Clarification regarding AI policy

[Questianor]

I understand there's no 100% surefire way to distinguish between AI-written/assisted and purely human writing and that enforcement would inevitably never be complete and ocassionally suffer from false positives/negatives and subjective determinations of the moderators. I also think, however, that this describes most moderation activity anywhere on the internet. I think it would be well worth it for the site's usability and long-term appeal to at least try to crack down on or identify and filter the really obvious AI slop. You know, the stuff that updates with a new full-length chapter every single day where every other sentence is "it wasn't just X— it was Y". All this slop crowding up the pages is just a bad user experience, at least in my humble opinion. If it's not as obvious as that it's not so big a deal so there's not much need to try to enforce anything anyway.

That's my two cents, had to throw it out there even if it doesn't seem likely to make a difference.

 

[NuclearBird]

I understand there's no 100% surefire way to distinguish between AI-written/assisted and purely human writing and that enforcement would inevitably never be complete and ocassionally suffer from false positives/negatives and subjective determinations of the moderators. I also think, however, that this describes most moderation activity anywhere on the internet. I think it would be well worth it for the site's usability and long-term appeal to at least try to crack down on or identify and filter the really obvious AI slop. You know, the stuff that updates with a new full-length chapter every single where every other sentence is "it wasn't just X— it was Y". All this slop crowding up the pages is just a bad user experience, at least in my humble opinion. If it's not as obvious as that it's not so big a deal so there's not much need to try to enforce anything anyway.

That's my two cents, had to throw it out there even if it doesn't seem likely to make a difference.

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Literally all you have to do is to look out for emdashes and reddit prose (for some godforsaken reason they are all trained on reddit style prose) and then a quick sweep of any positive results for Grammarly users (why anyone uses that garbage service is beyond me) and that's most of the work done.

 

[Lady Naga]

I will never give up my emdashes, you can take them from my cold dead hands.

 

[Lady Naga]

Unironically though AI is an issue for two people: paranoid schizos who can't read a chapter without thinking the person has been replaced by a robot, and people who write so poorly that most people arent bothering to begin with. Its a non-issue on both sides and I'm glad QQ is being sane about their rules. You read fanfiction. If you want perfect media tailored to you, find a bunch of goodread reviews and buy a book.

 

[LazyAutumnMoon]

Literally all you have to do is to look out for emdashes and reddit prose (for some godforsaken reason they are all trained on reddit style prose) and then a quick sweep of any positive results for Grammarly users (why anyone uses that garbage service is beyond me) and that's most of the work done.

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To add on:

Go about 1.5 years back, and the em dash was a sign of real writing. It's useful in many different situations - adding details to a sentence, interrupting sentences, placing actions in between dialogue. All the complicated stuff that makes writing fun and engaging. Best of all, iterations of AI programs back then just didn't know what to do with them, and most of them don't.

But then, if that's the case, how come you've never seen it before? Because by the time a writer is confident enough to start using em dashes, they tend to know the rules and conventions behind writing. They use these marks sparingly and in ways that flows naturally, thus leading your your eyes to glaze over them in the same way that a reader's eyes pass over the 'said' dialogue tag.

Recent versions of AI changed that, causing an explosion of em dashes in the past year. Suddenly, they're everywhere!

Of course, the programs still don't understand the proper way to use them, and like an amateur the AI overuses it to the point where the average reader notice them. Thus, everybody jumped on it as the sign of AI writing, launching a hundred articles and a thousand reddit threads telling people to look for the em dash.

Except, that's not quite right. What you'd need to consider when you read a story are questions like:
Does the writer show that they know how to use the em dash?
Does the writer know when to stop using the em dash?
Do they not know what a comma is? It would have been so much better there!
...And such things.

My advice is to find a good writer who you know is not using AI to write their chapters, and ask them to explain the many signs of AI writing rather than relying on advice condensed to the layman-level, which, though containing a grain of truth, simplifies it to the point that the advice becomes unusable.

Basically, there's no quick and dirty way to spot AI writing, hence the creation of this thread in the first place.

 

[Student of Zelretch]

Grammarly users (why anyone uses that garbage service is beyond me)

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You mean other than universities pushing it to the point of having entire classes that cannot be passed without getting 100% grammarly scores on each assignment? It's genuinely useful for formal writing, or at least it was back in the 2016-2020 era when I was in Uni.

