So something interesting happened:
I posted a work 'Hard Reset' that was about 30% AI generated and 70% me. Sometimes, I would stick in quite long prompts to get a paragraph, and then significantly modify the output because output was usually pretty bad. Sometimes I would write the entire paragraph. I did not add an AI generated label when I posted (see link below on US copyright rulings).
The Storiesonline platform seems to have automatically added an AI Generated label. I didn't care in the end because it was an experiment and I had intended to label it as AI generated so that it could be compared to other works.
I posted a second work 'Wolf in Sheep Dog Clothing'. This was 100% me. No AI tool was used in its creation. Yet it still received an AI Generated Label.
I assume that there is some kind of automatic AI detection tool being used. I can say right now that it is faulty.
The issue here is not only the fact that work labelled as AI generated is less likely to be read, it could also affect copyright.
The issue is this: An AI Generated body of content is NOT protected by copyright in most jurisdictions. A body of work in which a AI tool is used, but the content is substantially modified, MAY be able to be copyrighted. Copyright is still maintained for human generated sections are as well as the sections that underwent substantial modifications. Here is an interesting article:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c4986a04-e808-48bb-a874-b0af02fcdf25
I think the issue here is whether the tag of 'AI Generated' actually impinges on copyright. Let's say that a posting on Storiesonline has a tag of AI Generated. Someone can then take this work and repost it somewhere else without your permission. Or maybe they created one of those Youtube videos based on the work. Their defense would be that the work was posted with an AI Generated tag, thus, it was free to use.
There is no issues with having an AI Generated Label - it just needs to be a statement from the author, not automatically applied. Storiesonline has a very clear statement that authors retain copyright. Automatically applying a label that could possibly infringe on copyright protection is concerning.
I would appreciate other thoughts.
I tried to do something different: Use AI to write a short story (Hard Reset). It was harder than I thought. Most of the time, the result was florid and barely readable prose that sounded interesting at first and then made no sense when you read it. I ended up spending more time editing the result than writing anything. I noticed that it seems to love to use m-dashes, tends to use two adjectives in from of nouns, and uses figurative language so frequently that I feel that I am reading a bad first year semester creative writing class. It also had this weird tendency to first say what the character did NOT do before saying what the character actually did. Where does that come from?
The resulting story has ended up readable - it ended up with higher ratings that I expected, but that is probably because I rewrote 70% of it, or maybe the plot was interesting.
I have written a second story using no AI called A Wolf in Sheep Dog Clothing. It should show up in a few days. It is my first attempt at humor. I got the idea after I was listening to a guy saying that he was an alpha and he started talking about some engineers as betas. It was a crock of shit. So I came up with a story about alphas and betas. I suspect women will be offended if they took it seriously (god I hope not). I kept laughing as I wrote it.