Tim Boucher interview defending his use of AI to create works

[hjmoritzo]

From The Register UK
https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/31/canadian_artist_anthropic_ai_lawsuit/
He isn't happy that his work is being called 'cheap book content'.

[Post-Crisis D]

IMHO, if you churn out 97 books in a year, I find it challenging to believe those are the crème de la crème of books but .

What is interesting is he says he doesn't sell his books on Amazon. 

[Lynn]

After reading that piece, it does seem as if the lawyers took a shortcut after having read an article and just picked him out of a hat as an example without actually looking into what it was he was doing. Shoddy work on their part.

[Post-Crisis D]

After reading that piece, it does seem as if the lawyers took a shortcut after having read an article and just picked him out of a hat as an example without actually looking into what it was he was doing. Shoddy work on their part.

But he is very careful about how he answers questions.

From my reading, unless I missed something, he does not deny using Anthropic but only denies that he paid them.

Then, the question would be, does Anthropic's free level have ads?  Because, if they have ads and he used/uses the free service, they do benefit from his work because they would be getting ad revenue.

But, I have no way to confirm or deny that without signing up for a free account which I have no interest in doing.

[djmills]

From what I read he did not churn out 97 books. He churned out 97 short stories plus generated images.

"Each book features between 2,000 to 5,000 words and 40 to 140 AI-generated images. Generally, each one takes me approximately 6 to 8 hours to create and publish. In some instances, I've been able to produce a volume in as little as three hours, everything included."

Plus:
"Each AI Lore book is priced between $1.99 and $3.99. I decided to sell my books directly to readers using Gumroad because it gives me greater control."

So, we could try writing short stories (in a series) and sell on Gumroad for $1.99 - $3.99 and see if we can make any money. Or sell the short stories on all the normal distributors for $1.99 - $3.99 or even put 5 short stories together and sell for @5.99 - $6.99.  :-)

I personally prefer to write the short stories and try to sell to top paying magazines first, and once accepted, wait the 3 to 6 months before making a cover and selling on all the distributors. 

[Dormouse]

What is interesting is he says he doesn't sell his books on Amazon.

Just avoiding a gatekeeper he knows will close the gate

[PJ Post]

Good article. He appears to be on solid ground.

Also, Amazon doesn't have a place for formats like this.

[Bill Hiatt]

Semi-solid ground, assuming his own statements are accurate. But if challenged, could he prove that the ideas came from him? The short answer is yes, but he'd need to produce the prompts and responses for comparison to the finished work. If he's saved all the supporting materials, he's in good shape. If not, his position could be problematic down the road.

[Post-Crisis D]

Semi-solid ground, assuming his own statements are accurate. But if challenged, could he prove that the ideas came from him? The short answer is yes, but he'd need to produce the prompts and responses for comparison to the finished work. If he's saved all the supporting materials, he's in good shape. If not, his position could be problematic down the road.

Ideas are not protected by copyright so it wouldn't really matter where the ideas came from.

[LilyBLily]

And it's a darn good thing that ideas are not copyrightable, because I just discovered that a plot thing I used in a recent book was also used in a book I'd read forty years ago (and had totally forgotten). Obviously, the circumstances and details were different, but basically the idea was the same.

There aren't all that many ideas in genre, and that's the way genre readers like it. More of the same, please--but not exactly the same.

[Bill Hiatt]

Semi-solid ground, assuming his own statements are accurate. But if challenged, could he prove that the ideas came from him? The short answer is yes, but he'd need to produce the prompts and responses for comparison to the finished work. If he's saved all the supporting materials, he's in good shape. If not, his position could be problematic down the road.

Ideas are not protected by copyright so it wouldn't really matter where the ideas came from.

I was responding tot he part of his claim that the ideas are his, and he's only using AI to help implement those ideas. That's fine--as long as the ideas really are his. The issue here is whether there's a copyright infringement as much as it is how much the human author is actually contributing to the finished product.

[Post-Crisis D]

Semi-solid ground, assuming his own statements are accurate. But if challenged, could he prove that the ideas came from him? The short answer is yes, but he'd need to produce the prompts and responses for comparison to the finished work. If he's saved all the supporting materials, he's in good shape. If not, his position could be problematic down the road.

Ideas are not protected by copyright so it wouldn't really matter where the ideas came from.

I was responding tot he part of his claim that the ideas are his, and he's only using AI to help implement those ideas. That's fine--as long as the ideas really are his. The issue here is whether there's a copyright infringement as much as it is how much the human author is actually contributing to the finished product.

Again, it doesn't matter whether the ideas are his or came from the AI tool or came from somewhere else.

