Not compensating people for their work is pretty harsh.

Not compensating people for their work and using their work to help create additional works for financial gain is even harsher.

Not compensating people for their work and using their work to help create additional works for financial gain and that compete with and reduce the market value of their work is really harsh.

If using someone's labor without their permission and without compensating them for their work is not a form of slavery, then can it be described as theft?

Theft is a more applicable term.

I think a lot of people wouldn't want slavery used because stretching the definition too far causes the word to lose some of its impact. Jewish people have been complaining for a long time that comparing every political thing we don't like to Nazi Germany reduces the impact of the Holocaust, trivializing it.

I can see that point when I look at contemporary America. Without take sides on any of the issues, if we take all the statements being made at face value, every political figure is either a socialist or a facist--or perhaps both. In a decade, such terms will have lost most of their original meaning because they've been applied to too many things.

If I take a partial line from one book, a partial line from another, a bit from a third, a phrase from a fourth, a partial line from yet another book, and so on, and I combine those together and package them into a new book and call it my own, am I an author or a sophisticated plagiarist?

If I use a software program to do the same for me and I just edit and polish it up a bit, does that change things  because I am not personally cutting and pasting from the books?

I think the slavery analogy is a little harsh, though I certainly agree that any AI training should be based on the principles of compensation and consent.

In any case, working with AI-generated images reminds me exactly how much AI doesn't know. As I've said, elsewhere, it can produce a beautiful image, but it may take grinding out fifty or more to get that one beautiful image. Sometimes, I just give up and try something else.

Even when the image looks generally good, I can sometimes spot imperfections, like an incorrect number of toes, for example.

I haven't worked with AI text, but we've all seen documentation on the potential flaws that can be present.

Not touching the AI controversy with a 10-foot pole, but I've talked to several reps at Amazon...and some of them are real people.  I can tell.  They have a sense of humor. 

And I wish that AI-haters would stop spreading that lie that Chat or any other AI can generate an entire book on its own. Not a readable one! Yeah, it can generate crap but it still takes input and work for the writer to make the work shine and into something good.

The problem is, it doesn't stop the get-rich-quick schemers from trying. So much so that Amazon had to implement a very strict uploads per day policy. You're generally right, that no I don't think many people will be necessarily fooled into buying them--however they are developing new tricks like having a good or stolen first chapter, with the rest AI generated so the Look Inside is presentable. But yeah it can clog up search results and categories for other new releases until or unless Amazon removes the crud.

I agree with Bill. In many cases, especially for writing, there's an ethical quandary about it.

In my personal opinion, I can see AI use exploding for creative use under two conditions: 1) It is produced ethically, which is to say, the training data sets are from authors paid for the works to be used in a model, (2) Copyright laws (e.g. in the US) change so that AI-generated works can be copyrighted.

Let's say in a world where that happens, I would still not use AI. Why? Because I enjoy the process, if nothing else. Also, it is impossible to predict how much AI will improve.

There's so much to say for now, but current AI is just an averaging engine which pairs likely words together. It's not smart. It doesn't have much of a memory so nothing is consistent. It has no real creativity. Using an AI to write for me would not feel like my work.

I think it will have a hard time coming up with unique ideas.

As an author, you have infinite freedom for creativity that just might not fit with using an AI. You might not care if you're pumping out genre fiction, but some people choose words carefully for tone or pace. Some play around with rhyming by writing entire chapters in verse. Some eschew grammar and write without punctuation.

AI-assisted may be possible. But the amount of work it takes to make something useable or to fix mistakes, at least today, you may as well have just written it yourself.

I believe we'll always need humans to keep things fresh. Others disagree with me.

But you're right, in that both Amazon and consumers will not care, so long as they enjoy the story and continue buying.

We have had quite a few long threads about AI where a lot of this has been discussed back and forth, and that might be worth a read if you want more opinions.


On Topic:
This certification has been mentioned before. While I do think it's funny and wouldn't be opposed to doing something myself, nefarious actors will simply co-opt any slogan or certification themselves if they think it might get them sales.