 

[Lady Naga]

You mean other than universities pushing it to the point of having entire classes that cannot be passed without getting 100% grammarly scores on each assignment? It's genuinely useful for formal writing, or at least it was back in the 2016-2020 era when I was in Uni.

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[Jerrylothy]

Honestly I find a lot of the complaints about AI art funny because you're seeing unfiltered cognition.
But TLDR:Resist primal urge (Fuck around, and you will find out.), otherwise you're good.

 

[Zoroastrian]

Honestly I find a lot of the complaints about AI art funny because you're seeing unfiltered cognition.
But TLDR:Resist primal urge, otherwise you're good.

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As someone who uses image generators frequently but doesn't consider it art, I have no idea what the hell this means.

pls explain

 

[LTWadBK]

Is this what caused me to get logged out today? I had to redo my password and everything.

 

[CriticalFailure]

*curiously checks if there is a QQ thread for AI that helps writing*
Nope. Only AI art.


I wonder how far away we are from being able to train an AI on translations of Asanagi's writings (they have some on their fanbox, all japanese), and using that to produce more tailored smut in the Victim Girls style...
(I actually found an AI artist already that does their art in the Asanagi style, which is incredibly satisfying, when one has an immediate need for curvy shortstacks with smug grins made for correction that have amazing ahegao faces)

EDIT: Ah wait, there is a small one.

https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/ai-writing-and-disccusion-thread.19893/

 

[ZurigaSungama]

Is this what caused me to get logged out today? I had to redo my password and everything.

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I don't follow your logic. Did you post this in the right thread?

 

[Jerrylothy]

As someone who uses image generators frequently but doesn't consider it art, I have no idea what the hell this means.

pls explain

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Your dreams are equally nonsensical. The ideas in your head are fluid. Only by passing through the filter of doing is the result sensical. AI does not have that filter.

 

[Metabolicjosh]

I haven't read every comment, but I have read enough to know that I want to chime in.

I am categorically against any rule that forces people to disclose that their story is written in part or in full by artificial intelligence -regardless of the reasoning.

Why? Let's ignore that it is a needlessly controlling -something that QQ has a history of trying to avoid. The software used to detect artificial intelligence is frankly dog shit. The patterns that it looks for...?

Yeah, those patterns are common in autistic authors and experienced authors and doubly so with authors that fit both catagories. If you're not aware, QQ and the FanFiction community as a whole is extremely more likely to be neurodivergent than most other hobbies.

You would have so many false flags, it goes past not being funny and right back to being hilarious.

Please.

No.

 

[LTWadBK]

I don't follow your logic. Did you post this in the right thread?

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Seeing as this is the only active rule changing thread. There was some messages about Ai and bots but no alerts or threads on why people would get logged out.

 

[ZurigaSungama]

Seeing as this is the only active rule changing thread. There was some messages about Ai and bots but no alerts or threads on why people would get logged out.

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That's probably a browser issue, and certainly not relevant to this thread.

 

[Cap'n Skipjack]

It's clear that staff just kind of straight up doesn't care. I can respect that, at least in some ways, so long as they continue to allow people voicing displeasure over AI to do so, so long as it doesn't devolve into the nebulous category of "harrassment." But the staff themselves admit that disclosing AI usage is considered "polite" so as long as we're still allowed to point out when people are being "impolite," and make reasonable criticisms about AI and its use, then I guess that will have to do.

My only concern there is that people who use AI are, in my experience, horrendously oversensitive. Just this thread alone has had several people mention how much it "might hurt someone's poor feelings" when somebody simply asks the question, "Is this made by AI?" I can only guess you'll be getting a lot of erroneous harassment reports in the near future, and I can only hope you won't humor them.

Basically, if nothing ACTUALLY changes, then fine. If somebody posts a horrible looking AI generated image and I point out that it looks horrible, only to get hit with a "harassment" warning for it? That's less fine.

If pro-AI guys need a hugbox they should go to reddit.

All that said, if I may add my two cents, I think you're probably going to have to be ready to revisit this decision, possibly sooner than you think, because even if you don't care about any moral, ethical, or philosophical arguments, the PRACTICAL problem with AI remains, and that's the inevitable oversaturation. Look at the state of sites like DeviantArt and Pinterest. They're so massively oversaturated with mountains upon mountains of AI generated chaff that navigating them has become borderline impossible.

No site is immune to that, and this announcement could very well embolden the pro-AI crowd to start dumping here.

