ChatGPT disaster: SF mag Clarkesworld closed to submissions. Amazon Kindle flooded. [View all]

Welcome to the dystopia of AI being used for "creative" writing by people trying to make a quick buck.

I've been posting about this in GD, but with all the news stories in the past 24 hours, I thought there should be a thread on it here.

This is my latest OP on it in GD: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217666418 . See reply 17 there for links and excerpts from news stories about Clarkesworld and Amazon Kindle.

This is the OP I posted 6 days ago, after seeing Neil Clarke's first posts on his concern about the flood of AI-generated work, when he was still hoping he wouldn't have to shut off submissions: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217651861

But 12 days before that, I'd posted about the trouble ChatGPT and other AI would cause: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217612552 . See the second half of that OP.

I'm not happy that I was right. This AI mess hurts editors and writers, especially aspiring writers. But anyone seeing the news stories about people trying to exploit AI, to try to pretend to be creative when they aren't, could have guessed what would happen.

Amazon currently isn't refusing AI-generated fake writing. I suppose it's fine with them, no matter how bad the books are, if they produce any revenue at all. But there isn't a greatly increased audience for those books, so real writers will be hurt by the flood of AI-generated competition. A lot of which isn't even identified as such. And since ChatGPT plagiarizes, authors whose work is ripped off are also being hurt. AI can be told to write in the style of particular writers.

Neil Clarke had the integrity, and the sense, to ban anyone who submitted AI-generated "work."

Every publisher should do the same.