Forum: Author Hangout

but AI generated 'replacement' actors are here now.

Not to mention all the studio set builders being replaced by green screen.

AI generated 'replacement' actors are here now.

Not a new concept. Looker (1981) Film plot included 'AI' models/actresses.

ETA

Before my time, but mentioned in "Castle in the Sand"

My daughter works as a background actor (extra.)

Before the SAG/AFTRA strike she had already been asked to sign waivers permitting scanning her image and using it in perpetuity. She didn't agree.

If the producers get their way, all of the background and day players will be AI generated images.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-65589913

Less 'driver less', more 'hands free':

Despite the "driverless" name, the buses operate with two staff on board.
One will sit in the driver's seat to monitor the technology, and a so-called bus captain will help passengers with boarding and buying tickets.

Despite the "driverless" name, the buses operate with two staff on board.
One will sit in the driver's seat to monitor the technology, and a so-called bus captain will help passengers with boarding and buying tickets.

So, a more expensive bus plus two human employees to operate it vs a standard bus with one person behind the wheel driving and handling boarding and payment?
In any part of the world where public transportation has a limited budget I do not see that catching on.

So, a more expensive bus plus two human employees to operate it vs a standard bus with one person behind the wheel driving and handling boarding and payment?

It gets better;

Police Scotland has invested close to £20 million in electric vehicles (EVs) for the Force – but 23 of the police stations provided with cars have not got any charging points.

That's according to the Scottish Liberal Democrats, which stated that it retrieved this information under the Freedom of Information Act.

Source

POLICE blew up a wall socket after trying to power their fleet of electric motors by passing cables through station windows.

Officers resorted to the desperate move after 23 cop shops in Scotland were given the eco cars — but nowhere handy to top them up.

Source

A FLEET of 75 new electric vehicles bought by Police Scotland has been kept in storage for around eight months but the force has denied that a lack of charging stations has stopped them from being deployed.
Old diesel cars were used instead, with the EVs left at council car parks overnight "in the hope no damage would come to them".

Source

I wonder if I can use her

Make sure you choose an image that does not show her fingers, or crop them out. Especially the one in which she has six fingers on one hand.

Make sure you choose an image that does not show her fingers, or crop them out. Especially the one in which she has six fingers on one hand.

Unless the story involves how good it feels to get a hand-shandy from a bird with six fingers.

So his brother, who has no fingers on one hand and only one on the other is their binary expert…?

Note to Starmer.

When a woman shouts "cocksucker" at you, it is NOT an invitation…!

The 999 shouting "asshole" are using it as both a verb and an adjective.

Since the AI generated Milla Sofia is hot, and the U.S. Copyright Office says you cannot copyright AI generated material, I wonder if I can use her generated images on my book cover.

Just generate your own, with stable diffusion.

It's really not very difficult. The important thing to remember is never use a well-known person's name as part of your description. That avoids generating images that look too much like someone who would sue you.

It does take some experimenting, but eventually you can get some very good results - and I'm not talking about just the artsy-fartsy fantasy illustrations you most often see as examples on line, although obviously it's good for that if that's what you need.

Can you describe what sort of illustration you'd want for that cover?

Fed the right combination of keywords the AI can generate a story, but that story won't be inspired by imagination, it will be a miss mash of stories already loaded into the AI's data bank.

The majority of the population doesn't even know what imagination is anymore. They have no idea how to spot it, or even to care. Our world is so full of the artifical that there are people I know who have no idea what a strawberry or grape actually tastes like since the candy is all they've known (plus the real ones are gross these days).

It is blatantly obvious that easy access to AI generators will vastly increase the amount of dross produced globally.

Just like mass production filled our planet with plastic crap to the point there's a literal floating trash island, it will fill the digital space to overflowing with trash. I know the digital space isn't as finite as our blue marble, but the visible part to the average user is quite small and that's the part we should worry about getting over run. A "hate read" is still a read, and that's how many of these AI generated content get clicks, straight up hate, but negative attention is still attention, and attention puts them on the front page for everyone else to "hate read."

There are several websites full of free stories with more added every day. So why would anyone pay to read a story? The answer to that is the same as the answer to why AI generators won't ever replace good authors.

