I know the reason you are compiling this list is based on educational purposes, but I can’t help but think it has the potential for misuse. In the current AI witch hunt environment, it would be easy to misuse a list like this by those who would demonize “suspicious” authors without your editorial experience or context.
In the article I linked in this one, I state clearly that I don't want to do harm here, and you know me well enough to know my intentions as I state them are honest. I don't hate AI. I use it a lot for many things and find it an incredibly helpful tool to combat problems I have. I don't hate people who use AI to write their books, so long as they're honest with me about it when they come to me for editing (because I am *not* the editor for that). I think highly of folks like Novae, Danica, Mal, and many others who use AI heavily and have no problems with them. Or with their work. While I don't want anyone to be caught in the crossfire, I am limited to what I can do since AI detectors are nonsense entirely and are worthless for the most part (and we all know it). There's no surefire way to know unless you really get to know AI's voice (which I've spent over a year educating myself on pretty deeply).
Identifying AI doesn't mean the content is BS or that the person is inherently bad faith. It just means they used AI. It's a neutral fact. But it does open the door to questions about who the person is, why they used it, and how. If someone just used it to edit their book because they can't afford a human and went that direction... cool. I get it. If someone used AI to write their website copy for SEO reasons, okay, I understand that; SEO's rough. If someone used it to help them write their book, that's fine. It's not my cup of tea, but if they are delighting their readers, then that's between them and their readers; no finger wagging present from me.
I would equate this to an ingredients list on a muffin (for reasons beyond dietary safety/allergens). Some people won't eat it if it has sugar in it because they choose not to eat sugar. That should be up to them to decide with full knowledge because AI, right now, is a controversial "ingredient."
Then there are the downsides of how it's being deployed.
Unfortunately, we have run into a problem where we cannot do anything to help those most at risk if we do not accept false positives. If we do nothing to identify AI-generated content, then people run the massive risk of barreling into very dangerous misinformation, disinformation, or people are being sold things by dishonest actors (not all AI use is dishonest, to be clear--that's not my belief). And at that point, if people are not educated on what to look for, they are at immediate risk for severe harm. The damage this kind of thing is doing to our democracy, to people's health, to people's ability to do business... it's massive.
I see it happening on Facebook all the time where people are taken in by AI-generated "heartwarming" stories and send money to people or "news" articles making outrageous claims about politicians or other people or situations. Then there's the health disinformation, which is leading people to make sometimes fatal decisions about their health and safety. While that's always been a problem, it's a *dramatically* worse one now that AI has appeared because the speed and volume and believability at which it happens is so increased. This is particularly true in the political sphere with misinformation and disinformation at an all-time high and has led to very real violence and death.
Then you have AI marketing which frequently creates slick, believable, and non-existent products and scams people (it happens all the time on Etsy/Amazon/Kickstarter/etc.). It also makes things look far more polished than they usually are, which is entirely dishonest and is a consumer threat.
The number of AI-generated "marketing" websites targeted at authors that I have seen is absolutely massive. They look good and legitimate until you realize the whole thing is AI-created, and there's no human doing the work. They'd just run the novel through ChatGPT/Claude/whatever and spit out images and marketing text to the tune of thousands of dollars and do no work. It's worsening the problem of the old marketing scams. With AI, if you don't know what you're looking for (and track businesses to their locations and look up their names in secretaries of state websites etc), you can absolutely get scammed. It makes that already massive problem even bigger.
If I do nothing at all for fear of good writers being caught in the crossfire, I allow the bad faith people to continue to operate and offer zero protection to people who could be harmed, which is against everything I believe in on a fundamental, moral level. So I feel like I have to speak up and give people tools to identify AI content. I might not be doing it the best way imaginable, and if there's a better one that gets the information to the people who need it, I'm all for it. But at this point I don't feel I can morally stay silent about helping people identify it for their own safety.
I’m sorry if you misread the intent of my comment. It was a general concern about the direction of AI detection options and not anything against you. I know your objectives are benign and mean well. I apologize if this wasn’t clear.
I wasn't upset with you, even if I did misunderstand it. You're a dear person to me, and I respect you highly. I tend to over-explain (thanks, autism). It is a legitimate concern, and we are in murky water. :( The best we can do is act in good faith as best we can to try and help where we are able!
