ChatballGT_ebooks.txt
ChatGPT (From here on known as ChatballGT because I think it’s funny and I don’t want the keyword metrics.) is the big bad guy in the room right now for the literary community. While it’s astoundingly great for searching through programming documentation and help you with that roadblock in your react app it’s causing a bit of a fuss over in the writing world.
A bit.
More like, a lot.
In software development it’s totally acceptable and expected to use code you found online that works for your project. StackOverflow is the place you went to ask for help and get responses or search for your issue someone else had 5 years ago and see if the result still works.
Literature doesn’t work that way. You can’t plagiarize or use someone else’s work without permission. Code only works when specific text is typed into a file and compiled. Writing requires originality because the variables that create it are nearly infinite. This goes for both non fiction and fiction writing but I’m going to stick with fiction for the time being.
Earlier this week Science Fiction magazine Clarkesworld had to suspend submissions due to the sudden jump in accounts sending in plagiarized work thanks to the use of bots and computer generated content.
I won’t use the term AI here. It is computer generated content based on a very large data pool. So why did this magazine get hit like this? Well for one thing, SFF mags like this one tend to pay upon acceptance unlike their more literary counterparts. That makes it a target for scammers when they can have a free application spit out a story based on the mags requirements.
You’ve probably already seen the posts about ChatballGT passing various written exams and such due to its ability to reproduce content based on content its been fed. Again, great for software development, not so much for creative fiction. So what did Clarkesworld do? They had to pause subs to deal with the influx. They should be spending this time reading submissions - not fighting spam.
Folks like this guy are everywhere right now on LinkedIn and social media telling you how to use keywords and specific prompts in order to create content that will bypass plagiarism filters.
Now, I have no problem with folks using this to write free content like blog posts or marketing copy. Throwing prompts at a program and having it generate text for you has its uses, just not literary ones.
More commercial fiction lends itself to specific formulas and tropes that must be incorporated in order to meet market demands. I’ve talked about that before but now with this type of software you can publish a full kindle-ready romance novel or fantasy high school story much faster than before. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are already generated stories out on Kindle Unlimited.
Are they any good? Do the readers care? If you came up with the prompt is that not enough to claim ownership? Lord knows.
What I do know is that I can see, from this point on, literary works being more - experimental. If not to prove to publishers and agents that a human wrote it but so that what they write isn’t simple enough to be reproduced by a program. For example repetition - something a data model might try to avoid - could be used more often. High level metaphors, absurdism, and experimental prose will probably make a comeback - if anything to differentiate human work from bots.
Hope y’all are ready for Modernism 2.0.
I don't know how all this is going to end. Personally, I haven't used this chatGPT and I don't plan to.
My base case is that, in the long run, human-made stuff will be way more valuable. In the meantime--the following years, or even decades--yeah, many are going to cheat in very creative ways.
And with "cheat" I mean pretending they made something "by hand" when it was "AI-generated". If they are honest about the tools used, I think that's fair enough.
P.S. ChatBallGT, I like, I like.