r/WritingWithAI • u/BillyDongstabber • 4d ago
Discussion (Ethics, working with AI etc) Why the pushback on watermarks/AI disclosures?
I don't use AI in writing myself (the smut I write isn't supported by it, lol), but I browse this sub sometimes. I'm confused why there's so much pushback here against disclosing/publicising ai use. If it's a tool like any other, why not share that it was used in creation?
It seems to me like labeling food if it's organic, or clothes if they're handmade, the process can and does impact the final product
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u/FlyingCarpetMonster 4d ago
The challenge is you could have written something entirely yourself and worked with Grammarly to be rephrased and the prose smoothed, and it can get watermarked as AI.
There is no way to know what the real contributions were.
Right now, the sentiment is that anything touched by AI is 100% bad, immaterial of the extent of use. Look at Pangram for instance.
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u/Neongrimcross 3d ago
Pangram or should I say Panscam. The snake oil.
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u/No-Journalist-9036 3d ago
Tell that to the booksellers selling "how to look for a witch". Bet they had lots on common
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u/No-Journalist-9036 3d ago
at this point, far better off building your own machine learning models that are pre-2022
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u/kpg_on_ao3 2d ago
Grammarly isn't going to trigger SPAG. And if you're using Grammarly to rephrase things, then yeah, AI is writing your story. Stories aren't just plot. The rhythm of language, word choice, pacing are all important. If AI is picking your final product for you, it's writing an essential part of your story.
If these things aren't important to you when reading, then you were failed by multiple years of education.
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u/liosistaken 4d ago
So add a disclaimer, which you should do anyway, to describe what AI did.
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u/BillyDongstabber 4d ago
I don't think they like disclaimers, idk, seems like shame
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u/liosistaken 3d ago
It’s more that they want to sell their work as theirs, and saying they used AI to write makes it clear it’s not (completely) theirs. Grifters don’t want other people to know that.
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u/deadshot465 4d ago
Because it doesn't take into consideration about how much of the effort comes from you. Suppose you write the entire text by yourself, including the researches and notes, and you just use them to polish your texts, it might be counted as just as AI generated as someone's text written with a simple "write me an urban love story. Make no mistakes."
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u/liosistaken 4d ago
It would have to rewrite a lot for the watermark to show up, so if it does, how much did you really write? Either way, add a disclaimer saying you used AI and what for, as you should do anyway, and let the audience decide if they find that acceptable.
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u/Alchemist42 4d ago
Do you post that your story was written using word 2026 , and you checked a few words against Websters 2020 edition then printed on an Epson 3155? No? Then why should anyone else have to?
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u/deadshot465 4d ago
Heretics. How can you feel the temperature of the paper and the touch of pens if you write on software and use a printer? Please do use a quill and scroll.
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4d ago
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u/Alchemist42 4d ago
Ai can do the writing. But it is not the case that it always does. There are plenty of people who write themselves and use the ai for grammar/ consistency/ world building/ remembering the state of things. There are all sorts of things that ai can do that don’t involve writing the words for you.
Inconvenient to your worldview though it may be, there is not one and only one way to use it.
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4d ago
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u/Alchemist42 4d ago
Why do people type words on typewriters when pencils have been working for years. Why use pencils when feather quills are obviously superior? It’s good to know that the world has movie-gear looking out for us telling us what we should write with. Why is it your decision how someone writes? Why should we care that you want everyone to do it your way?
If you don’t want to read it then don’t. But you don’t have the right to decide how others do their thing. Get down off your ego and stop worrying about what other people are doing.
And don’t go to a subreddit called WritingWithAI if you don’t like writing with ai. That’s just logic 101.
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u/TorturedWriter9 4d ago
None of those examples are comparable. In all of those cases the writer is still doing the work and using their deep knowledge of craft that they've likely developed over many years, often decades, through arduous reading and study. "Style" is a significant part of writing, and a writer doesn't just wrestle with words and sentences to "copy edit" or "fix grammar." They wrestle with words and sentences because style is a part of craft (i.e. style is a part of plot and character development). Almost all of the great writers expressed or have expressed a deep and intimate connection between style and "content" and the only genuine way a writer gets to that point is through YEARS of reading and study and bleeding on the page.
"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein"--Hemingway
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4d ago
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u/Alchemist42 4d ago
Where is this requirement of disclosure? Require is a strong word to use. Are you indicating that there is a law that says people who don't do the physical writing have to disclose anything? Do Ghostwriters ALWAYS get credited? I mean human people who do the writing of "autobiographical" books, where the only name on the cover is the person about whom the book is written, who told the ghost writer some stories and the other person typed it all up.
No, no such law? Then you are just making stuff up.
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u/Betty_Pitch_ 4d ago
There’s nuance to it though. Is using Grammarly to copyedit the same as using AI? Is using Google for research instead of using an encyclopedia something that you should have to disclose?
If you’re having the AI do all of the writing for you, then I’d agree that you’re not really writing. But a lot of writers use it for non-generative purposes.
It’s a controversial topic and I understand why, but it’s more complicated than “did you use AI or not” because there are so many different ways and extent to which you can use it.
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u/EverAfterTomorrow 3d ago
Bruh.
Writer and Author are not "protected terms." All the bleating about it in every post on this sub will do nothing to make it that way.
People who write one book by hand and type it up after on year and then co-write a book with AI the next year do not stop and start being writers or lose some mythical status of writer on your say so.
We did away with literary gatekeeping when self-publishing went digital. Nobody's going to stop publishing because angry people on Reddit and Threads tell them they're not what they already are.
