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The spelling checker and grammar checker in most higher-end word processing programs are “AI” in the barest and crudest sense of the phrase. They can help you produce better writing—and they can also foul things up exponentially. Even in translation, AI is at best an imperfect crutch, and can produce some real dumpster-fire-funny results. In athletic competition or exhibition, performance-enhancing drugs and robots are banned, because we don’t want to see “fakery.” Likewise in non-athletic competition, marked card decks, chess computers, and the like are also banned. In the creative arts it should be no different. AI is to me no more and no less than the “automated attendant” provided by companies trying to avoid providing good goods and serviceable services even after you’ve already paid for them.

Eventually we’ll have fifty shades of AI. For those that want to use a small snippet for their stories, I’d suggest we have the author mark it out, treating it like any other quotation/excerpt, not to exceed up to, say 10% of content? And if we get a fully sentient self-aware AI, doubt the posting rules here will matter, we’ll be adopted out to responsible AI overlords. Based on the GoT HBO series, doubt AI could make the ending any worse…

I think there’s an enormous difference between using AI in the background to help you flesh out a setting or character, and using AI to actually write content. The nature of AI, as most of us non-coders will experience it, is a commercial program that uses the Internet to source its output. AI is not capable (at least not yet) of thinking creatively. It responds to a series of parameters, and it isn’t concerned with where it gets its response as much as with the level of conformity to the parameters. Eight million years ago, before we all had an inkling that the Internet would exist and when we still typed on manual typewriters, in a freshman writing class, we were asked to write an essay. The professor had made a point of mentioning a book he wrote (several times) in the course of the discussion on what we were expected to write. So, I went to the library and took out his book, read it, and wrote my essay in his voice. I used the same sentence compositions, vocabulary, and style of presentation. I did not use any of his actual writing, merely copied his style of writing. And as a result, I got an A+ for the semester, and was recommended to work on the school paper in lieu of having to take his class. Had I been an AI, i would most likely have included actual sentences or sentence fragments cribbed from his book, but as a human, I knew better. Do I think AI could finish GRR’s book? Absolutely not. AI isn’t capable of the human touch. It doesn’t understand emotions, or even physicality. It’s not a “real” writer despite its alleged sophistication. It’s a good tool if used in the background, but not more than that.

I’m on the fence, with the thought we should stick to what we have, that the uploading member asserts that it’s a product of their authorship, their creativity, simply because there will be levels of “AI assistance” that’s between zero and full writing. For instance, when I’m creating a character, I will typically use random generators to assist as I’m terrible with blank sheets of paper. So having a modest list of random names, traits, hobbies, etc to choose between helps me focus, helps me define that character faster. Is that AI assistance? Spelling & grammar checkers are getting better, incorporating AI into them, and SUGGESTING improvements that’d be AI-based. I can also see AI creeping into developmental, copy, & line editing, helping the human write their book better. How about AI creating background material for stories? Like news paper articles, pictures, and the like? AI’s only as good as it’s training set of data. If I train an AI up on JKR’s works to help with my potter fanfic, well, I’m already infringing her copyright on Harry Potter by writing a potter fanfic, what’s a little extra AI assistance? Similarly, if I train an AI up on my existing original works, there’s no copyright issue if I leverage that to write more of my stories, faster. What if AI’s the only way for G.R.R to finish his book? (Or done posthumously.)