Will AI compete with writers in the future?

[big_foot]

Artificial intelligence generated blogs/short stories are making news headlines. I tried reading a few, it doesn't look that great, yet!
Amateur writers, blog posters, literary enthusiasts of this sub: what do you think? Will the machines outdo humans in generating stories? Can art be predictably created?

Will literature (of any kind) be the sole dominion of our species?

PS: This discussion is not to offend any writers, I'm genuinely interested to what others think of the future of writing...

[Aglaea]

I recently saw a discussion on Reddit and people were speculating some books out there (romance) are the product of an AI, in part of in full. I don't remember specific books though and there's no actual proof (I don't think). I have seen mentions of people using them to help write fiction. Probably occurs more than we think!

Google this for the article - How Kindle novelists are using ChatGPT for the whole thing

Here's part -
Interviewing - Jennifer Lepp, who writes in the cozy paranormal mystery subgenre under the pen name Leanne Leeds

You and a few other independent authors were early adopters of these tools. With ChatGPT, it feels like a lot of other people are suddenly grappling with the same questions you were confronting. What’s that been like?

I definitely am still grappling, and I think I’m grappling a little bit more publicly. For the most part, people before had kind of rolled their eyes — I don’t think they understood what people were using AI for. ChatGP3 exploded that. Every group, every private, behind-the-scenes author group I’m in, there’s some kind of discussion going on.

Right now, everybody’s talking about using it on the peripherals. But there seems to be this moral chasm between: “It does blurbs really well, and I hate doing blurbs, and I have to pay somebody to do blurbs, and blurbs isn’t writing, so I’m going to use it for blurbs.” Or “Well, I’m going to have it help me tighten up my plot because I hate plotting, but it plots really well, so I’m going to use it for that.” Or “Did you know that if you tell it to proofread, it’ll make sure that it’s grammatically correct?’

Everybody gets closer and closer to using it to write their stuff, and then they stop, and everybody seems to feel like they have to announce when they’re talking about this: “But I do not ever use it its words to write my books.”

And I do. It doesn’t drive my plot. It doesn’t generally drive any of the ideas in my books. It doesn’t create characters. But the actual words, just to get them down faster and get it out, I do. So I’ve found myself in the past couple of weeks wondering, do I engage in this debate? Do I say anything? For the most part, I’ve said nothing.

What do you think the line is that people are drawing?

It’s a concern of plagiarism. Everybody knows that they crawled stuff with permission and without permission.

And there’s an ethical question. I can go in and — right now, I’m listening to Jim Butcher’s audiobooks. I love his tone. I love the deadpan snark. So I went into the AI when I was thinking about trying to get something like that with a character and said, “Rewrite it in the style of Jim Butcher.” Bam! The same kind of deadpan, urban fantasy phrasing...

Have you incorporated ChatGPT into your work?

Right now, I use it for titles and plots — specifically mystery plots. And blurbs.

I basically started out by just telling it who I am and what I need. “I am writing a paranormal mystery that takes place in the small town of Table Rock, Texas. It has a female amateur sleuth. This is her name. I need a murder victim. I need how they were killed. I need four murder suspects with information about why they’re suspected and how they are cleared. And then tell me who the guilty killer is.”

And it will do just that. It will spit that out.

What are some of the things that it’s given you?

Right now, I have [plots for] books two, three, four, five, six, and seven, and all of those murder mysteries were ChatGPT-generated, though I edited some of them. The impressive thing about it is that if I tell it that it’s a cozy mystery and I tell it that it needs to be humorous, it seems to understand what I’m asking for. The names that it gives me for the suspects are cutesy. The reasons behind it are never gory or serious.

Interesting...I am not sure if this is a good thing or not. On one hand, you can say if it helps an author, they can create more works and then people can enjoy them. On the other, many will see it as a form of cheating.

I think the bigger issue is if the AI is actually writing chapters, scenes, etc. Titles, blurbs not that big of a deal IMO. As in the author did 99.9% of the work and just needed help on title and blurb.

But it does raise concerns over plagiarism...in that these AIs do gather from tons of sources and you might unknowingly be copying something and get in legal issues.

Though on the other hand, most ideas are not new or unique. Tons of romances are based off Cinderella, even if it's not a straight retell. It's the same plot concept and everything though. So general things like that might be okay.

I just think the whole AI thing will become a bigger issue in the future, not just for fiction and writers but other aspects of life - and it might not be for the better.

[sherlynn]

I think it is a bad idea all around. Writing is an artform in itself. I know that I just can't sit down and write a book so I don't do it. I have other talents. If authors want me to read their works, then they should be the ones writing them, not some AI. If I found out that one of my favorite authors was using this AI, then I would definitely not read them anymore.