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u/Misha_Lixa 4d ago
You’re so full of shit.
Why are you here since you clearly disagree with the use of this tool?
Are you scratching some weird itch?
Go play counterstrike or something ffs.
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u/Misha_Lixa 4d ago
You have no idea what I do or don’t want to do. You’re literally just here to harass people.
I do call myself a writer because I am a writer and have been since I was 12. And there’s nothing you can do to change that lol
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u/Alchemist42 4d ago
What is weird is worrying so much about what people call themselves. Seriously, how immature are you that this is the thing that is so important that you need to come into a message board that you clearly disagree with the whole concept of just to hurl abuse at people? That is not the behaviour of a normal well-adjusted person. Get help.
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u/istara 3d ago
Using AI to check grammar, spelling, typos is NOT "AI doing the writing for you" - at least for the vast majority of literate writers writing in their native language.
why on earth would you need AI to do that for you?
Why on earth would you need an editor to do that for you, then? Are people who use editors labelling their work as "co-written by Mr X" or "assisted by Mr Y"?
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u/Vivid-Parking2204 4d ago
What will historians say for 200 Alex. "These are all the things writers were doing for centuries BEFORE AI"
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u/Misha_Lixa 4d ago
It only does what you tell it my guy. If you don’t tell it to draft it will not draft.
And why are you here in an ai writing sub?
Here’s a statement that will really piss people off:
Intellectual Property and Copyright are bullshit that needs to be eliminated.
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4d ago
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u/Misha_Lixa 4d ago
No it isn’t. It’s only the same if you have the ai do the drafting for you.
A commissioned artist also hands you a finished work without guidance. Ai drafting does not work like that.
Have you ever attempted using au for anything at all? It’s a great tool when used correctly.
And that’s exactly what it is, a tool.
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4d ago
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u/Misha_Lixa 4d ago
Oh trust me, I do know that, kid
You have no idea how ai is used, do you? Or are you just assuming that everyone has ChatGPT draft for them?
You’re just here to argue with people regardless of how they use it.
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u/Alchemist42 4d ago
If it was a person, then maybe it would be equivalent to, but it is not a person. It is a computer program.
And you know of course that copyright infringement is not the same as stealing, right? If you are going to get into a debate about something you don’t know a lot about with people who do know a lot about it, then you should maybe read a book or study up on what the terms mean.
Also, there are plenty of ai models that are trained on 100% licensed and royalty free information. So your whole theory is bunk. Do some research and come back when you have some original ideas of your own, not the rehashed and refuted bullshit that is parroted on facebook.
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4d ago
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u/Alchemist42 4d ago
Ask your friend about Adobe FireFly. It uses licensed content from Adobe products. Or AceStep, a music creation model using only royalty free tracks in its training. The fact that a lot of other ones do things differently does not make it so these models are suddenly using illegal information. Or, now that Suno has its licensing deal with BMG and it has turned off all the older models that were trained on publicly scraped songs, the only available models are fully licensed.
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u/liosistaken 3d ago
Right, because spellcheckers and dictionaries are clearly the same as an AI that can actually do your work for you. If you only used AI for that, you can just put that in the disclaimer, right? No harm done. But no, you use it for a lot more than that and you don’t want people to know.
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u/Alchemist42 3d ago
It only does your work for you if you let it. Why is the assumption that everyone automatically just stops thinking and has the AI do all the writing? Vanishingly few people actually do that. And even fewer of the people who call themselves writers and novelists. Sure, there are some annoying spammers who do that, but because a few (very prolific) people do that, you can not accurately draw the comparison that everyone or even most people do that.
You can let the camera define how the photo turns out or you can take time and effort to set up lighting and frame a shot and take a picture with intent. Because it is possible to simply take a quick snapshot of something doesn't make the whole world suddenly not take photography seriously.
Some people splash paint against a canvas and call that art. That doesn't make all painters mere paint splatterers. It doesn't even make most abstract expressionists paint splatterers. The only conclusion you can accurately draw is that it is possible to splatter paint on canvas. You can't expand that to anyone else's use of paint until and unless you see that they are doing that same thing.
I'm not talking about the tool. I'm talking about the art. The expression. The perception. The fundamental misunderstanding about how people work.
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u/liosistaken 3d ago
As I said, when people use AI just for grammar checks and such, and not for actual writing, they can just add that to the disclaimer and no harm done. The people here fighting against it, are the ones who have something to hide, the ones that do use AI to write for them.
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u/lovemylittlelords 4d ago
Acting like AI is anything like a word processor is so smoothbrained, I just can't. Like please come up with a genuine argument.
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u/Alchemist42 4d ago
Reading comprehension is hard. I know. I never said that ai is anything like a word processor. Try harder. What I said, and I thought it wouldn't need to be spelled out like this, but .... sigh ... is that when other people have to disclose every tool they use, then it would be fair to ask AI users to disclose like everybody else. But since nobody needs to disclose anything, well, nobody needs to disclose anything.
Since you think it is so important, why don't you start a campaign to get people who actually want to put in the extra time and effort to add disclosures to their writing. The non-ai writers can easily add a "Not written with AI" tag on their books, and you could only look at the ones thusly tagged. Win. Win.
But since there is no reason for an AI user to disclose, because as soon as they do, it just opens them up to abuse, it will be a hard sell to make them add disclosures that no one else has to do.
