectors

Over the past few weeks there have been two posts in particular that have come out against two authors in the community that have resulted in near witch hunts for one, and essentially driving the other off the internet from all the bullying and hate received. These posts were related to the potential use of AI in fanfiction, as well as using supposed “AI Detectors” to support their claims. With the help of friends, we have been able to look into the AI claims that were made against both The Silence and The Song and Ir Abelas, Da’ean.

We were curious about how and why these posts were being flagged with high levels of “AI Probability” when the authors have been adamant (either in chats or in public) that they have never used generative AI for their work. So we did the most logical thing, put on our detective caps, and rolled up our sleeves. We would like to note that we do not wish to have philosophical discussions, we wish to have transparency and honesty.

Spoilers: We found inaccuracies almost IMMEDIATELY.

Firstly, we looked into the weakness of AI detectors, and read through online posts where people voiced their frustrations with detectors. One thing that we noticed was that the common denominator was that well written articles were being flagged as “Likely AI”, particularly with Originality, and that the solution was to either “dumb them down” or to remove punctuation such as commas, which immediately improved the score, tipping the scale to “Likely Original”.

For the second step, we ran some of our own works through Originality AI checker–works that were made prior to the creation of AI and generative AI. However, after punctuation was removed, this magically changed from 50% likelihood of AI to 100% original work. Again, these works were from before the dawn of generative AI, and therefore could not have been created by AI. For fun, we even ran the first chapter of Harry Potter through it–a novel that is objectively without AI, which still did not come out with results stating 100% original work. We then removed almost all of the punctuation from it, and it actually improved the originality score by 3% (from 95% to 98%).

Personal fic, before and after:

Next step, we ran our own scans through Originality and Quillbot.This includes full chapters of Ir Abelas, Da’ean, both with and without punctuation in Originality, and excerpts in Quillbot. Interestingly, the excerpts in Quillbot pinged as “0% likely AI”, and that is without any removal of punctuation. Across the board, the removal of punctuation from the chapters caused an immediate and dramatic increase in the score, from “100% likely AI” to “96% likely Original”. We have found that the more grammatically correct a work was, the more likely it was to be flagged as “AI”, much like how the freelance writers were complaining about.

Chapter 1 of Ir Abelas, before and after:

Chapter 1 through Quillbot:

Chapter 45 of Ir Abelas, before and after:

Chapter 45 without commas or double hyphens:

Chapter 45 through Quillbot:

Even the Ai detection websites caution against this:

To Durgeapologist, Fangbanger3000, and friends: If you do actually read this, I hope you realize that your posts have done more harm than good to the community. You are correct that AI is a potential threat to creative spaces, but you have gone about addressing it in the worst possible way. By creating multiple posts across platforms with the intent of creating a negative perspective toward certain authors and their fictions rather than the use of AI as a whole—not to mention the counter-accusations with personal attacks rather than focusing on the issue at hand—you are creating an environment that fosters negativity, bullying, and division—none of which are directions to take a sustainable and healthy community. AI Detection is the Wild West right now. There is no way to determine if something written is AI through the use of algorithms, and it requires the use of human intervention and careful comparison to previous works to be within a certain level of certainty that it is AI. Our hope is that in the future, you will take time, step back, and consider all possible sides before causing a stir in the community like this.

[whatisamettafor]

I saw a horrible AI Tam and Lucy this morning in animal onesies and had to use my actual human hands to make a better version.

After drawing the whole thing I was like damn....I should have made s*xy pin ups with little ears, so if you want to tell me to do that, consider joining the patreon

Edited because tumblr absolutely will not allow me to reply to messages, so I'm trying to reply to @booksnwriting:

The difference is that the other person put their prompt into a computer and the computer program took a bunch of artists' hard work and skill without permission to fill that prompt. I'm taking human skill, time and effort and using it to fill a prompt. What I'm doing is no different than any art challenge, or draw your OTP like this meme or whatever. Do I have their permission? No, but frankly if you're out here stealing other people's skills and calling it art, then I think it's only fair that your ideas can be turned around and used as prompts by people with those skills to produce actual drawings. Furthermore, what I'm doing is not hurting them, but if they didn't have access to a database of stolen work, maybe they would have given money to an actual human artist to draw their prompt, maybe they would have held a little drawing prompt contest and shared the art and gained real artists exposure which could then allow those artists to find work doing other commissions. Even if they didn't do either of those things, even if not having AI meant their idea just stayed in their head never to see the light of day, the existence of AI art in general devalues skills people had to work to develop and takes jobs away from those people by taking their existing work. That actively hurts artists. I'm "bashing" them because what they're doing is actively harming me and people like me.

