AI use Question

[xman5]

A question on the use of AI. I recently had an Audio story rejected for being AI. I understand the reasoning for the policy. For the record the story was all my creation. After creating the story and editing the story I realized that frankly it stunk and the text just did not sound right. Even though I wrote it it did not reflect properly what and how I wanted to say it. I did use AI to punch up paragraphs. Now the result was still my ideas and most my text, but certainly improved. Much like and editor would improve a Novel.

My question is what is the line for assistance from AI? Some of us have great ideas (well we think we do), but just are not that good of a writer and it does help. And yes it do help me improve. The guidelines say "These type of apps are replacing original human written text with generic AI generated text, and should be avoided when submitting work to Literotica."

OK I am taking " should be" very literal and not absolute. I would like others opinions.

 

[StillStunned]

Nope, the site takes a pretty absolute stance on AI.

 

[OffNSFW]

Bruh, if you think automated tools are making you a better writer, wait until you try doing all the work yourself.

 

[Voboy]

Yep. Don't use it for anything at all in the writing process. That's what the site wants, and that's the safest advice anyone can give you.

 

[Bramblethorn]

A question on the use of AI. I recently had an Audio story rejected for being AI. I understand the reasoning for the policy. For the record the story was all my creation. After creating the story and editing the story I realized that frankly it stunk and the text just did not sound right. Even though I wrote it it did not reflect properly what and how I wanted to say it. I did use AI to punch up paragraphs. Now the result was still my ideas and most my text, but certainly improved.

That would be more AI than Literotica allows.

My question is what is the line for assistance from AI? Some of us have great ideas (well we think we do), but just are not that good of a writer and it does help.

Nobody here started out as a good writer. Like most things worth having, it takes work to build up that skill. AI might be able to teach you a few things, basic technical stuff, but it's also likely to teach a lot of bad habits.

 

[jaF0]

A question on the use of AI. I recently had an Audio story rejected for being AI. I understand the reasoning for the policy. For the record the story was all my creation. After creating the story and editing the story I realized that frankly it stunk and the text just did not sound right. Even though I wrote it it did not reflect properly what and how I wanted to say it. I did use AI to punch up paragraphs. Now the result was still my ideas and most my text, but certainly improved. Much like and editor would improve a Novel.

My question is what is the line for assistance from AI? Some of us have great ideas (well we think we do), but just are not that good of a writer and it does help. And yes it do help me improve. The guidelines say "These type of apps are replacing original human written text with generic AI generated text, and should be avoided when submitting work to Literotica."

OK I am taking " should be" very literal and not absolute. I would like others opinions.

Use the Bot result as an example, then in your own words tweak it a bit further. THAT is more like what would happen using a Human editor ... they read, make suggestions, you incorporate those suggestions in your own words.

 

[xman5]

That would be more AI than Literotica allows.



Nobody here started out as a good writer. Like most things worth having, it takes work to build up that skill. AI might be able to teach you a few things, basic technical stuff, but it's also likely to teach a lot of bad habits.

Thanks. It was a story I wrote a while ago. I think that I am a much better writer now, but I always liked the story concept. I am rewriting the story now and it is actually much better then the ai version.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I may need some clarification...

Was the text of your audio story being assisted by AI the reason for the rejection or did you use AI to create some or all of the audio?

The reason I ask is because I have had an audio story on Lit for a couple of years that was created by taking one of my posted stories and running it through Amazon Polly to convert text to speech. I was done as a test of the technology available at the time and not something that I spend a great deal of time on.

When all the hubris about AI-generated content began surfacing here in the forums, I sent Laurel a private message pointing out my audio story and informing her that I would have no qualms with her viewing it as a violation of Lit's rules and taking it down. She has never responded or reacted.

 

[xman5]

Now that I go back and read the message it states:

This means not only the text of our stories but also the art, audio, and photos must be taken by you or the illustrations made by you - or the work of a collaborator who has given permission for the image to be used in your work. Currently, the copyright of an A.I.-generated artwork is uncertain. For this reason, we do not accept work generated using A.I. Please verify that the all parts of this are created by a human.

So now I assume that is the AI Audio voice. It is the only way I can do an Audio story, which is what I enjoy doing. My goal is to eventually create stories that are like old time radio dramas. However the problem is that I am not a great speaker and frankly I would not want to hear me narrate a story. In the past I have used AI voices without a problem. This must be an updated policy.

I understand not allowing AI text, but in my opinion Audio of your own text should be ok. Copyright is a lame excuse. I don't mind declaring my Audios copyright free. I just want people to hear them, whether the like them or not.