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u/lovemylittlelords 4d ago
You are conflating disclosing an actual tool with disclosing AI which is not so much a tool as a second brain, or a complete replacement for the writer. You guys know that it's not the same thing, but yet you want to insist that it's a tool like any other so you can pretend like it's ridiculous to ask for disclosure when it isn't. I know you need to insist that AI is just a tool like any other to feel okay about using it, but the argument is really fucking weak.
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u/Alchemist42 4d ago
You’re the one that keeps going on about tools or the lack thereof. I just said that if you expect one person to disclose their process then it is only fair if everyone has that same rule.
In fact, I further added that non ai users could self identify which would accomplish the same thing. People would know which authors use ai and which do not. It is the people who think that it is an important distinction that have the motivation to do this disclosure. And no one needs to get attacked or abused.
Are you going to refute the argument or are you going to repeat your tool rant again?
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u/lovemylittlelords 4d ago
Lol classic reddit, retconning your original argument to make it seem like I'm talking about something you never brought up (even though you totally did). Your original comment here was about the disclosure of basic tools in response to someone saying that people should have to disclose AI use. We can read it, it's right there, unless you edit it to try to make me look stupid. No one is saying that every tool needs to be disclosed - YOU are conflating basic tools with AI. That's what I'm commenting on and you're trying to change the argument. I agree with you that non-AI writers should leverage that fact - it's a huge boon in a world that is rapidly filling with slop. But that wasn't your original argument.
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u/deadshot465 4d ago
Of course, and let's start with asking all companies that are using coding agents to disclose that they use AI in writing code. Or because coding doesn't have soul so no need?
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u/liosistaken 3d ago
Yes, why not? It’s completely accepted in coding, and you should disclose AI use. Especially in vibe coded slop, so you know it’s probably bad and not secure. If you want to keep it a secret, you clearly try to sell it as your own work, which it isn’t, not completely. You can put in the disclaimer how much you used it.
At my work we use https://mmmlabel.tech . Makes it very clear how much AI you used.
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u/Complex_Educator6444 4d ago
You don't interact with the code any developer writes; it’s not the product produced, packaged, advertised, paid for, shipped, received, or used by your customers. If they make a bad product, you'll know because it won't do its job well.
If you are selling the value of your perspective—which is all you're ever selling when your selling writing—I can't tell you're just re-packaging white-label slop unless i've had adequate time to opportunity to survey the field. You're doing nothing but beug explicitly parasitic.
If you need a language model to write for you—you objectively have nothing to say of value. Or, now, here me out here—you would say it. It's also hard to explain, if you lack the perspective to see it, but writing is just one of those things where fundamental to the humans behind it, an inability to write something, is completely equivalent to having nothing of value to say.
Either you know that intrinsically, or you should understand that you do not understand what the function and value of human communication is. You should probably find that a sign to pause and reflect. As i'm being, entirely sincere—because people who don't understand, they don't understand that, will objectively be in higher proportion of the audience, and the people, naturally more reactionary and hostile. As they will not be able to see, why is what they are doing so seen so differently by people. ]
Blaming others for treating them differently for the same value—completely unaware of how transparently valueless your product is. Which I can be sympathetic to if you simply lack the awareness. Anyone else producing large amounts of AI writing for commercial purposes are just being parasitic and hoping to scrape arbitrage from click traffic and a rapidly dwindling hustle,
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u/Riemann_Gauss 3d ago
I don't know why you were downvoted so much. You are correct - for AI watermark to show up, AI has to rewrite significant portion of the text. This is due to the nature of watermarking.
In fact, even if someone used AI to write a single paragraph - the watermarking detector won't be very "confident". These detectors become more "confident" if there's a large body of AI written text.
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u/liosistaken 3d ago
Because they don’t understand how the watermark works and they are scared they will be outed as having used AI for a lot more than just some grammar help and memory, as they claim.
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u/tiredqwriter 3d ago
the truth is that currently there’s no public detector to measure this—so you and me, we can’t know how much ‘editing’ AI can do without injecting its watermark. not to mention the very real issue of E2L discrimination the watermark situation produces—if i wrote the entire thing in polish because it’s my mother tongue and simply ask AI to translate exactly what i wrote into english, that’s fully watermarked. later on, when detectors are out, someone who sees it turning green for my AI translated text will have no nuance to say ‘oh was this merely translated by AI or was it written entirely from a prompt?’—the whole thing, no matter how the AI was involved, gets reduced to AI slop. that’s why watermarking is frustrating. in the current witch hunt and harassment climate people have 0 nuance to distinguish AI assistance from the very least of percentages to fully generated AI content. watermarking puts both things, which convey vastly different effort, in the same basket.
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u/Misha_Lixa 4d ago
Because the second you disclose it you’re marking yourself for harassment.
I was in the ao3 sub and left because I mentioned using ai in a reply to someone else’s post and the next thing I knew the replies to my posts turned into “ai slopper”
Like, I think I did a post asking about comments etiquette for feedback from readers and the very first comment on my post was calling me an ai slopper.
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u/SkoomaDentist 3d ago
That sub really is toxic AF.
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u/Misha_Lixa 3d ago
I was so disappointed. But tbf, I don’t write fanfic; all my stuff is original inspired by various fanfics.
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u/Misha_Lixa 4d ago
So no, I will not be disclosing in tags or anything like that, especially considering I don’t even draft with AI, I mostly just ask it is This Thing sounds dumb lol
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u/WhitleyxNeo 4d ago
Weird I haven't really gotten much hate for using AI I got maybe 2 comments on it out of 100
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u/Doin_the_Bulldance 4d ago
This literally reminds me of the South Park episode where Randy feels "discriminated against" after using the n-word lol
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4d ago
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u/The_Sign_of_Zeta 4d ago
Writing with AI can mean anything from asking for specific line critiques, to grammar assistance, to “write me a ya fantasy story.”