 

[SuperPulp2789]

The issue with requiring the disclosure? Even if we, the staff, cared (and we don't), there is no easy way to determine AI use. And thus, enforcement is impossible. And thus, there is no way we will require it.

The main reason we put this up is that we were seeing witchhunts and harassment starting about whether people were using AI or not. These were reported, and were indeed breaking the rules, so we did the standard warning. So, please report this harassment.

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I think I recall some YouTube critics accusing some people of doing AI, thing is, it really is just their flawed art style and some of those weird defects can be made by regular artists

Hell, people are bizarrely robotic and easy to predict after awhile, that's not an exaggeration…..I know some people so extremely into routine it gets uncanny

There are even some guys who speak and look "wrong" in a way like they're speaking with only one tone continuously or very much reaching into the uncanny valley

 

[carelesslazy]

I do agree there's nothing can be done, and apart from any ethical or philosophical concerns, from a practical point of view, I'm not sure if there's even a reason in the first place to do something.
I've read stories that some authors has disclosed at the very beginning that they've used AI, and other authors has vehemently denied that they've used AI, though, I strongly suspected that they did. As with any other story, some of them I enjoyed, some I didn't and authors truthfulness didn't matter to me.
So even if we could somehow magically identify AI usage in fics down to the percentages and mods did tag them. For me, It would be like tagging the fic with "AU". It says almost nothing about the fic and whether or not I'd find it enjoyable. I would still, feel the need to get in there and get hit in the face with " adjective. adjective. adjective. " and " not adjective but/just adjective " every other sentence to gtfo of there.

 

[Reece]

@Grok summarise this thread for me.

 

[Karp]

A writer is a wordsmith as much as a guy hammering steel is a blacksmith,

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I always thought this line of thought to be amusing. There are guys like you (assuming) and George RR. Martin, who think heavily over every word, and deeply plot their worlds/characters. Then there's guys like me and Stephen King who write a chapter a day, and it is what it is. As long as the story flows, makes logical sense and is entertaining enough, no need to let the mind weigh heavy over intricate meanings, deep themes, or extensive world building.

 

[wolfund]

I always thought this line of thought to be amusing. There are guys like you (assuming) and George RR. Martin, who think heavily over every word, and deeply plot their worlds/characters. Then there's guys like me and Stephen King who write a chapter a day, and it is what it is. As long as the story flows, makes logical sense and is entertaining enough, no need to let the mind weigh heavy over intricate meanings, deep themes, or extensive world building.

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Well some blacksmith can make swords, over can make frying pans. Some writer can only write with detailled plans and over with instincts, and in many other ways and forms. Bold of YOU to assume I only think that writer are some monolithic entities, what like all of us together is that we use our hand and brain to write.

someone who only repost a fully fledged unedited AI story is not a writer, they are a prompt engineer. the same way a guy pushing a button in a factory making frying pan is not a blacksmith. Ironically both have the exact same limitation.

 

[Student of Zelretch]

But the staff themselves admit that disclosing AI usage is considered "polite" so as long as we're still allowed to point out when people are being "impolite," and make reasonable criticisms about AI and its use, then I guess that will have to do.

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If you want to point something out, once, politely, it'll be allowed. If you're stalking original posters… you'll be leaving their threads and/or the forum as a whole long before staff enforces your desires.

 

[Zoroastrian]

In my experience, you only use AI if you can't or won't learn how to do something "properly". If you can't or won't draw, you use AI to make pretty pictures. If you can't or won't write you use AI to make fancy words.

However, if you can do one of those things you're likely to avoid AI since you consider it "cheating". Or at least I do. I can write but I can't draw, so I gladly use AI for "art" but would never have it write for me. Having the AI do it would not only dilute my work, but would make me feel like I am not improving since I am not doing anything. Although I have considered feeding scenarios into the AI and having it give me ideas, but in my experience it tends to spit out the same sorts of things over and over, if you pay attention. AI can't do subtle foreshadowing, for example.

 

[Metabolicjosh]

this thread alone has had several people mention how much it "might hurt someone's poor feelings" when somebody simply asks the question, "Is this made by AI?"

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AI isn't very good at making natural writing. If you ask an author that manually wrote their story if they use ai, then you're really saying "the writing is bad / unnatural enough that I believe it was made by an ai."

It isn't overly sensitive to recognize that the question is mildly insulting to actual authors. You must have assumed that people pointing this out were saying that ai tool users will be insulted for your position to not be intentionally slanderous.