I feel the issue with this is the same one all good professions have suffered. I have a mild interest in learning wood working. But, why even bother trying to learn when the only way to sell man made woodwork is if you're a top master already? It can only be a hobby at best, and I've already got a million other things on my plate. I wouldn't pay $2k for a table made by a person when I can buy a plastic one that doesn't need special care for under $100. People will buy the 10 cent AI crap and get 50 stories for the price of one human written novel. It's not that human authors will disappear. You can still hire calligraphers, but I've never met one. It's more about the fact that writing will have a barrier for new writers, and true writing will become as rare as those who hand carve canoes from a tree trunk. Do they exist? Of course. There's a huge number of people waiting for the world to end to finally put these skills to use. If I was just getting into writing today, I'd be massively discouraged by the complete lack of reader comments and interaction, and I mean that across all platforms. I post to 5 other sites and out of them all I have only 1 reader who regularly comments and interacts with me, even though collectively my stories generate thousands of views. Occasionally, I'll get one or two pop up if they're really excited or if I disappear for a long time, but that's not feed back and that's what young writers and artists and musicians need to get better. I have no idea if I'm actually a good writer or not because, well, no one says anything! I just go off my own ego, at this point. I think that's the more immediate threat to writing and art from AI. Yes, it may be another 50 years before the AI is writing well, but in the meantime, with our already depressed and hopeless society, the biggest threat is going to be "why bother?" And all the imagination and talent will be lost before it's ever known.

there's a literal floating trash island

No, there's not.
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/great-pacific-garbage-patch/

For many people, the idea of a "garbage patch" conjures up images of an island of trash floating on the ocean. In reality, these patches are almost entirely made up of tiny bits of plastic, called microplastics. Microplastics can't always be seen by the naked eye. Even satellite imagery doesn't show a giant patch of garbage. The microplastics of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can simply make the water look like a cloudy soup. This soup is intermixed with larger items, such as fishing gear and shoes.

All you really gotta do is type in "garbage patch ocean" and there's hundreds of images of said garbage patch, and while yes, many may very well be AI generated (another major issue for AI), I know not all of them are. There's also many other articles about the sheer size and density of said patch, and it's not microplastics.

You don't like National Geographic as a source, here's an actual published scientific article.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w

We estimated that an area of 1.6 million km2 holds ocean plastic concentrations ranging from 10 s to 100 s kg km−2 (Fig. 3).

hundreds of kilograms of debris per square kilometer of ocean is a very long way from anything that can be honestly described as an island.

All the images on line showing a garbage island are fake. Every last one.

They are not exactly fake. What they do is corral floating debris into a small area and photo it. Then the imply that it is representative of the entire area.

What they do is corral floating debris into a small area and photo it.

I would argue that is faking it, you just aren't faking it in post processing.

Also, that's not going to create something anywhere near dense enough for someone to stand on, which is what describing it as an "island" is intended to imply.

If I was just getting into writing today, I'd be massively discouraged by the complete lack of reader comments and interaction, and I mean that across all platforms. I post to 5 other sites and out of them all I have only 1 reader who regularly comments and interacts with me, even though collectively my stories generate thousands of views. Occasionally, I'll get one or two pop up if they're really excited or if I disappear for a long time, but that's not feed back and that's what young writers and artists and musicians need to get better. I have no idea if I'm actually a good writer or not because, well, no one says anything!

I was going to post a Comment on one of your stories...

But I can't find any on SoL.

Please post some of your stories here. I find that it is common to get feedback, or at least Comments. As long as you remember to Enable Comments for your stories.

I was going to post a Comment on one of your stories...

But I can't find any on SoL.

Authors don't have to use their pen-name on the forum.

The majority of the population doesn't even know what imagination is anymore.

Exactly my experience with pretty much anyone under 30 and/or still living in mom's basement.

No imagination - just buy what all your friends have - whether you need it or not. When it breaks, order another online.

No imagination means readers are unable to temporarily immerse themselves in your story. First time they encounter something new to them, they'll give up reading. They'll be unable or unwilling to figure it out, because without imagination there's no curiosity, and no incentive to even bother trying.

That's bad news for writers, but even worse news for civilization.

Remember, many, if not most, of the things that allow people to live comfortable, well-fed lives were invented two or three hundred years ago, by people who were curious and had imagination.

Now, it seems like the most "innovative" thing to do is to take anything invented years ago, stick an "i" on the front of the name, and get rich.

Which seems an appropriate place to drop this link. ;-)

"AI just beat a human test for creativity. What does that even mean?"

My $0.02: It means we just proved we don't know how to measure creativity.

For which he won an award…!!!

DON'T PANIC.

I agree, I think AI can help aspiring authors clarify and build better stories, but the true greats are still going to stand head and shoulders above the rest of us. If anything, I think AI will help the lower quality writers (like me) to do a better job, kind of like spell checkers do.

Thanks for recounting your experiment. This matches my experience. The ChatGPT, both in its output and the way it responds to differently worded prompts, is a VERY different thing from what's gone before.

a guide to writing multi-person dialogue

Multi-person dialogue isn't that an oxymoron?
Dialogue means two talking. If only one is talking its a monologue.
With more than two talking it should be named either multilogue or oligologue, depending on the number of persons involved. ;-)

HM.

Etymologically the 'di' isn't a prefix meaning two,

No but dia is. Dia[logue], Mono[logue].