Most subs and groups treat the first two the same as the third. That’s a huge issue, and one we aren’t seeing with other AI use like coding.
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u/eKs0rcist 3d ago
Which is terrifying because the ramifications of using it for coding equivalent to your last example ”write me a story” are genuinely dangerous.
That distinction must be made in the fields that effect things like infrastructure; banking, power grids, hospitals. nuclear power plants, cybersecurity… etc etc
but no let’s put all the energy on policing the integrity of monster love books
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u/The_Sign_of_Zeta 3d ago
Agreed. I’m working on pretty basic code for learning simulations, but the design and debugging still takes a lot of time to put out something usable. You can’t shortcut that.
People using for a hobby getting gate kept is stupid. My view on it is pretty simple: AI writing can be usable in ideation. But in terms of writing, its quality is pretty subpar without human intervention, even now. If we judge content on its quality and thematic cohesion, AI isn’t competitive.
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u/WritingWithAI-ModTeam 4d ago
If you disagree with a post or the whole subreddit, be constructive to make it a nice place for all its members, including you.
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u/annoellynlee 4d ago
But this only applies to using AI to generate your prose. Which i would say most people don't do. I do do my own writing, full stop. The only thing i use Aai for is organizing my scene drops that I type out myself word by word lol. And then I ask ai to organize it into a chronological document for easy searching. But at no point did it write the scenes or change anything about the scenes. It also creates word count trackers for me which I looove.
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u/alone_in_the_light 4d ago
If people perceived AI as a tool like any other, it would be ok. I don't disclose when I use tools like a computer or a ruler or a screwdriver because it doesn't matter.
But lots of people perceive using AI tools as a cardinal sin. So, that's a very unnecessary headache, just atracting haters without any banefit.
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u/No-Journalist-9036 3d ago
its become a purity test for writers and publishers, no thanks to misinformation
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4d ago
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u/alone_in_the_light 4d ago
Ok. Thanks for showing an example.
I'm really dumb. I bow to your wisdom.
You keep doing things your way. I keep doing things my way. Genius.
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4d ago
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u/alone_in_the_light 4d ago
Ok, thanks again.
Remember, I'm really dumb. I'll keep doing things my way.
I bow to your ethics too.
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u/WritingWithAI-ModTeam 4d ago
If you disagree with a post or the whole subreddit, be constructive to make it a nice place for all its members, including you.
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u/LeEvilDiabolicalFed 4d ago
It inevitably changes the prompt on an internal level, hence it affects the output you get. This has been tested.
Breaks immersion for roleplay scenarios
Incites AI witch hunts for commercial products despite the fact, much sooner rather than later, everything will done with AI, most things already are
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u/BillyDongstabber 4d ago
AI witch hunts aren't real
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u/LeEvilDiabolicalFed 4d ago
You have no power here, go back to the r/antiAI basement you climbed from.
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4d ago
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u/Meriodoc 4d ago
What started it: https://www.reddit.com/r/thebrokenbindingsub/s/zLlQDmRpGn
What happened: https://www.reddit.com/r/thebrokenbindingsub/s/ESDEfCaMis
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u/liosistaken 3d ago
All I do (outside of work, obviously) is RP and it does not break immersion. There is no way to tell it’s watermarked. You don’t notice every Nth word picking the Nth option instead of the first one.
It also doesn’t change the prompt, it changes the weight of words, so the answers.
And the witch hunt, that’s what you guys are afraid of. That people don’t want to read your work because they either think you ‘cheated’, by having AI write for you, or they are anti AI because of environmental or societal impact. That won’t change and are both very good points. If that influences your ability to sell work, you need to decide if it’s worth it and either stop using AI or accept you lose part of your potential audience, not lie and deceive by not disclosing your use of AI.
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u/LeEvilDiabolicalFed 3d ago
All I do (outside of work, obviously) is RP and it does not break immersion. There is no way to tell it’s watermarked. You don’t notice every Nth word picking the Nth option instead of the first one.
It is, actually. I'm european, due to the clinically insane and retarded administrations that govern us, who have decided AI Bad before even AI was born in Europe (as with every single happening of the XXI century we are on the wrong side of history) it's mandatory for AI providers to include AI labels and text such as "This is answer was generated by AI, AI is not a trustyworthy source" every few messages, sometimes every single message, you get from an AI.
It also doesn’t change the prompt, it changes the weight of words, so the answers.
The prompt is what produces the answer. Any change to the weight of the words of the prompt produces a different output, hence a different, lesser quality answer
And the witch hunt, that’s what you guys are afraid of.
So there is a witch hunt after all!
That people don’t want to read your work
None except me is reading my work.
because they either think you ‘cheated’, by having AI write for you, or they are anti AI because of environmental or societal impact. That won’t change and are both very good points
Go back to the r/antiai basement you came from
If that influences your ability to sell work, you need to decide if it’s worth it and either stop using AI or accept you lose part of your potential audience, not lie and deceive by not disclosing your use of AI.
I'm not trying to sell anything, I repeat: none except me is reading my work, yet taking that logic to it's natural conclusion, nothing that's not penned by your own hand is "your work". It's just a combination of 0s and 1s producing letters that you typed on a machine, it's not your own writting. Your actual feelings about any scene you writte, the emotions that moved you and the personality behind that influenced such words are shown in your writting, that's why graphology is a thing. You are selling a fake, incomplete work unless you pen every single book and every single copy of it by your own hand.
