#seeing people use chatgpt to write fanfic is so....disheartening (?)

[babybeel]

if you support ai work (in any form, be it art or writing) pls unfollow me!

[weiszklee]

The exaggerated hatred directed towards "AI art" is weird enough on its own, but in the context of fanfic, it's doubly funny, given that a) there is generally no money to be made with fanfic, so people's concern for their own livelihoods can't explain the hatred, and b) fanfic itself is often maligned with exactly the same arguments directed at "AI art": That it's not real art, that it's theft, that it's just regurgitating tropes for quick consumption and thus cheapening the societal role of art, ... It's kind of disheartening to see fanfic writers haven't learned to reject these kinds of arguments and instead just think that for some reason they don't actually apply to fanfic.

First things first, copyright infringement is not theft, and "AI art" is probably not copyright infringement. Now theoretically, if you use "AI tools" to recreate for example passages written by someone else, that would indeed constitute copyright infringement, but as far as I know, it's extremely unlikely to happen with a well trained program like ChatGPT, and unless you can point to instances of it in the fic you take issue with, calling it infringement is just a lie. Styles are not protected by copyright, and there probably isn't a trademark for the style in question either.

It's also kind of funny to see "AI artists" accused of just trying to stroke their egos, when really the egos of fanfic writers are the only thing that is hurt here. You have no way of knowing what someone publishing a fic written with the assistence of ChatGPT wants. You just assume they want attention because you think you are owed the attention they receive. It's pure projection.

Most of the other arguments here seem to rest on the assumption that using "Ai tools" is not a legitimate expression of creativity. But whether that is true is the actual question here! You can't just assume everyone agrees with your main point, you have to actually confince people of it first!

@thehoneybeet Your definition of literature excludes a lot of the literary experiments of the past century (and even a lot of pre-modern literature), it is far from universally accepted, it is just your personal taste.

@orionsangel86 The great thing about art is that you cannot be cheated. Either you have an aesthetic experience or you don't. Nothing can invalidate or take away the experiences you did have.

For now at least, it seems the best way to make sure you don't read fic written by ChatGPT would be to exclusively read smut. ChatGPT is a big prude and will refuse to participate in writing anything offensive to corporate interests. Porn without plot is the last bastion of purely human expression!

Saw my first post with someone admitting they used chatGPT to ‘write a fic’ which they then shared here on tumblr and on Ao3.

To be clear, using AI to churn out a piece of fiction is not writing.

Using a bot (possibly one that was trained using a scrape of Ao3, that is to say, the theft of work from every writer who has posted their work on Ao3) is NOT WRITING.

It is theft. It isn’t creation. It’s a regurgitation of the consumed collective work and effort and heart and time of every writer who has shared their work on Ao3.

‘I’m not a good writer’ is no excuse.

Want to be a writer? Put in the time everyone else does to practice.

Don’t feel confident in your work? Open yourself up to the same vulnerability and risk that the rest of us do.

You don’t get to use a fucking bot to vomit out an approximation of a story and pretend you’ve got skin in the game.

The sad thing? This bot-assembled fic wasn’t bad. It was bland, but it had internal logic, some passing context to character and canon. It wasn’t like those early AI art pieces that had surreal compositions and extra fingers. It wasn’t immediately obvious it was made by a bot.

In this instance the person who posted it admitted they had used a bot. Which, actually, I have some respect for. But it probably isn’t the first and it won’t be the last.

I don’t know that there’s a solution to this, but it is both hurting my heart and enraging me.