By now, you're probably hearing all about AI, artificial intelligence, and how some authors are using it to write books.
Here are my thoughts...
Booksellers like Amazon reward authors for churning out books quickly by giving them more visibility in the store. If authors don't put a new book out every 90 days, they get lost in the crowd.
Competition pushes authors to strive for ever more frequent releases. It's no wonder that exhausted authors are eager to get on board with technology that lets them publish a book a week or even a book a day!
There are 4 Very Bad Things about this:
1) It's authorized plagiarism. The way AI works is by stealing phrases out of existing authors' works.
2) AI doesn't discern between what's true and what's false. It only collects words. You may be reading a "nonfiction" book (or "news" story) that contains false information.
3) AI content is not copyrightable. Once a book is published, there's no way to prevent it from being pirated or republished with a new title and/or character names. You could be paying for the same book over and over and not realize it.
4) Because they can create books almost as fast as you can read them, new AI "authors" will dominate the bookstores, making real authors hard to discover.
So what can be done?
I think books should have an ingredients label, just like food! Some people eat only organic. Some people eat junk food. Everyone has their own tastes. If authors wish to use AI content--and readers wish to read it--that's fine. But they need to disclose that.
Authors who falsely claim they haven't used AI can be easily exposed--ironically, using AI technology! Just as with food companies, if an author makes false claims about their ingredients, I think they should be required to pull their product off the shelves.
As for me, I can make you this promise...
I do not intend to use AI in the writing of my books.
I know AI is faster. I know my readers would probably love to get a new Glynnis Campbell book every month. I know it would give me better visibility to publish more often. And I know my books may soon disappear under an avalanche of AI novels.
But I believe some good things take time. Wine. Cheese. And stories.
So I will continue to write the old-fashioned way, with my own blood, sweat, and tears and on a human timeline.
I've decided to add this disclaimer to my book listings:
AI-FREE! 100% certified organic author-created content. No artificial intelligence was used in the making of this book.