The expression of the idea is what is protected by copyright.  And, if the AI reproduces copyrighted material and he ends up using it in his works, then there could be copyright infringement.

If I understand the current U.S. Copyright Office's interpretation of things, AI generated content cannot be protected by copyright.  I think it is considered public domain, excepting cases where it may reproduce copyrighted material.  So, the only portion that would be protected by copyright are those portions written by a human author.

Of course, anyone other than the author would have no idea what part of the work is technically public domain and what part is protected by copyright.

And that begs the question whether authors (and other creatives) should have to disclose (and perhaps publish?) exactly what is and is not AI-generated.  Granted, the copyright application (U.S.) asks you to limit/describe the copyrighted portion of your work, but how many authors follow that precisely?

For example, Frankenstein is public domain.  Anyone can do whatever they want with it.  Maybe Frankenstein is a winning race horse that dies but nobody knows and Dr. Frankenstein works to bring it back to life so it can keep winning races because the horse's owner, which may be Dr. Frankenstein himself, is in debt and just needs to win two more races to pay everything off.  Now, if you write that, I can't use anything except what was public domain from the original.  Fortunately, I can get a copy of the original Frankenstein novel and create my derivative work based on that.

In the case of AI works, where can I look up the original public domain work if an author uses AI to create his/her work?  Should people be able to see that somewhere?

[Bill Hiatt]

Again, I wasn't talking about copyright law. Your interpretation of it is certainly correct, but what I was talking about was public relations.

A lot of contests and publications now ban AI work, and I've gotten a little grief on Substack just for using AI images (from a company who paid compensation for the use of work in training, and even then, only for situations in which I couldn't find a human-made image that worked for me).

In other words, I wasn't suggesting Boucher would have legal issues. I was suggesting he might have PR issues if his work was perceived as Ai-generated. (He was being called a fraudster, not a copyright infringer.)

[Post-Crisis D]

In other words, I wasn't suggesting Boucher would have legal issues. I was suggesting he might have PR issues if his work was perceived as Ai-generated. (He was being called a fraudster, not a copyright infringer.)

Wasn't he acknowledging upfront that the works were AI-generated?

[Bill Hiatt]

That's where the ideas-are-his issue comes from. His claim is that he uses AI to speed up his workflow, but that the substance is entirely his.

That is the way some writers here have been talking about using AI, so it's certainly not an unbelievable claim. I'm just saying it's good to be able to document your process if people start questioning it. Boucher may be unusual in that respect in that he got named in one of the court cases. Otherwise, you'd have to be a relatively high-profile author before it would be likely for anyone to raise the question in such a public fashion.

[Post-Crisis D]

I still don't see where the origin of the ideas is an issue at all.

[Bill Hiatt]

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).

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.   

[Post-Crisis D]

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.

[Bill Hiatt]

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.

[Post-Crisis D]

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.

[Bill Hiatt]

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.

[PJ Post]

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?

[Hopscotch]

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.

[Lorri Moulton]

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

[cuberoute]

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.

[LilyBLily]

I've always wished I could draw as easily as I can write. Would love to have the ability to command a program to produce a graphic novel--especially since all my favorite artists are dead. However, from long experience I know that perception of quality in graphics varies widely from one consumer to the next. Some very pedestrian artists have gotten a lot of work over the years from people who can't differentiate competent drawing from a hack mess. So do you have a link?

[cuberoute]

Here's the link: https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Rozafa-Ancient-Shkodra-Albanian/dp/B0D6LGPBHC

I'm glad this author talked about his process on reddit but also this is a huge warning to never talk about anything you're doing on that hellsite - all the one-star reviews are clearly people from reddit come to crap on something because it's AI.

If I hadn't been told it was AI I would have just thought it was generic-okay art to tell a fairy tale. I think it's an excellent use of the art generation software.

edit: out of the five one-star reviews, four of them have never reviewed anything else before. The classic proof of the raging drive-by one-star review just because this author dared to talk about it on reddit.

Stay anon, stay safe, make money is the lesson.

[Bill Hiatt]

Well, maybe those reviews came from reddit, and maybe they came from passersby moved by outrate at the misrepresentation of the content.

Regardless of anything else, if the art is AI art, it should be labeled. I'd feel the same about art done by a human artist. The author of the text shouldn't be claiming credit for the art. Credit where credit is due.

But whether from reddit or not, these reviews do indicate that not everybody is cool with AI. I see the same kind of reactions on Substack, which, whatever else it may, isn't a hellscape.

All that seems to matter to most consumers is if the end product is entertaining, inciteful or has artistic merit.

AI is incapable of original insight.

