Magazines Stopped Submissions Due To AI-Generated Stories

What was to be expected given the general availability of the AI ​​tool ChatGPT has happened: numerous users are currently trying to earn money with quickly generated texts – and some publishers are already taking countermeasures.

One of the first reactions came from Clarkesworld Magazine, which specializes in science fiction. This is appreciated by fans of the genre because it always contains a wide variety of short stories. These can be sent in by hobby authors and a fee of 12 cents per word beckons for publication. Instead of being creative themselves, more and more senders are trying to be successful with AI-generated texts.

Neil Clarke, editor of the magazine and responsible for the short stories, wanted to ask their colleagues from PC Mag not to perform how he recognizes the AI-generated stories. “I have no intention of helping these people to make them less likely to get caught.” Still, he said the AI ​​works show “some very obvious patterns.” However, the technology is getting better and detection is becoming more difficult. For now, the magazine has stopped accepting new stories entirely.

AI flood at Amazon Too

The current situation is very similar in the Amazon department, in which authors can publish and sell texts and books independently of publishers. There are currently over 200 offers in the Kindle store in which ChatGPT is openly stated as a co-author, reports the Reuters news agency. There are even how-to books on how to use ChatGPT written entirely by ChatGPT. However, since there are also various publications whose authors are not so honest, the number of AI-generated e-books can hardly be quantified exactly.

As a rule, no particularly extensive income can be achieved via self-publishing. Therefore, the platform has so far been more for enthusiasts who ultimately didn’t care whether the effort of their author’s work was really worth it financially. With AI, however, entire works can be written and published within a few hours, so it is definitely a lucrative business if they ultimately bring in only a few hundred dollars.

There are different views on how the use of AI should be evaluated. For some readers, it should ultimately not matter whether a text was written by a human author or an AI if both variants are qualitatively on a similar level. However, authors’ associations see the danger that the computer-generated texts will once again draw a good deal of the already not exactly lavish funds from the market.