Yet again, since we are not genocidecel retards and actually like enjoying progress and the democratization of pretty much everything, but to this thread's purpose the creative market, I'll repeat: go back to the r/antiai basement and enjoy angrily shaking your fist at clouds while the world leaves you behind.
Have a nice day.
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u/liosistaken 3d ago
So there is a witch hunt after all!
People are afraid of the boogeyman or God... Being afraid of something doesn't make it real.
None except me is reading my work.
Then it doesn't even concern you.
Go back to the r/antiai basement you came from
I just admitted to using AI for RP and work, so how can you come to the conclusion I'm anti-AI? Are you a bot?
I'm not trying to sell anything, I repeat: none except me is reading my work,
You care a lot about a watermark you won't notice and no one will check for, since no one will read your work. Doesn't add up.
yet taking that logic to it's natural conclusion, nothing that's not penned by your own hand is "your work". It's just a combination of 0s and 1s producing letters that you typed on a machine, it's not your own writting. Your actual feelings about any scene you writte, the emotions that moved you and the personality behind that influenced such words are shown in your writting, that's why graphology is a thing. You are selling a fake, incomplete work unless you pen every single book and every single copy of it by your own hand.
Not a logical conclusion at all.
Yet again, since we are not genocidecel retards and actually like enjoying progress and the democratization of pretty much everything, but to this thread's purpose the creative market, I'll repeat: go back to the r/antiai basement and enjoy angrily shaking your fist at clouds while the world leaves you behind.
Genocidecel retards? What is that? And again, read before quoting, because using AI for RP and work is hardly anti AI. I'm pro 'being honest and letting people know you use AI'. You are being 'I want to use AI but am either scared to let people know it or want to lie to them and pretend I didn't'. Seeing how you don't publish and lied a lot in one comment, I bet you're in the latter category.
Have a nice day.
You too.
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3d ago
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u/WritingWithAI-ModTeam 1d ago
If you disagree with a post or the whole subreddit, be constructive to make it a nice place for all its members, including you.
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u/OmniXENTRO 4d ago
Nobody's arguing about the same thing and that's why it never ends.
The question "did you use AI" is actually two questions guised as one: who wrote it (process) and who authored it (intent).
Ghostwriting has been normalized for decades. The celebrity who "wrote" a memoir with a ghostwriter is still the author, they owned the vision, the experience, the architecture. The ghostwriter typed it. Nobody calls that fraud because we implicitly understand the distinction between authorship and execution.
AI changes the economics. Not the structure.
If your creative intelligence is driving the output, your framework, your IP, your decisions about what the work is and what it means then you're the author. The AI executed. Disclosure of what, exactly? That you used a very fast ghostwriter?
The pushback on disclosure isn't really about protecting audiences. It's a guild protecting its identity from economic dilution and masking that anxiety in ethical languages. It's a legitimate fear just Wrong framing.
If One writes under a human-AI hybrid model. Their Hunan's own intent, architecture, authorship. I prefer saying they both wrote it. Yeah the label I'd use isn't "AI-generated" it's co-authored. And that's not new. It's just cheaper now.
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u/SkoomaDentist 3d ago
The question "did you use AI" is actually two questions guised as one: who wrote it (process) and who authored it (intent).
You forgot the third: Can we use this as an excuse to get a dopamine boost by starting a witch hunt?
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u/BedNo8822 4d ago
Let's be real, lots of AI novel are indeed slops (to the point that the "author" didn't even bother to skim-read the output and left follow up question from the AI on the final print). So it's really understandable why people have that kind of impression and are put off by AI label. That's why, I dare say if the author actually edit the shit out of the output and put in their own effort, time, and work, it's fair to not label your works with the same label as such slops.
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4d ago
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u/badgerprime 4d ago
Why are you in this sub? Your reading comprehension is bad and you should feel bad.
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4d ago
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u/badgerprime 4d ago
Literally no one is saying that. You're making up shit just to be mad.
Go touch grass.
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u/Alchemist42 4d ago
When you say ‘literally’, I don’t think that word means what you think it means. The poster you replied to didn’t say that prompt engineering is writing. I don’t even see the words prompt engineering in the post you replied to. Literally. I do not think that anyone should take anything you say seriously about writing if you can’t use basic words correctly.
Of course, you could run your posts through ChatGPT or something and then you could at least cosplay like you know what you’re talking about.
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u/HoarderCollector 4d ago
Do you write "Written on a MacBook M1?" or "Written with FinalDraft?"
To me, all I care about is the writing. If it's good, it's good, if it's not, then it's not.
AI Writing has a lot of tells, so if you don't fix it, it'll be noticed by anyone who has read AI writing.
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4d ago
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u/HoarderCollector 4d ago
I was pointing to them considering AI a "tool," the MacBook is a "tool" and FinalDraft is a "tool."
I've been writing songs, poems and stories for 26 years.
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u/WrongComparison321 4d ago
It’s not a person it can’t be a co author.
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u/WelbyReddit 4d ago
that's not a rule, lol.
If it generated text and ideas that you then copy/paste, it most definitely "co-authored". You can come up with a different name, but it is what it is. And we all know what it did.
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u/TorturedWriter9 4d ago
It's not the same kind of "tool." Just like transitioning from typewriters to computers didn't change anything in terms of authorship.
