Lately there has been an enormous storm of controversy about AI being used in fiction writing.\u00a0 Recently it came out that a self-published story that became quite popular was subsequently picked up by a major publishing house and re-issued with the full weight and authority of this powerhouse including professional editing and a new cover.\u00a0 But then someone looked closely at the self-published edition and saw that not only was it significantly different from the professionally published edition but that the original was obviously a product of AI.\u00a0 Now, that caused a firestorm and the publisher withdrew the book permanently.<\/p>\n
But a cloud of questions swirl around the affair.\u00a0 Surely the editors who revised the self-published edition must have recognized that they were dealing with a product of AI writing.\u00a0 Why would they have purchased this title.\u00a0 It\u2019s assumed the reason was because the book had already found a ready audience and so the motive was monetary.\u00a0 But there are other factors.\u00a0 The authoress Mia Ballard is African American and Native American.\u00a0 In other words, in the world of intersectional identity bingo she was a three-fer!\u00a0 And so, she was exactly the kind of person that Hachette wanted for their imprint.\u00a0 But there still remained the fact that she got a bot to write her story.\u00a0 And that someone blew the whistle on her.\u00a0 Of course, she claimed that it was an editor who added the AI sections and what she had written was her own.\u00a0 Oh boy, that\u2019s gonna be a bunch of lawsuits (or it\u2019s just talk that won\u2019t go anywhere).<\/p>\n
Of course, the editors are defending themselves by saying that AI detection programs are far from infallible and so they aren\u2019t to blame.\u00a0 But supposedly the content was pretty obviously terribly written.\u00a0 Of course, that really makes it interesting that the self-published book was such a hit on Goodreads with over four thousand reviews.\u00a0 And that would once again jibe with the idea that the \u201cbio\u201d of the writer was one of the big reasons the book was so popular.<\/p>\n
The whole scandal seems to show just what a mess the publishing industry has gotten itself into with identity politics becoming the most important factor by which authors and storylines are selected by big publishing houses for their imprimatur.\u00a0 I guess the same problem is playing out with books that Hollywood is suffering from with their heavy-handed woke propaganda pictures.\u00a0 People are staying away in droves and the monetary losses have finally gotten so severe that they\u2019ve been forced to drop most of the woke plot elements just to lure paying customers back to the theaters.<\/p>\n
Well, now that I\u2019ve had a taste of what it\u2019s like to self-publish a book I can say that a large part of the satisfaction in writing a book has to be because the author enjoys his creation.\u00a0 Other than the one in a million phenom that finds the sweet spot in the self-publishing universe everyone else is talking to a small audience and in my opinion the only real failure is if you know that your book isn\u2019t good enough for you yourself to read it for pleasure.<\/p>\n
But how soon before AI slop is better than Shakespeare?\u00a0 Ay, there’s the rub.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lately there has been an enormous storm of controversy about AI being used in fiction writing.\u00a0 Recently it came out that a self-published story that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,5,2510,1289,1263,237],"tags":[3773,4801],"class_list":["post-36644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-current-events","category-literature","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-reviews","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-traditional-publishing"],"yoast_head":"\n