I feel I need to get this off my chest...
Just yesterday, I witnessed a mutual creative make a post on Facebook in which he bragged about writing his first movie script in only two weeks. Upon reading these first few lines, I was impressed. I was further impressed by his next claim that after doing thirteen drafts (I’m assuming he meant editing pass-throughs), he submitted it to a film festival and it was, within a few days, announced as a selection. I’m not sure what “selection” means in this particular festival, but I would assume it’s a favorable accomplishment. To be honest, after reading the post as a whole, my impressed feeling of his accomplishment quickly turned to a mid-level envy. As a writer, how could I not feel at least the tiniest bit, right? Envy aside, I sincerely congratulated him on his accomplishment.
Among the many comments of congratulations, one commentor asked, “What’s the script about?” The reply from the original poster is a long-winded AI generated description of the story, followed by an admission from the original poster that he used Chat GPT to write the description in his reply. Immediately, I’m feeling awry about the whole thing now and want to rescind my congratulations. I want to ask him why he couldn’t just describe his story in his own words, and why he needed AI to do it for him. Or maybe go a bit deeper with a snide accusation—If you need AI to generate a description of the script you wrote, I find it hard to believe you actually wrote the script yourself--perhaps AI helped with that too.
Long story short, I relented from posting any further comments, because I didn’t feel it would lead to anything good. Besides, I’m clearly making assumptions about this person’s creative process, and instead, I decided to write about it here, in this blog that only the two of you read. I know—so noble of me, right? I’m not perfect.
Using AI to generate a book, a script, or artwork, and pawning it off as something you created is just a middle finger to people who do actually write, or draw, and have spent a lifetime perfecting their craft. All the while, AI gathers the information it uses to create these “new works” from various places on the internet, included from other people’s (real creative people’s) hard work. It manipulates and blends several pieces into something just slightly different. In my mind, this is skirting the line of copyright infringement. Maybe I’m wrong though. This is just the simple man knowledge I currently possess of AI and how it operates, but I can’t find any information that refutes what I’ve learned.
Which brings me to another point: AI does not know how to distinguish valid information and incorrect information. For instance, I couldn’t count how many people I know who use Google to ask simple questions about recipes, locations, science, and even history. Nowadays, Google has been using AI to scour multiple sites at once to develop an answer for its users. This is usually shown as the top result, by the way. As I understand, when there is a discrepancy between the information sources, AI finds an answer that it determines is mathematically correct, because it is the answer it has found most often. If we are going to start believing something to be true based on how many times it is talked about on the internet, we are all in for a hard ride. Okay, before you ask; No, I haven't been under a rock for the last two decades, I just know this trend is getting worse, and AI can not be helping.
What can we do? It’s not realistic to avoid AI completely. You might be astounded at how many of your day-to-day activities, bookings, and what you see on the web is already dictated by some sort of AI. I hate to say it, but short of a mass world-wide server meltdown, AI is here to stay. The only thing we can do is make sure we do our research, especially when it comes to researching important facts like history, and health. Don’t throw away old physical copies of books because you have them available in digital format. I don’t know what safeguards are in place to keep AI from manipulating or hiding those documents in the future.
Don’t be lazy. Do the work. Be creative. And for the simple sake of decency, don’t take a product from AI and try to pass it off as something you created. If you have an idea, create it on your own. If you don’t know how, Learn! Don’t let the robots take everything from us, including our ability to create.
For goodness’ sake! How many books and movies have been produced where we let AI lead the way, and it goes wrong? Terminator? Eagle Eye? I robot? Wall-E? That’s just to name a few!
Okay, I feel I’ve gone off the rails a bit here, but I think I’m making a point. I hope so, anyway. I’m obviously not the first to throw fits about AI, and I know I won’t be the last. I guess I just wanted to put my two cents out there on how I feel about it. In my opinion, AI isn’t just theft from real creatives, it’s potentially dangerous for our future. Be kind, and be careful out there.