My understanding is that if the prefix came from ancient Greek meaning two, it should be duologue.

ETA: the word duologue exists and means a dialogue between two people.

The Greek prefix dia means through or across, cf diameter.

Yes, a little misunderstanding. I didn't mean that "dia" represents "two". I meant that "di" isn't the prefix in "dialogue" but "dia". The word dialogue literally means "through speech". This also means that a dialogue can be between more than two people.

The word dialogue literally means "through speech". This also means that a dialogue can be between more than two people.

Wouldn't that cover a monologue, at least in a case where the speaker has an audience?

Wouldn't that cover a monologue, at least in a case where the speaker has an audience?

Monologue is just a specific type of dialogue: just one person talking. Same with Duologue: two people talking to each other. Dialogue is just an undefined number of people talking although there is the (incorrect) general perception that a dialogue is between two people.

My understanding is that if the prefix came from ancient Greek meaning two, it should be duologue.

It's worth noting that just because we may know the linguistic origin of a word or part of a word does not mean that it retains the same meaning or usage. Words, sounds, and structures do evolve over time.

Worth noting that AI created art has been declared "not copyrightable" by a US court [Stephen Thaler v. Shira Perlmutter, (1:22-cv-01564) (June 2, 2022)].

I don't think there's been a precedent-setting challenge about AI text yet, but there's no reason to assume it'll go a different way.

No copyright means no means of protecting a work even if an AI does come up with something new which means that releasing the text as anything other than a proof of concept or part of a scientific study would be counter-productive.

Neither. It's an idea that was presented to the author which they then adapted into their own story.

I don't see how that's any different than a dozen different authors all using the same prompt to write short stories on a theme.

Each individual author is still writing their own story in their style, the fact that the underlying concept was generated by an AI rather than an editor or fan is irrelevant. What matters is the created work.

A famous example of this is the Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher. At the Del Rey Online Writer's Workshop (06 March 2001 - 05 April 2002), Butcher was challenged to write a good story based on a "lame idea" and he said he'd do it based on two ideas of the challenger's choosing. The ideas chosen were "Lost Roman Legion", and "Pokémon".

Out of that we got a 6-book series about Roman-descended elementalists battling an invasion by an alien hive mind which is probably one of the most unusual stories to enter fantasy in decades. The series was Butcher's first hard cover releases and three titles were on the NYT best-seller list with the last book peaking at #7.

Is that writing achievement lessened because it was based on a silly idea? No. Did Nintendo sue Butcher for taking using the "Gotta catch them all" idea as inspiration for human magic? Also no. It's the writing that matters, not the idea.

I'm pretty sure it's more than just an 'idea', more like generating a whole scene then changing a few words to be more compatible.

I would be more extensive than that. I've played around with AI specifically set up for writing stories in cooperation with a human author.

It's not like others have said, copying bits and pieces from various pre existing works.

It's more like a random word generator that then gets run through a filter to produce something remotely comprehensible.

It will do odd things like have a character doing a mundane every day task with multiple steps but it puts the steps out of order. Like a person undressing and taking pants off before taking off their shoes.

It will start a scene with a person preparing a meal and switch what is being prepared in the middle of a paragraph.

It can't keep character relationships straight for more than a few paragraphs.

The amount of manual intervention needed to get a coherent story is significant.

One example I read was where the author had never been to a certain country so tasked an AI with writing a specific scene set in that country for inclusion in his book to save him the job of looking up the amount of detail to make it seem authentic.

I will note that doesn't say he didn't have to do a lot of manual cleanup on the output from the AI.

he wouldn't know how to clean up the location-specific details so there couldn't have been too much cleanup.

No, not location-specific details, but there could be a lot else to clean up. Sequence of events problems, consistency problems, otherwise garbled sentences.

Like I said, I've played with an AI supposedly optimized for writing stories. I could never get much more than a paragraph or two out of it without needing some kind of manual intervention.

I set up a scene with a mother and teen son. A paragraph and a half in to AI generated text, it had the son going to work.

It couldn't keep the ages of characters straight, it couldn't keep their relationships straight, it couldn't keep their occupations straight. These are not location specific details.

To be fair to the AI, there are some authors here who seem to have trouble keeping details straight too, although that's more common with the longer serials.

It got cleaned up eventually, but in one of the earlier versions of aroslav's Living Next Door to Heaven the protagonist's height kept yo-yoing between 5'5" and 5'7".

there are some authors here who seem to have trouble keeping details straight too

Over a span of just a few paragraphs?

No, chapter to chapter. Although I recall Lumpy having some issues like that in their first story.

Not sure if it was ever fixed, but I recall a scene where the protagonist was planning to visit his adoptive sister on a Saturday since her mother would be at work, then the next paragraph when he goes by the house he's surprised that the mother's car isn't in the driveway.