THE WRITING ASYLUM

The war between AI and writers has begun. So buckle up, we’re in for an interesting ride.

OpenAI, famous for ChatGPT, is being sued by writers claiming that the AI giant trained their language models on their work without consent. In other words, AI companies stole their precious. Now writers are pissed. 

First, the pirates steal and distribute ebooks, and then AI steals from the pirates. Somebody is going to need an eye patch when this is all said and done. 

Copyright and AI

Copyright is already a sticky mess — who creates the AI-assisted work, the machine or the human? What’s the magic ratio? AI images are currently considered public domain because the machine is the artist, and human prompting is irrelevant. US copyright states only humans can hold the copyright. However, copyright laws vary from country to country, yet the internet is global. Oh, my head hurts. 

Writers suing OpenAI for the use of their copyright material for training AI language models adds another layer to an already complicated issue. Artists have been fighting a similar battle with the use of their copyright-protected images. If writers win this lawsuit against OpenAI, what does it mean for all the cheaters writers who have been using AI to write their chapters and whatnot for them? 

So many damn AI questions

How safe are we as writers if we publish AI-written material? At the moment, it’s the Wild West. Ride that pony. But cowboys can only dodge bullets for so long. I’m not a lawyer, but I’d be shocked to see any writer go to jail for publishing during these wild times. I predict a handful of different outcome options.

1. Careers are damaged because the public turns on AI and readers want a human mind
2. AI-collaborated books and posts are withdrawn from publication due to copyright infringements
3. AI-written work falls into the public domain realm like AI-generated images. This means the writer owns jack shit of their work.
4. The meaning of copyright changes into something new. Perhaps transparency will become the law and machine-human ratios will be put in place. An argument can be made that human creativity is driving the machine via prompting. 

The danger of using AI as a writer

For the most part, I view AI as a tool. Writers still need to put in the work for a polished, coherent story with subtext and a clever plot. Trust me, I’ve played (read here and here). AI is great for brainstorming and writing summaries. You know, the shit jobs. It’s worth noting, ideas are not copyright material. 

Sudowrite, an app specialising in AI novel writing, can take a story premise and with writer input expand the story idea, create a story outline and write chapters. It’s nothing short of amazing and a different way of story writing. Human involvement can be minimal or it can be major. As a writer, it’s safe to work with the machine to spit up an outline because an outline is a detailed idea, not the selling product. But prompting Sudowrite to write the prose… Prose writing is copyright material and a selling product. Where do the words come from?

Sudowrite is powered by ChatGPT… Oh No!

If OpenAI goes under for violating copyright material, what happens to all the novels the AI wrote? Will they be considered pirated? Take a collage, for example. To copyright a collage, the creator needs to obtain the copyright for every image used, even though it’s essentially a new piece of art. Is AI writing a collage of words? Does AI steal paragraphs? They say no. And tech companies never lie. They would never steal your data. Jeez, I’m choking on my sarcasm.

Takeaway

If tech stayed frozen where it is, fantastic, I don’t think writers have much to worry about; the machines aren’t human, and the problems we have will work themselves out. The courts and laws will amend copyright and the murky waters will clear. Maybe writers will be compensated like artists. AI companies are paying Getty (and others) for the use of photographs now. Maybe there is a solution for writers — my brain is blank. 

AI is a steam-powered engine. Advancements will not slow down and the language models will only get better and better as they harvest more words from the internet and beyond. Where does that leave writers who slave away at their craft? These language models can mimic a writer’s style and offer similar a plot. The bootlegs will become as good as the original. 

AI writing is some kind of magic, but do you want to risk your novel baby when copyright is sailing in pirate waters?

~*~

Are you team AI or team Writer? Or team just don’t give a shit?

Other posts featuring Tannille’s musings on AI and writing found here and here.