So I guess I will have to stop posting on the site. I'll go back to posting on Youtube for those 20 views that my vids received.

 

[StillStunned]

I understand not allowing AI text, but in my opinion Audio of your own text should be ok.

I think the problem is with the voices used to generate text-to-audio. Wasn't there a to-do a while back about Scarlett Johansson's voice being used without her permission?

 

[xman5]

Bruh, if you think automated tools are making you a better writer, wait until you try doing all the work yourself.

I hear you. I just liked the story concept so much and took a short cut. My bad at that. However now I realize the real reason was the AI voice.

I think the problem is with the voices used to generate text-to-audio. Wasn't there a to-do a while back about Scarlett Johansson's voice being used without her permission?

That is a bit different. They used her recordings to train their voice. It ended up sounding liker her. The voices I used are generic.

 

[xman5]

Now that I go back and read the message it states:

This means not only the text of our stories but also the art, audio, and photos must be taken by you or the illustrations made by you - or the work of a collaborator who has given permission for the image to be used in your work. Currently, the copyright of an A.I.-generated artwork is uncertain. For this reason, we do not accept work generated using A.I. Please verify that the all parts of this are created by a human.

So now I assume that is the AI Audio voice. It is the only way I can do an Audio story, which is what I enjoy doing. My goal is to eventually create stories that are like old time radio dramas. However the problem is that I am not a great speaker and frankly I would not want to hear me narrate a story. In the past I have used AI voices without a problem. This must be an updated policy.

I understand not allowing AI text, but in my opinion Audio of your own text should be ok. Copyright is a lame excuse. I don't mind declaring my Audios copyright free. I just want people to hear them, whether the like them or not.

So I guess I will have to stop posting on the site. I'll go back to posting on Youtube for those 20 views that my vids received.

One important thing I forgot to mention is that I have to highly self censor the stories for Youtube. Also many of the stories can't be post on YT at all.

 

[jaF0]

It is the only way I can do an Audio story, which is what I enjoy doing.

Here ya' go:

https://forum.literotica.com/forums/audio-creators-booth.74/

 

[Otto26]

Here ya' go:

https://forum.literotica.com/forums/audio-creators-booth.74/

That's hilarious. Most audio creators are focused on the first person experience rather than audiobooks. Try finding someone willing to do an audiobook conversion. Then try to find someone that will actually complete the project. I'm in the middle of that right now. The quality a human reader will bring to the project is head and shoulders above what a TTS tool could produce, but using a TTS would afford me greater creative control and put the project in my hands rather than someone else's. And who gets the credit if a voice actor does the performance? Seems to me that the audio performance, which can be copyright protected, should go in the catalog of the voice actor, not the writer.

The site has some very strict rules in place which ease the burden on the low number of staff members dealing with the high number of submissions. But the rules are applied capriciously. I've created new artwork using elements I had the rights to; either because I was explicitly granted the rights or the images were in the public domain. No AI was used. Rejected due to copyright issues. Meanwhile everyone with a computer and burner account is free to post images they clearly don't own the copyrights to on the forums. No TTS allowed. But they clearly are because there are TTS stories published here. I published one, which was clearly marked as using TTS, and it was accepted. I asked for it to be removed so I could invest the time and resources in making it better, and it was rejected with the AI tag when i resubmitted the exact same story.

Edit to add: The text in orange above sounds whiney. I'm working with someone who has volunteered to convert one of my stories to an audiobook. For free. I've priced professional voice work and that's a couple of thousand dollars worth of labor. Which someone is offering to provide for free. So if someone backs out of an audio project or takes a long time to complete it, that's fine by me. My point was that pointing someone to the audio creators forum and expecting that to solve their problem is laughable.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Anyone can learn to write, and it costs functionally nothing.

 

[StillStunned]

Anyone can learn to write, and it costs functionally nothing.

And you don't even have to be that good to find an appreciative audience. Or even a lucrative publishing/merchandising/movie deal.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Now that I go back and read the message it states:

This means not only the text of our stories but also the art, audio, and photos must be taken by you or the illustrations made by you - or the work of a collaborator who has given permission for the image to be used in your work. Currently, the copyright of an A.I.-generated artwork is uncertain. For this reason, we do not accept work generated using A.I. Please verify that the all parts of this are created by a human.

So now I assume that is the AI Audio voice. It is the only way I can do an Audio story, which is what I enjoy doing. My goal is to eventually create stories that are like old time radio dramas. However the problem is that I am not a great speaker and frankly I would not want to hear me narrate a story.