Sometimes, even beneficial tech languishes. We've had the know-how to clone organs (for transplant purposes) for a long time. The process has never been implemented because of fears about cloning complete human beings. I understand the fear, but lives are being lost because of it.

Ai is really popular with people--as long as it doesn't threaten them. As unemployment grows, and the economy teeters toward another recession, that won't long be the case, particularly not when politicians start calling it AIcession. (Of course, the US being so polarized, they'll disagree on what to call it and blame each other for it.)

[PJ Post]

AI is incapable of original insight.

But the human user prompting/directing the AI is.

[Hopscotch]

Are novelists who worry about the rise of AI really ‘classist and ableist’?
The Guardian  11 Sep 2024

The National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) organization said in a recent statement that “‘The categorical condemnation of artificial intelligence has classist and ableist undertones…questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege.’  Er…what?...did someone in the managerial class fire up ChatGPT and prompt it to weaponise social justice language in defence of a technology that has been accused of stealing from artists and writers…and is now making the rich richer? This weird statement sparked a lot of anger and four members of NaNoWriMo’s writers board stepped down in protest….We’re in a Choose Your Own Adventure scenario with AI at the moment. And right now we seem to be choosing the dystopian ending.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/11/are-novelists-who-worry-about-the-rise-of-ai-really-classist-and-ableist

[Bill Hiatt]

AI is incapable of original insight.

But the human user prompting/directing the AI is.

Which brings us back to the question of how much the human author contributed. Certainly, a human using AI to improve workflow is capable of having original insights. But one of the problems with Ai use is that, like Boucher, an author can get stuck defending his work against perhaps unwarranted allegations. Someone who saved the process materials at each stage could certainly prove how much of the writing is truly his creation, but it seems like a hassle, even then.

[Bill Hiatt]

Are novelists who worry about the rise of AI really ‘classist and ableist’?
The Guardian  11 Sep 2024

The National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) organization said in a recent statement that “‘The categorical condemnation of artificial intelligence has classist and ableist undertones…questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege.’  Er…what?...did someone in the managerial class fire up ChatGPT and prompt it to weaponise social justice language in defence of a technology that has been accused of stealing from artists and writers…and is now making the rich richer? This weird statement sparked a lot of anger and four members of NaNoWriMo’s writers board stepped down in protest….We’re in a Choose Your Own Adventure scenario with AI at the moment. And right now we seem to be choosing the dystopian ending.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/11/are-novelists-who-worry-about-the-rise-of-ai-really-classist-and-ableist

Apparently, the concern is that people with disabilities have to use AI to create literature. The thing is, such people created things before AI existed. There are other options.

As for opposition to AI being classist, it seems to me that defending the massive theft of the IP of others shows far more privilege than attacking the theft.

[TimothyEllis]

The National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) organization

I thought their entire aim was getting people to write?

For an organization like that to support AI is just wrong.

That could badly backfire on them.

[PJ Post]

Which brings us back to the question of how much the human author contributed.

If the user is prompting the AI to achieve specific results, then 100%. If the user is throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks...then probably less.

The ironic thing is that bespoke books and movies are almost here - music generation already is.

[LilyBLily]

The National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) organization

I thought their entire aim was getting people to write?

For an organization like that to support AI is just wrong.

That could badly backfire on them.

There's been a lot of negative chatter about this foolish statement, and some high-profile people have withdrawn from NaNoWriMo. On the NaNo site there is no public statement to members about this issue. The latest communication from NaNo admin to members was in April. As a longtime member, I still intend to use NaNo to help me focus on writing 50k words in November, but the forums in which we talk and encourage each other are still frozen. Those forums were shut in mid-November last year. If the board doesn't reopen them by October, its traditional wipe month, NaNoWriMo is dead--whether that is publicly admitted or not.

As for AI content, NaNoWriMo "wins" are all on one's honor. Word count is self-reported. At one time we had to copy and paste our ms., but no longer. Nobody looks at the content, only the word count. If AI content is allowed, some bright people will "win" on November 1. Some always do, anyway, claiming that they type really fast. It never has mattered. It's not a contest. The real issue for me is the forums. If we can't talk to each other, there's no NaNo.

[Matthew]

The NaNo stuff could be its own thread. There's been so much controversy since like 2022... I think it's time for a new organization to step in and the old one to be dissolved.

[Post-Crisis D]

The NaNo stuff could be its own thread. There's been so much controversy since like 2022... I think it's time for a new organization to step in and the old one to be dissolved.

My question would be why does there even need to be an organization?

[TimothyEllis]

The NaNo stuff could be its own thread. There's been so much controversy since like 2022... I think it's time for a new organization to step in and the old one to be dissolved.