I know the reason you are compiling this list is based on educational purposes, but I can’t help but think it has the potential for misuse. In the current AI witch hunt environment, it would be easy to misuse a list like this by those who would demonize “suspicious” authors without your editorial experience or context.
In the article I linked in this one, I state clearly that I don't want to do harm here, and you know me well enough to know my intentions as I state them are honest. I don't hate AI. I use it a lot for many things and find it an incredibly helpful tool to combat problems I have. I don't hate people who use AI to write their books, so long as they're honest with me about it when they come to me for editing (because I am *not* the editor for that). I think highly of folks like Novae, Danica, Mal, and many others who use AI heavily and have no problems with them. Or with their work. While I don't want anyone to be caught in the crossfire, I am limited to what I can do since AI detectors are nonsense entirely and are worthless for the most part (and we all know it). There's no surefire way to know unless you really get to know AI's voice (which I've spent over a year educating myself on pretty deeply).
Identifying AI doesn't mean the content is BS or that the person is inherently bad faith. It just means they used AI. It's a neutral fact. But it does open the door to questions about who the person is, why they used it, and how. If someone just used it to edit their book because they can't afford a human and went that direction... cool. I get it. If someone used AI to write their website copy for SEO reasons, okay, I understand that; SEO's rough. If someone used it to help them write their book, that's fine. It's not my cup of tea, but if they are delighting their readers, then that's between them and their readers; no finger wagging present from me.
I would equate this to an ingredients list on a muffin (for reasons beyond dietary safety/allergens). Some people won't eat it if it has sugar in it because they choose not to eat sugar. That should be up to them to decide with full knowledge because AI, right now, is a controversial "ingredient."
Then there are the downsides of how it's being deployed.
Unfortunately, we have run into a problem where we cannot do anything to help those most at risk if we do not accept false positives. If we do nothing to identify AI-generated content, then people run the massive risk of barreling into very dangerous misinformation, disinformation, or people are being sold things by dishonest actors (not all AI use is dishonest, to be clear--that's not my belief). And at that point, if people are not educated on what to look for, they are at immediate risk for severe harm. The damage this kind of thing is doing to our democracy, to people's health, to people's ability to do business... it's massive.
I see it happening on Facebook all the time where people are taken in by AI-generated "heartwarming" stories and send money to people or "news" articles making outrageous claims about politicians or other people or situations. Then there's the health disinformation, which is leading people to make sometimes fatal decisions about their health and safety. While that's always been a problem, it's a *dramatically* worse one now that AI has appeared because the speed and volume and believability at which it happens is so increased. This is particularly true in the political sphere with misinformation and disinformation at an all-time high and has led to very real violence and death.
Then you have AI marketing which frequently creates slick, believable, and non-existent products and scams people (it happens all the time on Etsy/Amazon/Kickstarter/etc.). It also makes things look far more polished than they usually are, which is entirely dishonest and is a consumer threat.
The number of AI-generated "marketing" websites targeted at authors that I have seen is absolutely massive. They look good and legitimate until you realize the whole thing is AI-created, and there's no human doing the work. They'd just run the novel through ChatGPT/Claude/whatever and spit out images and marketing text to the tune of thousands of dollars and do no work. It's worsening the problem of the old marketing scams. With AI, if you don't know what you're looking for (and track businesses to their locations and look up their names in secretaries of state websites etc), you can absolutely get scammed. It makes that already massive problem even bigger.
If I do nothing at all for fear of good writers being caught in the crossfire, I allow the bad faith people to continue to operate and offer zero protection to people who could be harmed, which is against everything I believe in on a fundamental, moral level. So I feel like I have to speak up and give people tools to identify AI content. I might not be doing it the best way imaginable, and if there's a better one that gets the information to the people who need it, I'm all for it. But at this point I don't feel I can morally stay silent about helping people identify it for their own safety.
I’m sorry if you misread the intent of my comment. It was a general concern about the direction of AI detection options and not anything against you. I know your objectives are benign and mean well. I apologize if this wasn’t clear.
I wasn't upset with you, even if I did misunderstand it. You're a dear person to me, and I respect you highly. I tend to over-explain (thanks, autism). It is a legitimate concern, and we are in murky water. :( The best we can do is act in good faith as best we can to try and help where we are able!