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All that seems to matter to most consumers is if the end product is entertaining, inciteful or has artistic merit. No one owes an artist a career, a job or validation. If someone can use various tools (automation et al) to get it done faster while being more lucrative - sounds like a win.

We're currently in that 'rock-n-roll' is the devil's music period with AI. It will pass. Eventually, AI will be the new normalcy bias - how did we ever get by without robots?

I saw recently a guy who used AI art programs to make a graphic novel of a fairy tale from his home country about a particular castle that is there.

It came out really well. He had to mess around a bit just to get the characters to stay consistent and so on but he managed to create a pretty-good short-story length graphic novel way faster and cheaper than hiring an illustrator.

Anyone who has ever had anything illustrated understands how slow it is, how time-consuming.

This graphic novel was really the first time I ever saw it as an absolutely viable thing that will be coming.

Before long, graphic novels will be like audiobooks - just another format for authors to put their work into. The programs to make them will just get better and better until it can store characters and keep them consistent, store locations.

There will be a time where it's six programs patched together to make one of these things and then eventually we'll get to Vellum levels of simplicity - just import your manuscript and watch it spit out a full graphic novel.

I really can't wait. It's going to be amazing. A real explosion of beautiful cool things and super low cost so it's very accessible.
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I think AI is cheating a bit when it comes to writing, but that's because I'm a writer. If I were a narrator or artist, then I'd probably feel the same way about those uses. 

However, PJ is right. The public probably doesn't care.  I see it all the time in fundraising campaigns.  AI art seems to get more attention than the other campaigns.  And it less expensive to use it. 

At the end of the day, it comes down to the individual and what they are comfortable using/buying.

ETA: I'm not sure AI could come up with what I'm writing into this latest fairytale.  And if it did, they'd probably think it was a glitch. LOL
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Scandal some yrs back when discovered that Dali had signed thousands of blank pieces of paper (selling his autograph) on some of which others added images and sold as signed Dali prints.  No scandal if they'd been marketed as Dali+other.  Writer using AI ought to sign me+AI, to give AI the credit it deserves.
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Bot Discussion Public / Re: Tim Boucher interview defending his use of AI to create works
« Last post by PJ Post on September 09, 2024, 10:14:49 PM »
All that seems to matter to most consumers is if the end product is entertaining, inciteful or has artistic merit. No one owes an artist a career, a job or validation. If someone can use various tools (automation et al) to get it done faster while being more lucrative - sounds like a win.

We're currently in that 'rock-n-roll' is the devil's music period with AI. It will pass. Eventually, AI will be the new normalcy bias - how did we ever get by without robots?
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I don't think he's necessarily saying AI "wrote" them, either. I think the thrust of his comment was related to work flow, with the implication being that the final product is what he would have produced, but it would have taken him longer.

And no, we don't disagree. I would think that someone who has AI doing all the fleshing out is probably letting AI do too much. My comment was directed at the specifics of his comment, explaining why he wanted to refute the idea that AI produced the whole thing. I wasn't really trying to comment on the desirability of what he might or might not have done.
36
We disagree then.  I'm not concerned about the source of the ideas so much as the source of the writing.

If the AI spits out some ideas, and he makes a story of it, that's fine by me.  I mean, you could throw plot ideas and character ideas and such into a box and randomly pull out a handful and use that as a challenge to write a story.  So, I don't see where it matters whether the AI randomly generates some story ideas or if you pull them out of a hat or whatever.

If he takes his own ideas and has AI "write" them, then I see that as an issue because of the issues we've discussed in these forums in the past.

If he has AI come up with the ideas and also has AI "write" them, then, again, that's an issue.

So, from my perspective, saying the ideas came from the author is not a defense because if the AI still "wrote" the dang things, then there's the potential problem.
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I don't think we're necessarily arguing over semantics. All I'm saying is that Boucher is having problems because people believed AI was doing the writing for him. His response was that the ideas were his, and he was just using AI to facilitate. He probably could have responded in other ways as well. But my comment was shaped by what his response actually was, not by my own perception of the nature of ideas. I agree with you that ideas can come from a lot of places. But certainly one way to defend against critics who claim the books were just AI productions would be to say that the ideas came from the author, not from AI.
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I think we may be arguing over semantics.

Let's say you decide to write a story about a boy wizard who battles dinosaur ninjas trying to take over the world.

That's the idea.  It doesn't matter whether you came up with that idea on your own, got the idea from an old B-movie, read it in an AI-generated story or saw it in a forum post.

Now, if you go and write such a story, I can say, "You stole my idea!"  And, yeah, maybe it doesn't look good, but ideas aren't protected.  Once you put it out there, anyone can run with it.  That's why a lot of us keep our stories secretive until they're finished and published.  We don't want people "stealing" our ideas but we also know there's no way to protect those ideas.

And, the truth is that if you and I were to both write a story about a boy wizard battling dinosaur ninjas, those stories are going to be wildly different.  Still, even recognizing that, you want to be the first to release such a story.

Of course, inevitably, you'll probably find that someone else had a similar idea years ago that you didn't even know about, so sometimes it just comes down to timing.  That is, getting a story out after any similar story is long forgotten but before anyone else releases something similar.

Because there's also the possibility that two people can come up with a similar idea at the same time.  I know that's happened to me and, because I'm a slow writer, the other person finishes first and then I put my story on the backburner so I don't look like a copycat.

So I don't have an issue with the source of the ideas.

The issue, I think, is who is actually doing the writing.  I don't think we need to rehash the issues with AI-generated writing (plagiarism, copyright infringement, etc.).  If a person does the writing, I don't think it matters whether a particular idea came from that person or was part of something AI-generated or whatever.  If the writing is the expression of a human writer, then there is no problem, even if an idea came from AI.

But, if the AI is doing the writing, then there's the issue.  I mean, you could feed your ideas into AI and end up with something that infringes on someone else's copyright if the AI spits out verbatim something someone else wrote.  So, I don't think the source of the ideas matters.  It's the expression.  And if that expression comes mainly from AI and not a human, then there is an issue.
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I still don't see where the origin of the ideas is an issue at all.
Huh?

It's public relations. Some people don't like AI. (Last time I checked, we were two of them, albeit with some context nuance.)

I've seen a lot of AI bans, from BookFunnel promos to writing contests. There is also criticism of AI-only books (usually warranted, given what AI can do without human intervention).

Quote
The complaint, which accuses Anthropic of violating authors' copyrights, says that the company's Claude model "has been used to generate cheap book content." As an example of the economic impact that AI-generated work has had on authors, it cites a Newsweek report about Boucher using Claude to write 97 books in less than a year.

In his letter [PDF] to Judge William Alsup, Boucher says that passage "mischaracterize my work in a manner that has led to reputational harm, including causing a major media outlet to refer to me incorrectly as a 'fraudster.'"

The letter – a request rather than a defamation lawsuit at this point – scolds the plaintiffs' attorneys (cc'd) for the unwarranted use of his name to support their claims against Anthropic. And it asks for a revision of the complaint.
In other words, being characterized as someone who uses Ai to grind out "cheap books" is hurting Boucher's reputation (and perhaps his bottom line). That's why he's making such a big deal out of the fact that the content is his, and AI is being used only to streamline his process.

It makes perfect sense that he'd want to get out from under the alleged misrepresentation. Even the most pro-AI among us want to use AI as a tool, not as a complete replacement for their own thought process. An author who gets a reputation for basically letting AI write the books is not going to be popular with some parts of the population.

That's why the origin of the ideas is a big deal.   
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I still don't see where the origin of the ideas is an issue at all.
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