Should Books Written by AI Be Allowed?
No, an AI program did not write this post.
AI (artificial intelligence) is a hot topic right now thanks to the recent release of programs such as ChatGPT. It’s claimed to have advantages in many different fields and is supposedly able to do incredible things. However, there are arguments that it will take jobs away from people and could become too powerful.
When it comes to writing books, as an author I write everything myself. I think of and type each and every word, I read through my work multiple times and use spelling/grammar/punctuation checkers to ensure the writing is correctly presented.
One thing I most certainly do not do is use AI to generate words for me. This is something I will never do in my writing. I want everything that’s in my works to be 100% me. I wouldn’t want any other person to contribute to any of my books, let alone a computer program that can create text based on prompts.
But I am just one writer and there are countless other writers out there. While I wouldn’t use AI for any of my own projects, others might have different opinions. They may think it acceptable or even beneficial to use AI to some degree. They could, for example, use AI to write certain pieces of text they’re having trouble with or rewrite sections to make them flow better or be more effective.
There are undoubtedly some who create whole books using AI. They come up with a basic idea, instruct the program to ‘write’ a book based on that initial idea and the program does what it’s told. While this can be a very quick way of producing a load of text, it does have its drawbacks. A key issue is the fact that a lot of the time, you can tell AI-generated text comes from a computer program and not a human being.
This is why many people who create text-based projects using AI, spend time editing the piece of writing to make it more human. In other words, they add their own touch and style to it so that people will assume it’s written by a person and not by software.
The question is, should books written by AI be allowed? Should stores (both digital and physical) sell books that are fully or even just partially produced by AI?
Personally, I haven’t got a problem with it as long as the author makes it clear if they used AI. If any amount of text was created using AI — whether it was the entire work or parts of it — the author should be honest and upfront about it.
I’m not necessarily pro-AI, I just recognise that it’s here and fully accessible to everyone. Anyone can hop online and use AI to create books. People actively use and they will continue doing so. There’s never going to be a way of preventing books with AI-generated text from being sold. Why fight a battle I’m never going to win?
If someone is going to release a book, they should clearly state if any part of the writing was created by AI. It’s wrong to give people the impression that you wrote something you had no hand in creating.
As a self-published author, I’m not too bothered about AI, even if it results in a greater number of books being self-published and a greater amount of competition. Even though I should be concerned, I’m not going to let it get to me.
There is always going to be an incredible amount of books being self-published every day. The competition is massive and will always be that way. Yes, AI programs have more than likely increased the number of people becoming self-published authors. But the thing is, if AI wasn’t around, there would probably be something else that would give self-published works a boost.
To sum up, I think producing AI-written books is fine as long as it’s made clear to the reader how much of the book was created using AI. As a reader, I want to know whether the text I’m reading is human-written or AI-generated. If you’re going to write a book and want to use AI in some way, just let me know before I dive in and start reading.