My question would be why does there even need to be an organization?

I've never really understood that either.

[LilyBLily]

In recent years NaNo has spent a lot of money and effort on young people's programs. I've never understood why, since the majority users of NaNo are always young people anyway. It's mostly teenagers writing fantasy. I applaud those efforts. If NaNo had existed when I was that age, by my twenties I would have been a legit novelist. And I would have had a long traditional publishing career as an author writing one book a year. Now I'm trying to make up for lost time.

[Hopscotch]

AI could be an existential threat to publishers – that’s why Mumsnet is fighting back
Justine Roberts/CEO Mumsnet   Guardian   28 Sep 2024

Google is “pushing to overhaul UK copyright law in a way that would allow it to freely mine other publishers’ content for commercial gain without compensation….it’s not as if these tech giants can’t afford to properly compensate publishers. OpenAI is currently fundraising to the tune of $6.5bn, the single largest venture capital round of all time, valuing the enterprise at a cool $150bn….Google’s proposal to change our laws would allow billion-dollar companies to waltz untrammelled over any notion of a fair value exchange in the name of rapid ‘development’…[even though] there’s more than enough money flooding into AI companies for everyone to be fairly and sustainably rewarded for their contribution….”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/28/mumsnet-ai-google-openai-publishing-copyright

[Post-Crisis D]

The more AI companies demand more data to build AI models, the more obvious it becomes that there is no actual intelligence behind their AI.

It is just algorithms that are either spinning input to create the illusion that its output is new or making predictions about what word should come next based on the textual data input into it.  (Or photos, art, etc., but for just focusing on text here.)

And it may pick up on patterns we might not notice (especially where "AI" is used for problem solving situations) and thus it might seem intelligent but there's no intelligence.

If there is no intelligence, there is no learning comparable to how humans learn.

Which means that arguments that it is okay to use copyrighted material without permission or compensation for the copyright holders does not hold water because it is not learning from the material in the same or similar way to how humans learn.

Because there is no intelligence behind AI.

There is no there there.

If there were actual intelligence, you could feed the AI school textbooks in order and it would learn the material and understand the material and be able to read and write and understand and all that.

It would not need to scan hundreds of thousands of articles and books and whatnot to be functionally literate.

But there is no intelligence there.  Machine "learning" may be a form of training, but the machine never actually learns anything.  It may be trained to perform a function, but it did not learn.  It does not understand.  It may mimic learning and it may mimic understanding but that does not mean it has accomplished either.

Which means AI companies should not use material that isn't public domain or hasn't been properly licensed from the copyright holder.

[Matthew]

Because there is no intelligence behind AI.

[...]

But there is no intelligence there.  Machine "learning" may be a form of training, but the machine never actually learns anything.  It may be trained to perform a function, but it did not learn.  It does not understand.  It may mimic learning and it may mimic understanding but that does not mean it has accomplished either.

They butchered the name for a buzzword. Any true learning is probably now lumped into Artificial General Intelligence, which is still science fiction, but has the same meaning we all originally assigned to AI.

Machine learning as a term may be coopted by AI soon, but it has a distinct meaning now as well. It was mostly about designing algorithms using statistics. A simplified version is that a Reinforcement Learning model (a category of ML) is given a series of actions it can perform, and is given a score based on the results the actions. You run hundreds, thousands, etc. of these. For example, you may give it a Mario game and ask it to maximize points or time to complete a level. So it can self-improve. But it's still dumb, so it's not really "learning" why a certain combination of buttons results in a certain score. In the way that the new "AI" operates, it's hard to fit it into these kinds of definitions.

[PJ Post]

Intelligence is not the same as sentience or self-determination. AI has no agency in terms of motivation or drive or desire.

According to google:

Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

So, yeah, technically AI is intelligent. It 'learns', just not like humans do.

I still find it easier to think about it as a sonic screwdriver capable of whatever the plot requires.

[TimothyEllis]

According to google:

Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

So, yeah, technically AI is intelligent. It 'learns', just not like humans do.

Not what I'm seeing.

The bots do what they are coded to do. Nothing more, nothing less.

Intelligence in bots requires going beyond the code. There is no sign of that yet. Just marketing tricks to fool people. It's just code.

And by that definition, the majority of humans are NOT intelligent.

[Lorri Moulton]

Google: 1. the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.
                 a person or being with the ability to acquire and apply knowledge.

            2. the collection of information of military or political value.

Merriam-Webster: 1 a (1): the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations: reason  also : the skilled use of reason   (2): the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (such as tests)

Wikipedia dives even deeper and includes Artificial Intelligence along with the other definitions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence