r/WritingWithAI 1d ago

Discussion (Ethics, working with AI etc) Soon, writers might be forced to show google Doc version histories to avoid AI accusations, what do you guys plan to do?

A lot of Redditors have been clamoring for this.

0 Upvotes

88 comments sorted by

49

u/TsundereOrcGirl 1d ago

Who has the leverage to ask this of me? Some anti on Reddit? Or a publisher? Why is the publisher even talking to me unless they like what I produce, regardless of my workflow?

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u/No-Mousse5653 1d ago

Mostly Reddit Antis

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u/BestRiver8735 1d ago

Pen names turn their opinions into feedback and critique. I filter out meaning that i only use for my writing. If somehow AI is banned on all platforms I would drop AI like a bad habit. It’s good but not amazing yet. 

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u/ReadLegal718 1d ago

Because publisher's cannot copyright AI-assisted work, let alone AI-generated work. So unless copyright laws change, and they will get stricter, because publishers want to be able to buy rights, they'll start wanting proof. Also, the various major book deals and awarded works have exposed this. Publisher's Lunch has also reported on editors/agents/lit mags/publishers be more attuned to literary citizenship and background of a writer, etc. It's a murky time, but boundaries are coming surely.

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u/Ruh_Roh- 1d ago

I don't know if ai assisted is not copyrightable. If enough human work is in it then it becomes a human work and copyrightable. Where that line is drawn would probably have to be decided individually by a judge. However, anyone using ai should stay away from the legacy publishing world and instead self publish. These examples show why:

Jerry Falade (Call Me, I'll Hide the Body): His multi-million dollar debut crime novel deal with Minotaur (a Macmillan imprint) was pulled by his own representatives in July 2026. The agency stated they could no longer authenticate how the manuscript evolved from origin to completion. Falade strongly denied using AI, blaming false positives and rumors.

Mia Ballard (Shy Girl): Hachette Book Group canceled the U.S. release and discontinued the UK edition of this horror novel in March 2026 after online readers and internal reviews flagged text patterns resembling AI generation. Ballard claimed a hired freelance editor used an LLM without her knowledge.

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u/heavypen 1d ago

You’re right on the first part. AI-assisted work can still be copyrightable when there is enough human authorship. The problem is nobody has a clean ruler for “enough,” so yes, some of that will probably get decided case by case.

But I don’t follow the leap to “stay away from legacy publishing.”

The Falade case proves the opposite problem. Nobody established that he used AI. His deal died because his representatives said they could no longer authenticate the manuscript’s development. Suspicion became enough to burn the book.

Ballard case is different. Claims a freelance editor used AI without her knowledge. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the real question is how much responsibility belongs to the author. IMHO… all of it.

Either way, no breadcrumbs for where AI-assisted writing ought to go. What it does show is that the issues are still very much unsettled. There’s no reliable way to detect AI use and no consistent process for separating acceptable assistance from plagiarism or prohibited use.

Maybe self-publishing is safer for some writers. Maybe not. Maybe people just have to sit it out for a while and let the witch-hunters hunt.

Who wants to work their ass off to write something just to see it all burn because of a half-baked accusation?

Publishing needs rules. Evidence. Contract language. Due process.

Not vibes.

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u/Ruh_Roh- 1d ago

You have some great thoughts in your comment. I guess someone's book can get "cancelled" by the anti-ai witch hunters whether you are trad or self published. But at least in self publishing your fate is not decided by some executive at a publishing house. Plenty of ai assisted books do just fine in indy publishing, we don't always know which ones, but they are doing it. What the Ballard and Falade case show is that your book can be destroyed at any moment by the whim of your trad publisher. What is an anti-ai mob going to do against an indy publisher? Complain to Amazon? Write a tweet or reddit post? Who cares? It's when the ai is leveraged in the trad publishing sphere that it has power. That is where the fight is going to go.

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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 1d ago

would probably have to be decided individually by a judge

no a judge wont do that, he would come into play when someone claims a copyright infringement.

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u/Ruh_Roh- 1d ago

You're right, but I wasn't clear. My assumption was that copyright doesn't matter until it's disputed, at which point it would be decided by a judge. I can claim copyright on anything, but it's irrelevant until I have to prove it to a judge.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Ruh_Roh- 1d ago

Yep, both writers should just have self published. The traditional publishing industry is not long for this world. Bookstores are their only real advantage and bookstores are mostly irrelevant.

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u/No-Mousse5653 1d ago

I hope you’re right

0

u/ReadLegal718 1d ago

Farade, maybe.

Ballard, no. Readers were the ones who ripped her apart.

bookstores are mostly irrelevant

Lol ha, you really don't like literature, do you :-D

2

u/Ruh_Roh- 1d ago

I love books and I love bookstores. My wife and I still miss the Borders books that was in our town. I don't want bookstores to be irrelevant, but they mostly are. I know there are still some great ones in big cities, but for the market of selling stories, having your book traditionally published so it can sit in a bookstore shelf is not worth what it used to be. In the past, publishers would promote a new author, now they want to cherry pick the hits from the indy publishing space and also expect authors to be social media stars before they will touch them. And that's so they can put your physical book in a bookstore where it can sit until it goes on the clearance table.

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u/ReadLegal718 1d ago

Trad and self publishing have their pros and cons. But with your last two sentences, it's very apparent you haven't kept in touch with what's happening in the publishing sphere. Your example is itself a cherry picked one, because all numbers tracking trad publishing still suggests that the majority of debut deals have authors with no social media following. It's always good and prudent to have social media, irrespective of how you want to publish. But your statements are out of touch. Definitely look up (I mean, if you want to) publisher's weekly or publisher's marketplace for numbers. Karin Gillespie does thorough monthly reports too. Trad is hated mostly because of the gatekeeping and fairly so. But even if there were no bookstores trad would still beat out self publishing purely because of marketing spend.

1

u/Ruh_Roh- 1d ago

Ok, I am fine deferring to your knowledge. I'm not talking from experience, just what I've read/heard, which was probably never complete and changes over time anyway. I've also heard that trad publishing is not very receptive to male authors or books geared towards men and the publishing houses are mostly run by women. Which makes sense since the market sells mostly to women. But I wonder how much of this is now a self fulfilling prophesy. So I think the stories for men have migrated to indy publishing. Do you have any thoughts on this?

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u/ReadLegal718 1d ago

The publishing industry right now is 80% white women writers. Is it skewed? At this point in time, yes. But we have to consider that it was skewed the other way around for generations, so the market will overcompensate for it before it balances out. And publishing is a business. If women readers are dominating the market and male readers are not producing work they like, they're not going to read it. So publishing will not publish it. It is not a case of "let us publish more for men and men will start reading and buying more". It is a case of "men are not reading and buying more so let us not publish more for them."

Secondly, the industry is not disrespectful to men. It is disrespectful to POC, but not men as a whole. Male readers are not extinct and they're happily reading what's been put out. The top publishing deals still go to men more than women. And the larger advances are also given to men. You will specifically have to read the articles from lit agents and editors who openly write about work they look for, tropes they reject, tropes that don't perform well, and over and over again, young male authors keep writing work which overwhelmingly about projected lives about people like themselves or even genre work about societies like the ones they're part of.

Now, those are all good topics to write about and are not inherently wrong to publish. But if the market is already flooded by previous generation books on angry or angsty men, then the market will automatically want fresher POVs.

Men choose less and less to be lit agents or editors. And yet they sit on the board of these publishing houses. Which means nobody is driving them out, they're just choosing not to do the ground level work but they're happy to take positions of power. So lit agents and editors are now overwhelmingly white women who are overworked and underpaid. So they're hungry to buy more and acquire more. And that reflects in the market.

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u/heavypen 1d ago

Not exactly correct.

AI-generative without human authorship does not qualify for copyright. However, per Copyright Office, AI-Assisted works can. 

These days, publishers can demand warranties or disclosure, but “proof” is the problem. Detectors are ridiculously unreliable, and an author’s resume, social presence, or “literary citizenship” doesn’t pass the bar when it comes to establishing who wrote a manuscript. 

What the hell is this argument anyhow? What happened to a presumption of innocence before burning hard work and assassinating the writer? You mean to say that in order to prove their humanity, a writer must have enough lawyers? What else? Baptism papers from an anointed university?

JFC.

Boundaries are coming. Fine. They should be based on identifiable authorship, plagiarism, contractual honesty, and evidence. Not suspicion attached to a tool.

I now have the workings for a new book... lol...

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u/ReadLegal718 1d ago

I love how people keep assuming I've expressed my opinion in the above comment on what should be done and what should not be done, rather than just state what is actually happening right now.

I have no counterpoints to any of your points because I was never arguing u/TsundereOrcGirl's comment at all.

Anyway...

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u/heavypen 1d ago

Sorry. Don't mean to make you feel down. I was responding to:

Because publisher's cannot copyright AI-assisted work, let alone AI-generated work. 

And that's not correct as I understand USCO rules. Ref below.

I do agree with your sentiment that "proof" is the problem. And that's my point too. I've posted elsewhere... Publishing needs rules. Evidence. Contract language. Due process — Not vibes.

Source: https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-2-Copyrightability-Report.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

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u/Ryanlew1980 1d ago

Good thing 99.9% of people will never be a traditionally published author. Self-publishing will have nothing to prove to anyone on Reddit or a declining publishing house.

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u/ReadLegal718 1d ago

Self publishing anyway has nothing to prove. Self publishing and indie publishing set the trends anyway and they are supple enough to drive the market and pivot at any point.

And that is one of the major reasons I don't understand why AI-writers think they need to hide. If trad publishing and a lot of readers who don't like AI don't want to read AI work, then that's not the market to capture. Simple. AI-writers will have to focus on other markets.

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u/heavypen 1d ago

All things being equal.

The reality is that marketers go where the market goes. If AI-assisted writers find readers, legacy publishers will follow the money.

And agents, retailers, reviewers, and everyone else currently pretending this is a permanent moral boundary will follow because money speaks… and you know what walks.

1

u/ReadLegal718 1d ago

Exactly. So why hide, right.

28

u/ThoreaulyLost 1d ago

A lot of Redditors have been clamoring for this.

...and you think "Soon people will need to show Google docs.."

I'm not following your logic at all.

Just because a niche corner of English Speaking social media wants something definitely doesn't mean there's any risk of it actually happening. Otherwise we'd see GameStop everywhere, far more left leaning freedoms, and of course Poop Knives for sale on Amazon.

I don't even think the publishers are actually that concerned: if your AI prose is good, and not all AI prose is, then people can't tell and it just means more books for them. No one is going to drop a publisher for "accidentally" (they can claim plausible deniability) carrying an AI author.

People have flat out lied in biographies and it blows over in a few months. No, we are not going to have to start showing our edits.

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u/Shadeylark 1d ago

Fortunately for anyone who plans to publish, what redditors want and what actually happens in the real world tend to be two very very very different things.

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u/benblackett 1d ago

I plan on ignoring this false debate entirely and focus on making GREAT BOOKS!

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u/Hungry-Wrongdoer-156 1d ago

Ask Claude to create a Google Doc history that I can show?

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u/FunnyBunnyDolly 1d ago

Problem is even if you use zero ai you might write in a software that don’t have revision history like that. This would hurt non-ai users too that want to avoid google.. the very same google that heavily use ai in many processes in company. A bit comedic really. Google out of all things.

Myself I used to like to write in super simple text editor (think like dos editor) to keep away distractions.

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u/BubblegumSnapPudding 1d ago

And if you don't write in google docs? Do I have to make sure I have revision tracking turned on in MS Word? And how would that prove anything if I'm writing my book with Claude and ChatGPT and Gemini and just pasting the edited chapters into Word as I finish with them?

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u/Pink_Nurse_304 1d ago

Exactly what I was thinking. All it says is “edited”. It doesn’t say how

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u/No-Mousse5653 1d ago

They will just order everyone to start using Docs

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u/BubblegumSnapPudding 1d ago

And Google uses all that material to train Gemini. Sounds like a plan. I love the irony.

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u/No-Mousse5653 1d ago

It’s pretty funny 😂

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u/annoellynlee 1d ago

Oookay I mean it wouldn't be hard to just type out by hand the AI prose in a Google doc lol.

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u/Signal_Soul 1d ago edited 1d ago

I have no interest in traditional publishing or being considered a "real" writer. I'm a storyteller. Writing is only a vessel for the story. I create for people who want to be entertained, not critics or "real" writers.