Based on your user name I assume you are probably a writer, and I would like to ask you: is there more value in an actual human being writing things like fanfic (stories using other people's ideas as their jumping off point) or original books that include genre tropes than there is in typing prompts into a text generating AI?

Would you be annoyed if someone chose to write a retelling of Dracula using their own brain and hands in response to hearing that someone else was marketing a Dracula retelling that they'd "written" using a text autofill program?

And just so we're clear, the thing that makes the AI horrible is that it's AI, not whether or not it's nice to look at.

[monstersholygrail]

Is it okay if I made a character ai chat thing for the bird hybrids? If that’s okay with you

I appreciate you asking but no, that is certainly not ok with me. I do not condone any of my writing, characters, or ideas to be input into anything to do with AI. I don’t want any of my writing associated with AI at all and I will never give permission for anything like that.

I do not support or encourage the use of AI whatsoever. It is extremely harmful for writers as well as other types of artists. And it’s seriously not talked about enough and discouraged enough when it comes to writing.

Like, asking this would be similar to asking an artist if you could take their art and put it into an Ai generator so you could create more art with their art style for free.

If people want something from a specific character whether it’s an oc or a fandom character or whoever, then commission it. Normalize commissioning writers like yall commission artists!! If there’s something you wanna read and see written, a conversation, dynamic, interaction, reaction, and anything else then simply commission it.

I promise you a real writer is going to be able to more accurately portray a character, especially an oc, than a computer can.

Plus, just imagine how happy you’ll make the writer!!! Showing your appreciation to them and wanting to pay them for all their hard work. It would mean the world to any writer. And I think it’s so insanely important to extend that same courtesy and respect to writers.

[eskawrites]

I feel like I’m seeing another uptick of people talking about using AI for fics/writing in general and I know some of it’s in a mostly unserious way but I still just wanna say

1) Generative AIs are literally built on the concept of mosaic plagiarism. You are, by definition, stealing from the work of countless writers on the internet

2) AI writing is not writing, it offers zero value beyond in-the-moment entertainment. If you want that satisfaction of doing something creative you have to actually, you know, do something creative. If you want the instant gratification of a story go read/watch/play something that was made by actual artists

3) even if you have no qualms about the plagiarism and deterioration of human skill and creativity, AI is a major threat to the environment and every time you use it you’re contributing to a massive waste of energy and resources

4) using AI just for ideas or just for inspiration or just to rewrite a sentence or just to find a different word is still using AI and it is still harming the environment and it is still stealing from others. There are other tools to use. The internet is full of free resources created by actual writers that can help you find that cool word you’re looking for or show you different ways to approach style and voice. And if you’re looking for inspiration there are literally endless amounts of prompts and ideas that are only a google search away

4a) this is also true for people who are only using AI as a joke. It’s still harmful and you are helping the problem continue by using it, training it, and normalizing it

5) art is valuable because it is created by humans. Making something worthwhile isn’t about creating a masterpiece, it’s about putting part of yourself—whether that part is passionate or heartbroken or angry or inspired or silly or reverent or filled with brainworms—into the world. And even if you are the worst writer/artist/musician who has ever walked the earth (and trust me, you aren’t), anything you create on your own still has an impact. You are changing the world! You are putting something out there that leaves an impression on you and anyone who comes across it! But when you use AI for that, you haven’t made anything. You’ve just rearranged someone else’s work and dropped it on the ground. And by the time you make your third work, or your tenth, or your hundredth, you will not have grown or learned or changed or experienced any of the actual meaning and beauty of creativity. And if you don’t want any of those things, that’s fine! But that means being a writer or an artist or whatever is not for you, and you shouldn’t go around cosplaying as one with a computer algorithm that is destroying the planet, stealing from hard-working artists, eliminating jobs, and contributing to mass misinformation and the deterioration of reading comprehension