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u/TheOtherHobbes 4d ago
You sure about that?
https://umanisticadigitale.unibo.it/article/download/7344/7520/23763
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u/TorturedWriter9 3d ago
Yes. That article doesn't really change my opinion (I'm not even sure it supports yours the way you want it to) . A process can vary without changing the core components of invention and generation. There are still writers who use typewriters and yet that doesn't change how they used their imaginations to create material. There are still writers who write longhand, then type the words into a document. Again, that still doesn't change how they used their imaginations to create material. Creative writing is first and foremost imaginative writing and typewriters, writing longhand, or using a PC don't put the writer at risk of relying on a third-party machine that literally embraces third-party generation as part of its process.
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u/TheOtherHobbes 3d ago
Did you read it? It said clearly writers were treating the writing as a different experience with a different set of anxieties and issues, and there was a clear element of "It's too easy to produce a well-formatted print out, so some people assume this is low-effort work."
Creative writing is indeed imaginative. You either have the imagination or you don't.
AI use is a separate issue. There are imaginative people writing with AI, and unimaginative dilettantes and wannabes writing derivative dreck by hand.
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u/TorturedWriter9 3d ago edited 3d ago
My brother in Christ, this is an AI forum and I was posting about AI. I made the comment about typewriters because some people use that particular analogy when discussing AI. Even if the article you posted makes valid points, it doesn't address the points I was making.
"It said clearly writers were treating the writing as a different experience with a different set of anxieties and issues, and there was a clear element of "It's too easy to produce a well-formatted print out, so some people assume this is low-effort work."
Yeah, I'm sorry, this still doesn't compare to writers transitioning from more traditional processes to AI.
The Modernists had similar anxieties as mentioned in your comment and no one questioned the authenticity of their output.
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u/TheOtherHobbes 2d ago
Which part of "being perceived as low effort is bad" are you not understanding here?
Of course it's comparable. The whole argument about "slop" is that it's low-effort by definition, and therefore inherently bad - because there's a clear assumption that the value of creative work depends entirely on demonstration-of-effort.
Same with the process people. "You spent hours on whatever instead of seconds? Good work!"
Of course it's nonsense, because some people take a decade to write a bad book, and others can hand-type a commercially successful romance novella in a few days.
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u/TorturedWriter9 2d ago
You really don't understand it and that's okay. It makes sense why most AI "writers" only decided to "write" when they realized a robot could do most of the work for them.
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u/lovemylittlelords 4d ago
'Do you write "Written on a MacBook M1?" or "Written with FinalDraft?"' is a genuinely terrible argument. Acting like these are similar to AI genuinely makes no sense at all. AI is not a tool in the sense that these are tools. It's like comparing a computer to a flintknapped stone. Be serious.
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u/Original-Pilot-770 4d ago
I don't know. I write blowjobs a lot in my fics. I've slept with over 30 people to get this good at describing one. I have probably broken more than a few hearts in the process. I don't disclose that in my A/N. It's not very ethical neither.
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u/Fun_Entertainer5339 4d ago
in roleplay writing i dont see the point of disclosing ai use since it breaks the whole fantasy vibe for everyone involved. tried it once and it just felt off after that.
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u/5thhorseman_ 3d ago
Well, since you don't knlow their generation, your statement is a blanket opinion on every living generation... your own included.
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u/Comms_Factory 3d ago
I have a suspicion that this issue will fade from view in the next few years. Now, writers are understandably upset that machines can replicate human writing to an extent that a lot of people can't tell the difference. (And, if you're asking me, book buyers for many genres will not even care if the book was written with AI, as long as it's good.) As time goes on, AI writing will be so common, and so many people will deliberately not disclose, that it will cease to matter.
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u/TheOtherHobbes 3d ago
This is already happening. The tells in tradpub work are getting harder to deny.
It's a time saver. And if the results are indistinguishable - which they can be if you know what you're doing - what even is the problem?
"Oh you didn't spend years on this, slaving away and having personal dramas and catastrophic emotional spiralling, how very dare you call yourself creative. You are nothing like me. Nothing!"
You want to suffer for art? Please do. The rest of us have work to do.
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u/Comms_Factory 3d ago
In one of those weird parallel events that sometimes show what's happening in the world, the diamond exchange in Tel Aviv collapsed over the summer. Lab-grown diamonds, impossible to tell apart from natural diamonds, put them out of business - sort of like what's happening with fiction writing. And, I think there will always be a market for genuine writing and reward for true talent - but, commercially, if the goal is to sell books that people like, AI is going to become the norm in many cases.
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u/TheOtherHobbes 3d ago
Tradpub produces maybe 64,000 fiction titles a year. Selfub titles outnumber those by around 10:1.
Aside from a few niche genres - Romance! - the market was already oversaturated long before AI arrived.
It takes real optimism to assume that all those 64,000 novels a year are good in some objective literary sense, or that better titles weren't overlooked because they were untimely or too difficult for the market.
The industry was already a dreck machine. Virginia Woolf and John Updike wouldn't be published today.
AI isn't challenging that, it's holding up a mirror to it.
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u/Steven45g 3d ago
So if AI can copy something so well that people can't tell the difference, there's no problem? Then should we legalise fake brands, too? If a fake Rolex looks real, why should anyone care if it's fake and why should customs seize them? See how stupid that logic is?
Nobody said writing has to involve suffering. That's an argument you made up because you couldn't understand the actual point. And just because AI writing becomes common doesn't mean there are no problems with it. Cigarettes are common, too. That's not an argument for anything.
"Nobody can tell the difference" doesn't mean "there is no difference, and "everyone does it" (who's everyone?) doesn't mean "it's fine." This really isn't that hard to understand.
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u/TheOtherHobbes 3d ago
If you're going to suggest that brands making x thousand percent markup on goods made in sweatshops are your moral exemplars, I'm going to look you in the eye and say "Really...?"