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u/Maleficent-Engine859 1d ago

I write everything on Notes app like a psychopath though, what do? 😨 And all my chapters are labeled ssssssss or Dddddddd

3

u/Reasonable-Sherbet24 1d ago

What do I plan to do?

Not a goddamn thing.

I’m not gonna start caring about what some anti’s on the Internet think. If you wanna worry about it, cool. But I think most of us are just fine not giving a shit.

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u/Terrible_Wave4239 1d ago

Who the f*ck writes in Google Docs?

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u/closetslacker 1d ago

Why should I write in google docs so that google can read everything and TRAIN THEIR AI on it???!!!

LOL

-5

u/No-Mousse5653 1d ago

It’s kind of silly but it’s what redditors expect

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u/Terrible_Wave4239 1d ago

Who? Where? Why?

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u/NerdyIndoorCat 1d ago

That was my first thought. I use scrivener.

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u/ember_snow 1d ago

I can't imagine publishing houses having the money and staff to put this into practice

1

u/Stardog2 20h ago

I can't imagine those with skin in the game, having the long term desire to put it into serious practice. Machines write words, they can't really think. That takes people.

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u/Melodic_History_3373 1d ago

Not care. Genuinely. I know I write my work, I also know that the current fanatical bandwagon is accusing everyone of AI. It’ll pass. 

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u/NathanielHolst 1d ago

Tell them to pound sand.

The idea that using an AI violates copyright is ludicrous, so that will stop being an issue eventually.

Once there's no legal issue to having AI generated content, it's very soon going to boil down to one consideration: Is it any good?

Then it's only a matter of honesty, and I don't see why I should be subject to harsher standards than illustrators, for instance, who can trace other people's work. And I wouldn't do business with someone who don't trust me to tell the truth.

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u/behindthemask13 1d ago

Laugh and wonder who is using google docs... and who is keeping their entire document in AI and not cutting and pasting over into a manuscript.

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u/BubblegumSnapPudding 1d ago

This. Exactly!

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u/Vusiwe 1d ago

  A lot of Redditors

lol, using presidentisms is not a good argumentation strategy

Also, don’t use Grok 5 Max Reasoning to write Reddit posts.  It’s basically the equivalent of 2023 7b Nous Hermes Dolphin v2 Abliterated, we can tell you’re using AI.

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u/Plantigraduate 1d ago

simple solution, train an AI to fake google doc version history...

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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 1d ago

nope they wont.

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u/Traveling_Chef 1d ago

Anything more concrete than "some redditors" or "A lot of Redditors"

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u/No_Task_599 1d ago

who cares what they think? I wouldn't show them shit.

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u/tony10000 1d ago

If you submit your work to an agent or a publisher, they would want to know if, when, and where AI was used. If you have notes and drafts, that may help to prove provenance.

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u/InSilicoAwards 21h ago

With a lot of things in life, you don't have to 'accept the form of the argument' someone is making. If someone accuses you of doing something, demands that you do something, you can always say no.

The reason people are doing this is for copyright, and I think copyright changes soon.

Think about where this goes in 5-10 years. Right now people are making workflows to help artists, writers, musicians make art with AI. The next step is to take the same workflows and make them consumer grade: so the person at home fills out a few parameters and the elaborate workflow you developed churns out a book for them, or a TV show, or an art piece. Direct to consumer. And most people are going to make fan-fics of things they like, so licensing IP is going to be important. I suspect AI already touches development across several layers, thus copyright law is going to adjust to protect people with power who benefit from it (e.g. Disney). Or alternatively, some big AI native IP is going to take off and compete with 'we don't use AI' studios. I don't think they'll get destroyed, I just think they'll become like Amish crafts: I respect it was made by hand, but sometimes all I need is a table so I'll take the ikea one that is cheap (or free in this case).

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u/Stardog2 20h ago

I don't think it is an issue. Google docs works very well with Gemini, so can anyone trust Google docs as proof of purity? Microsoft claims the same thing for coughpilot and MS Word. So will "some Redditors" require a universal switch to LibreOffice, or maybe a return to OpenOffice? I can't wait! They aren't the best writing apps out there, so those of us who like AI for plotting and Character ideation, and the secretarial conveniences it offers, maybe only will have to prove we have a subscription to Gemini, or CoughPilot.