Again, this is something that can be developed with practice, or you can ask another human to narrate for you. Many people are very self-conscious about the sound of their own voice (me included) but don't underestimate the value of having an actual human reading the story, one who understands which bits should be emphasised, drawn out, ...

I find AI voices hard to listen to, something that's actually gotten worse as the tech has gotten better, because they're now in "uncanny valley" territory where they're not immediately obviously robotic but there's just something subtly off about them.

 

[xman5]

Again, this is something that can be developed with practice, or you can ask another human to narrate for you. Many people are very self-conscious about the sound of their own voice (me included) but don't underestimate the value of having an actual human reading the story, one who understands which bits should be emphasised, drawn out,

I understand. A great voice actor is 1000% better then TTS. This is just for fun. Late night, a cold snowy winter day. I don't want to run a production company. Also because of the nature of my stories I am not too crazy with the idea of asking anyone I know to help. I'm go try my own narration.

 

[Scorcher2123]

Im curious about the rate of false positives for ai use. I just wrote the first chapter of my first story and I'm hoping that it is not flagged because of my writing style.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Im curious about the rate of false positives for ai use.

Many of us are. "AI detectors" generally have a significant error rate, and with about 100-200 stories published here daily even a 5% error rate would mean a lot of false positives. But Literotica haven't disclosed what tools they're using and without an independent way to know the error rates, we're mostly just speculating.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Im curious about the rate of false positives for ai use. I just wrote the first chapter of my first story and I'm hoping that it is not flagged because of my writing style.

Impossible to know. As @Bramblethorn noted, we can't see behind the curtain to know what tools the site is using to make the determination.

On the converse, there is the Shakespearean protestation factor; "... doth protest too much, methinks." How do we know for certain that those that claim to be falsely tagged are, in fact, false positives?

As the system is, we can either try to adapt so our stories don't get tagged*, or we can post them somewhere else. It may sound a bit draconian, but what other choices do we honestly have. We don't get to tell Laurel and Manu how to run their site.


*This is in no way intended to state, imply, or suggest that any writer change their style. Rather it is intended to suggest they look for 'other' things they can do within their style so their stories don't get flagged as AI.

 

[StillStunned]

As the system is, we can either try to adapt so our stories don't get tagged*, or we can post them somewhere else. It may sound a bit draconian, but what other choices do we honestly have. We don't get to tell Laurel and Manu how to run their site.


*This is in no way intended to state, imply, or suggest that any writer change their style. Rather it is intended to suggest they look for 'other' things they can do within their style so their stories don't get flagged as AI.

I've read a few times that stories used to get rejected for being poorly written, and even now bad punctuation can be a reason for rejection. Do people say, "You shouldn't have to change your style" to those writers too? Did they back in the day?

My point here is that those writers presumably improved their skills, or else gave up. I don't see rejection for suspected AI as being fundamentally different. Whether or not the writer used AI tools, Laurel feels that the story is lacking in some way - as in, it lacks the quality that makes it feel like a proper story - and she can refuse to publish it on her site.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I've read a few times that stories used to get rejected for being poorly written, and even now bad punctuation can be a reason for rejection. Do people say, "You shouldn't have to change your style" to those writers too? Did they back in the day?

Three years ago, folk would have given advice such as, don't write bland and cliched characters, vary your sentence lengths, punctuate correctly, etc etc, and it would have been considered good writerly advice. It's the same advice given now, in these AI threads - get better reader engagement by writing better stories, but people seem to reject that notion. I don't see any difference now.

My point here is that those writers presumably improved their skills, or else gave up. I don't see rejection for suspected AI as being fundamentally different. Whether or not the writer used AI tools, Laurel feels that the story is lacking in some way - as in, it lacks the quality that makes it feel like a proper story - and she can refuse to publish it on her site.

Absolutely agree.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Three years ago, folk would have given advice such as, don't write bland and cliched characters, vary your sentence lengths, punctuate correctly, etc etc, and it would have been considered good writerly advice. It's the same advice given now, in these AI threads - get better reader engagement by writing better stories, but people seem to reject that notion. I don't see any difference now.

Absolutely agree.

"Style" has become sacrosanct, even if it's bad style.

 

[StillStunned]

I think perhaps we should distinguish between "style" and "voice".

Style can change, can evolve, can be adapted to different kind of stories, can improve with practice.

Voice, however ephemeral to define, is the writer's own - and it's precisely what AI lacks.