Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. It’s new, it’s big, it stinks, and it’s taking up way too much space in this cramped area. Heck, everyone is over-talking about it these days.
If you haven’t seen any blogs, news, articles, social media posts, chats, ads, or heard anyone talking about AI writing, then you must be hiding out in a very out-of-the-way writing retreat with no contact with the outside world. Kudos to you and how the heck did you find it? What’s your secret?
Back on topic.
If you just went, “Huh?” at the “AI”, it is Artificial Intelligence. ChatGPT is just one, but there’s a rush of companies jumping on that wagon, including, if you haven’t heard, Bing’s cringey chatbot Sydney, who apparently has shown some pretty manic personality traits to its testers, assuming a computer algorithm at this point can have a personality.
What is the fuss all about?
Programs like ChatGPT are artificial intelligent chatbots. It simulates and processes conversation. You ask it a question, and its algorithm comes up with an answer. Will the answers be correct? You would have to fact check them to find out. The thing about programs is that their capabilities are limited to their programming. The responses have to come from somewhere, some kind of input. Is that input a pre-programmed catalogue of potential responses? Is it farming the internet for the data to give you? If it is pulling from the internet, how do you know it’s coming from reliable factual sources vs. simmering piles of bogusness? (That actually is a legitimate word. I didn’t even make this one up.)
AI chatbots are a new tool in the box. They are still in their infancy and need a lot of improvements before they’ll see their full potential. I have no doubt they will find their niche of being essential. But, like any other tool, it will have its time and place of usefulness. Do I want to use my Phillips screwdriver to put together that desk I bought at Ikea? As the saying goes, “Only if the screw fits.” (Okay, I might have made that up. Is it a real saying? I don’t know.) Probably I’ll need an Allen Key. I definitely won’t be using it to fix that hole in my pants. You get the idea, use the right tool for the job.
Can I or should I use AI chatbots for my writing?
That is the big debate these days. Some see nothing wrong with using it for research. The problem with that is at this point there is still open debate on whether or not those research answers are correct.
You likely already know that when you use search engines like Google for research, you need to check multiple sources. You also need to make sure those sources are reliable. A bad source only hurts your legitimacy. Can you get the chatbot to give you its sources? If it does, can you find them to verify them?
How about using chatbots to bounce writing ideas off of? Maybe you have writer’s block or are stuck on your project. Some see this as okay, while others are against it. There are strong opinions on both sides of this debate. But, how good are those responses going to be? Remember, this is a computer program running on a pre-determined set of algorithms and input data. What that means is, it is not coming up with anything intuitively new. It is not sentient and does not have an imagination. If it seems like it does, that’s likely your hopes mixed with some clever programmed responses.
Now the big question. Can you use chatbots to do your writing for you? Here is where the debate gets really heated and ugly. This is also where the question of cheating comes in and, of course, the questions of legitimacy, copyrights, and plagiarism. Let me ask you this, if you want to brag about how you drove a 1970 Dodge Charger RT, do you want to have ‘driven’ it from the passenger seat? How about if you ‘drive’ it from standing on the sidewalk watching it go by?
If you didn’t write it, if you had a chatbot write it for you, then you did not write it. Just like you didn’t actually drive that car if you are not in the driver’s seat, hands on the wheel and foot on the gas controlling it. If you are fine with that for something you are using for your own private purposes, then fine. If you are submitting something that is supposed to be written by you, for school, work, or as an author, then that means it should be written by you. You should be the author, not by your friend or neighbor, your partner or child, and not by a computer program.
Yes, famous people do hire ghost writers to write for them and publish under their own names. Some famous authors do this too. While some can argue that in a sense this is cheating, putting out work as your own that isn’t, they are hiring a service, paying the real author for their time, and it is considered legit. The difference is, they are hiring a service here to buy unique content created by the person they hired.
Can you hire a ghost writer to submit to that magazine or anthology you want your name in? It’s probably not a good idea. The well-known assumption, often not stated in the submission guidelines, is that your submission is written by you, not by someone else. Sometimes it is in the guidelines in wording like, “Entries must be original works of the Entrant.”