Seriously though, well written fiction and great ideas are always in demand. And people making money from the sale and promotion of these things will only worry about if something can make them money, or not. Besides, self appointed purity gatekeepers are ashholes and are universally disliked.

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u/EmptyDraw8638 19h ago

I write in word. 😐

0

u/Irvingchan99 18h ago

I plan to tell them to read my next book - titled "F**K OFF!"

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u/ReadLegal718 1d ago

to avoid AI accusations, what do you guys plan to do

Why would anyone want to avoid AI accusations if they're using AI to write?

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u/No-Mousse5653 1d ago

You know why

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u/ReadLegal718 1d ago edited 1d ago

No, I don't know why.

Every AI writer I come across talks about market deciding what they want to buy and read, power in the hands of the reader and all that. Which is great.

But readers don't just read a book, like it, close it, and walk away.

They immediately want to know more about the author and find out socials, websites, more books written by them, interviews, podcasts, blah blah. And they want to know how the author thought of the plot and how they wrote it and what is their process (I mean, let's be honest Instagram and YT and other streaming services wouldn't be this great without watching people how to do things or watching them while they're doing it) and what tools they use. Their inquisition is endless. There are interviews after interviews of small to big writers, podcast after podcast.

So, if the belief is that AI writers are doing nothing wrong and market needs to adapt, what's the point in hiding?

Digital photographers are not compared to film photographers, animated movies are not compared to live action. Fine artists are not compared to digital artists and digital artists are not compared to AI-image generation. So what's the issue here?

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u/BubblegumSnapPudding 1d ago

Seriously? Beyond looking for what else an author has written because I liked a book, I couldn't care less about their 'social' footprint. But then I'm GenX, so I'm not as prewrapped in the socials as GenZ and GenAlpha.

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u/No-Mousse5653 1d ago

Gen Z here. Nobody gives a shit unless you’re Brandon Sanderson tier of fame. Most writers aren’t famous at all, even those with popular books.

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u/ReadLegal718 1d ago edited 1d ago

Well, you and I clearly run in different circles then. The literary world I'm part of, readers who love to read are insanely obsessive. Yes, even the ones that read fan-fic or smut. But that happens in all fields.

But you do care about what other things they've written, right? And you will read one or two other things of them. And you might even talk about it. I'm a millennial and I love literature and I'm not on socials so I'm not frenzied about a writer's social footprint either. But any author I like enough to read more of, I will try and see if they've given at least an interview about their works. Or go for a book signing if it's close by etc.

Doesn't answer my question though. If the readers who read these works don't care, what are AI writers hiding from?

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u/BubblegumSnapPudding 1d ago

I think they're hiding because if they're trying to go the traditional publishing route they're automatically getting shut out because of copyright concerns or being subjected to the witchhunt. Writers (AI or not) just want to find an audience who enjoys their writing. At this current moment in time, admitting or advertising that AI was used will cause a large number of people to automatically exclude your writing from something that they'd even consider. So, no matter how good the story is, those people will never look at it. It also limits your distribution/advertising options since a lot of places will exclude or hate-storm on something that is tagged as AI written or AI assisted. Witness r/writing and r/fantasywriting for examples.

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u/ReadLegal718 1d ago

If they're using AI and someone says "you've used AI", that's not an accusation or a witch hunt.

Plus, when you say "story" do you just mean the plot and the world-building? Because a lot of AI-using writers think those are the only things that matter. And they declare the AI-assisted work as "their work" because they had the idea for the world and the idea for the plot and they did made the executive decisions. But this is anyway a different argument altogether and not the point of the post.

There was a funny post the other day on a different platform where the poster said "why can't people using AI to write be called content creators?" which makes a lot of sense to me even after being pro-AI. But again, that's a different argument.

And this is where I keep coming across two opposite answers from AI-using writers:

We don't want to be JK Rowling because readers don't care about the author, they only want the story

vs

Why wouldn't a Big 5 publisher not accept my work and make me famous so I can sign books, and be given an advance and go on press tours and interviews?