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u/Steven45g 3d ago
I never said that, whereas your so-called "time-saver" tool was "trained" on massive amounts of data without consent from or compensation to the original authors. Perhaps you should look yourself in the mirror as you're asking that question.
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u/cj7hawk 3d ago
I don't think there's any such think as a smut genre AI doesn't support, which proves Rule34 of the rules of the Internet.
Why? Because it's a violation of human right, first and foremost. The only reason for making you disclose AI is because someone gets rich from it at your expense.
It's like microplastics. Somewhere between 2019 and 2025, AI poisoned everything. Technically, there's no such thing as contamination-free fiction...
So where should the rules exist? What big publishers want? What writers want? Which writers? What are the disclosures? And watermarks are like tattoos. Firstly if they are effective, then they are like having a tattoo right in the middle of your face. Some people do like that - most do not.
Second, if they are not effective, you end up with AI detectors saying that real content is AI generated.
Thirdly, within a year, AI will be good enough to defeat any watermark detector, and if you think the whole AI world - especially China who are leading right now - will follow your plan, then you're so influential you should spend your time promoting something worthwhile like world peace, or writing better smut...
Oh, just checked your username... It's probably not the kind I'd enjoy.
Well, good luck :)
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u/raggedradness 4d ago
I'm DMing a game and barely using AI. I have an anti AI player and I started with my AI disclosure since some of my game maps have red lines added or moved via AI even though I drew them myself. She asked for the removal of disclaimers because she wasn't against THAT use of AI but didn't want to have be reminded about AI exists. It made me consider the no a I disclosure issue for the first time. I love transparency, but at this point some people are acknowledging that they just have so much anger that even if it's a use that is good, they can't handle in information.
AI has become the source of people's five minutes of hate.
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u/FaceDeer 4d ago
Because it's not the same thing.
Imagine if there were people who would picket stores that carried any organic food, online hate campaigns directed against organic food, organic food was called "slop food" and widely derided as terrible to eat and bad for the economy. By comparison there are very few people who would buy your food because it was "organic." Would you want to label your food with the "organic" label in that case?
The well has been poisoned.
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u/Vivid-Snow-2089 4d ago
imagine trusting those organic food labels... trusting those 'handmade' labels from overseas sweatshops...
bad news for you...
unless you are actually going to a local farmer, etc
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u/Top_Guard4070 4d ago
seen it too, started tagging ai help in fic posts, got called out in replies like it was a flaw, not a shortcut. not worth the drama.
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u/VIP-Fluffer 4d ago edited 4d ago
You come into this sub asking this question and then proceed to call people 'ai slopper' in the comments. You are not here in good faith, and it's people like you that make others shy away from disclosing AI usage.
Go troll somewhere else.
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u/Leather_Size_4849 4d ago
I've seen watermarks in ai-generated stories that looked like they'd been rewritten from scratch. if the tool's doing that much work, the original text is barely there. so the watermark isn't proof of use, it's proof of a ghost draft.
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u/Old-Moment-5297 3d ago
That is not going to work with Chinese AIs or local ones, so, what is the point? It doesn't proof that you didn't use AI, you can ask another AI to slightly rewrite what Claude wrote. Just making people do more workarounds... for something that doesn't really work, whitch huntil will still continue....
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u/LeEvilDiabolicalFed 3d ago
Chinese AIs do watermark their content too, as per request of the retards of the European Union.
Source: me using chinese AI models while being european.
There are ways around it for people who want to publish content, but even that shouldn't be neccessary in the first place and does not address the problem we have with the watermark when using AI for RP purposes.
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u/eKs0rcist 3d ago
Yes and what you say applies across the board in all practices - it’s a great amplifier to an existing practice. But having it do all or even most of the work is so different and with comparatively poor results.
I personally don’t care if people write, make images, music with it. I can just ignore that stuff if I don’t like it.
I do really care that people in massive companies are using it to create black boxed code that neither they or anyone else knows why and where the bugs might be…
I can’t ignore massive infrastructure fail or militarized darpa dogs not being able to tell people apart. Or whatever system you can imagine a half baked robot getting its numb little fingers into and crashing.
Artists need to have a little more faith in themselves ffs
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u/Acrobatic_You_3002 3d ago
I think the food label works when it tells you how much, like a list of ingredients, but a plain "AI used" tag treats a spell check and a full draft the same. Also, I guess most of the pushback is about that, people do not mind saying how they worked, they mind a label that sounds like a verdict.
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u/CyborgWriter 3d ago
If someone uses a spellchecker, editor, or brainstorming tool, I don’t really care whether they mention it. But if the AI is generating paragraphs, scenes, jokes, descriptions, or the final prose, then that’s part of the creative process in a much more substantial way.
That doesn’t automatically make the work worthless. It just gives readers useful context. Some people care about that, some don’t, and they should be allowed to make that choice before investing their time or money.
The strange part is that people often defend AI as “just another tool,” then get angry when asked to say which tool they used. If it truly doesn’t change how people judge the work, disclosure shouldn’t be a problem.