Can you copyright something you had a chatbot write for you? Don’t count on it. In countries like Canada, you own the copyright to your writing from the moment you create it until you sell the rights. The defining thing here being that you created it yourself. If a corporation or other business creates the text, likely through paid employees, freelancers, or otherwise hired, that business owns the copyright. If the AI program pulls the phrases from the internet, then it’s giving you something that is likely already copyrighted by someone else. So who actually owns the copyright to the work the AI chatbot generated for you?
The Abuse of AI Writing
Here is where things are going sideways and creating a lot of animosity in the publishing world we are all trying to find our way in.
There is a growing use and awareness of AI writing among writers, editors, and publishers. While an author takes hours, days, months, even years, to complete, edit, and perfect a piece of writing, an AI program can spit it out in seconds.
I’ve seen the first-for-me submission calls specifically spelling out that they do not accept any work ‘written’, co-‘written’, created, generated, or assisted in any way by the use of AI. I used the term ‘written’ loosely here. If you are not writing it, it is not ‘written’. ‘Written’ infers organically written. AI stories are generated through computer code using words and phrases input into it. They are not ‘written’ in the organic sense.
The market for submissions was already overloaded before AI ‘writing’ made its public debut. Many submission calls are absolutely deluged with hundreds of submissions for a handful or two of slots. Many of those will be poorly written and edited, maybe not taking the time to follow the simple submission instructions. And many are scam spam, mass-produced and submitted without care for the hope of a quick buck. Editors have to weed through all of that to find the, also many, well-written and carefully edited work by authors passionate about their craft.
Non-writers are abusing the use of AI generated stories to mass submit to the better paying publications in hopes of earning an easy payday, making an already tight market harder for authors. These are people who are just looking for that quick buck no matter how they can scam their way into getting it. Editors now have to weed through this mountain of submissions on top of those sent in by authors.
One well-known Sci-fi magazine recently announced the closure of its always-open submissions due to a deluge of AI created stories. Another editor shared that their publication is permanently blacklisting anyone submitting AI created content without notification. Wording like, “No stories written (generated), co-written, created with, or assisted by AI will be accepted or considered.” is beginning to show up in submission calls. When a well-known magazine editor floats reducing submission windows, accepting solicited submissions only, private submission opportunities (by invite only) to “known” authors, and regional bans among other steps publishers might consider to reduce AI generated content submission spam, it’s a good indicator of how serious the AI question is.
At present, it seems, the majority of editors are not willing to embrace work generated by or co-created with AI, and for good reason. The questions of quality, sources, copyrights, plagiarism, and legitimacy all need to be worked out still.
Writing, in our sense of the word, is organic. It is human creativity. Imagination. Things that a computer program is not yet truly capable of.
If you are tempted to take what feels like an easier route, know that writing is not supposed to be about easy over art. If you are considering having a computer program generate a story in seconds that would take you hours, days, or more, think again. Writing is not supposed to be easy. It’s an act of passion. It’s work.
Sure, it could be a faster route to self-publishing that story you feel the urge to get out. Why spend months or years writing what you can have AI do for you in a fraction of that time? Why spend hours or days on that short story that AI can pop out in seconds? Why actually put your own effort and passion into something when you can get instant gratification? And that is why. Instant gratification. But won’t that gratification sit hollowly? The seed of the story is yours, the idea, but you will always know the story, or poem, or whatever it is, really belongs to an AI bot. It’s not really ‘your’ story because it was generated by a computer program and not your own words. Won’t it be more fulfilling knowing you created it yourself? But maybe that doesn’t matter to everyone.
Then there is that lingering question of legitimacy. No matter how you come to have it, submitting work as your own that you did not create, in a market with the assumption of organically created work written by the person claiming authorship, is a lie. And at present, the market for AI generated writing calls is very small.
If the submission call does not specifically say they want AI generated or assisted submissions, assume that using AI will be an automatic rejection and possibly get you blacklisted permanently from the publication.
The intangible world of the literary mind 