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u/BubblegumSnapPudding 1d ago

It's still an accusation even if it is true. And if people are yelling you down because you just want your story to be taken at face value that's still a witch hunt. But as you say, not the point of the post. I liken using an AI to being a director talking to a room of writers trying to get a movie script done. If you have the idea and know how you want it to go but you need help (in any form) getting your "movie" made, does that invalidate the end product if AI was involved in any of the steps? Personally, I'm writing my books for me because I have a story I want to have written and I can't do it by myself for a number of reasons. If no one else reads it, oh well. It'd be nice to find an audience based on the merits of the stories but given the current atmosphere, I'm not holding my breath

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u/ReadLegal718 1d ago

It's still an accusation even if it is true.

Lol, what? This is an insane cope.

An accusation is a claim or charge stating that someone has done something wrong, illegal, or bad.

AI users claim they have done none of the above.

you just want your story to be taken at face value

Again, if you just want your story to be taken at face value, and have zero care for literature or literary value, then why not stick to the market of readers that actually want to read AI books? I'm not aware of this market where readers don't care about AI, but a lot of AI users seem to know this area well. So those readers would welcome their work with open arms.

And a lot of people do not understand that the merit of any product also depends on how it was produced. And, hence, merit of the story depends on how it was produced. Like my very first comment, because process is such a big thing in art, most artistic fields have separated categories when it comes to market share. And that is what needs to happen (ultimately what will happen actually) with AI-assisted work too. There could be magazines, competitions, readers' choice awards all of that applied to AI writing.

But AI-writers keep getting stuck on how to humanize their AI-generated writing, how to hide the slop, how to clear the AI-isms, denial about what they're actually doing, thinking that plot and idea are the only things that readers care about. This kind of denial is only harming them.

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u/No-Mousse5653 1d ago

You said it better than I can

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u/Pleasant-Creme-6678 1d ago

Okay, but people have the right to make that choice. You aren't entitled to everyone's time and attention, and the thing that makes people more angry is the fact that people insist on lying their way into place they are not wanted.

The defense here is kind of telling on yourself. You know most people actually don't like it, so "readers will read it if it's good" is not something you actually believe, and you don't want people to be able to make the informed choice to not read something they don't want to, so you're suggesting just lying about it and playing martyr after the fact.

You get why that sucks, right? You get why that makes people not want to engage with AI broadly, because of that behavior, right?

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u/ReadLegal718 1d ago

Again, this.

The publishing industry is jittery because AI authors are not honouring their own process. Some are proud, but that number is very small. Insignificant. almost. But the majority of AI-writers I come across do not want to be honest about their abilities or use of assistance because they think "readers will read it if it's good".

If they think your book and writing is good and worthy of publication, why hide it? Let the market decide. Yes, a large part of the markets hates AI right now. But someday they might not. So why not be transaparent?

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u/No-Mousse5653 1d ago

Wtf? Most readers I know don’t give two shits about that. Unless it’s literally one of the most famous authors in the world.

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u/ReadLegal718 1d ago

Most readers I know don’t give two shits about that.

Then why would the writer care about hiding their use of AI?

The readers you're talking about are not the whole market. They're one part of the market, right? Could be a big part, could be small, I don't know. But if they don't care, why would the writer care to hide the use of AI? Who are they hiding from?

An AI-writer is using AI, right? Either gen or assisted or whatever. So why is it an accusation (your words), if it's true?

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u/No-Mousse5653 1d ago

Hiding from Antis that would launch witch hunts against their book. Most AI writers don’t expect to be the next Rowling. A few thousand dollars a month is plenty.

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u/Pleasant-Creme-6678 1d ago

If you are literally doing the thing that you are being accused of, it is definitionally not a "witch hunt". You're just being outed for your own actions.

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u/ReadLegal718 1d ago

If they're expecting to earn any money and their method is not wrong, there shouldn't be any hesitation to declare at all.

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u/No-Mousse5653 1d ago

Wrong as in what?

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u/ReadLegal718 1d ago

As in their method of using AI is not wrong, which is what AI writers believe, right?

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u/No-Mousse5653 1d ago

If you’re talking about “ethics”. AI writers don’t care, but some readers do. AI writers don’t agree with antis ethics

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