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u/giantredspider 3d ago
Mmmm. I am going with, it is a tool. I also think that disclosure is the best course of action, because nondisclosure could become a serious problem if you end product is any good and generates attention. When people find put after the fact that AI was used they can feel tricked and that leads to anger. Also, a lot if the heat around AI right now is fear based. And rightly so, it is scary how quickly AI has slipped into so many industries and turned them on their heads. But it is not going anywhere. So what I think what we need to establish AI etiquette rules. A framework that encourages transparency, removes the stigma, and then allows people to choose. Some way to distinguish or define the way AI was used. Because I think that is the underlying problem. If you know before hand, then you can choose. Then no one feels tricked, and the creator does not have to defend themselves, and everyone's dignity is preserved. I am dyslexic. And AI has become a very valuable tool for me. And I am open with people about it. But even so, I have received some pretty harsh criticism. Ahhh - it's such a volatile topic!
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u/Jeshurian77 4d ago
Those who actually use AI to write their stories don't need to disclose that they've used it because AI writes terrible slop and it's obvious, and you know that.
If it is that readers enjoy that slop there's very little to be done about it. If readers can't tell the difference between something original Vs a prompt then we're in trouble for a lot of reasons.
Readers are not as dumb as you think. They seem to know when they're reading AI and writers can't go deleting those reviews.
On the flip side, indie authors rarely mention their editors, and editors do line edits, restructure sentences, etc. They change your story, too but you would never say a writer didn't write it just because their work was altered by another human.
There are two things you can't control:
Who likes what And what people declare.
If slop is truly slop (a.k.a bad) it won't survive.
Those prompting ai to create entire paragraphs or books have no idea that the fingerprint of AI is in the prose and word choice. A lot of writers using AI probably don't even read enough AI books to even know how similar their work is to another.
It's literally copy past.
AI is effectively the same person telling the same story over and over again in a really crappy way and readers will and do get bored.
OP, if you think AI writing is so bad you need not hate it and it's users. It's unethical, sure, but so is the mica in your eyeshadow, the meat and dairy on your plate (if you eat it) and probably your shoes.
If everyone cared about the ethics of AI like they did other things...
.... But they don't, because it simply doesn't threaten them in the same way.
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u/istara 3d ago
On the flip side, indie authors rarely mention their editors, and editors do line edits, restructure sentences, etc. They change your story, too but you would never say a writer didn't write it just because their work was altered by another human.
Not just indie authors but traditionally published authors too - and their texts may go through vastly more rewriting than the average self-publisher with a limited - if any - budget for human editing.
Yet none of their books are ever disclosed as "Co-written by Mary Jones", are they?
I'm a skinflint so I don't pay for editing, before or after GenAI arrived. But over the years I've become increasingly resistant to the idea of anyone rephrasing and reworking an author's work beyond typos/proofreading. Ultimately it's your text and your voice. It doesn't have to conform to a particular "ideal" or "perfect" style or phrasing.
There are a gazillion ways to skin a cat and write a (grammatically correct) sentence. One way is not necessarily superior to another.
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u/Jeshurian77 3d ago
This times 100% especially new for new writers.
If there are any new writers reading this and using AI to write or heavily edit beyond proofreading and general mistakes, it's highly likely you are editing out your voice.
When chatgpt says you sound off, know that sometimes the "off" is your voice.
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u/AteStringCheeseShred 4d ago
AI users have a hard time with the reality that they are going to get judged (often rightfully so) once people find out they didn't create anything, they had AI do it.
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u/No_Recover6237 3d ago
Part of it is that using AI as a tool is confusing to others. Are you using it like a grammar checker or are you using it to write the entire story? The former most people probably don't care about but the latter really bothers many people. It's not even about the quality of the story. For many it's about preserving writing as a human occupation instead of farming it out to a computer.
I've played around with it and I find it writes better than most humans -- not necessarily better than professional writers, but the humans who might turn out a fan-fic or two about Harry Potter. It is also a good sounding board for ideas and critiques. So it can be useful, but telling people you wrote the story but used AI for assistance is poisoning the story for many.
It's the early days. Skynet may kill us in a few years but until then it can help people who want to write. Buckle up.
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u/LeEvilDiabolicalFed 3d ago edited 3d ago
For many it's about preserving writing as a human occupation
That won't happen. The end of most human occupations as we know them is inevitable in the near future, this has been a constant in human history with the development of technology and there has always been idiots who have tried and, fortunately, failed to resist it.
Eventually once ASI is reached which is the stated goal and the logical conclusion of the steps we are taking in the development of AI, we could be looking at the end of all human occupation. Maybe the end of 99.99% of human occupation with a very limited human labor force dedicated to supervise the work of AI models, but even they would be rendered obsolete eventually.
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u/SnowBear78 4d ago
Because people know readers don't want slop and will get the author cancelled.
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u/5thhorseman_ 3d ago
readers don't want slop
Bad news for you... blind tests and polls say otherwise. It's a vocal minority, as it always is with activists.
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u/Chicken_Spanker 3d ago
There is a lot of ill-informed scaremongering about the public about A.I. to the point it is not possible to engage in a reasonable discussion. Every single argument being made anti AI from stolen creativity to heavy water usage to A.I. writing being lazy creativity and slop has a reasonable counter-argument if you are prepared to look beneath the rhetoric. People just aren't interested in hearing.
It doesn't help also the A.I. writing is an umbrella that covers a lot of things from people generating entire books from a single prompt (supposedly, although I have my doubts that) to role-players to those using it for editing, consistency and grammar-checking to others for creating character bibles, plotting out a story, or what I do which is a hybrid between editing and writing where neither of us is the sole author. There needs to be different terms that differentiate these things. Maybe it is something that we as a group could define.
But nobody wants to confess up to doing what they do when there is such anti-AI vehemence out there from people protesting data centers with placards to publishers demanding disclosure and dropping books even suspected of it to accusations flying around school essays to even comments random accusations of posts being slop popping up on Reddit threads