So this article will be useful until AI stops making stupid mistakes like wrong number of fingers or spookily elongated hands. What's "typically associated with AI" is transitory, and AI is getting better all the time.
It's funny to worry about protecting people who buy adult coloring books. You can see at the Amazon page what the pictures look like. If you want to color something like that, why would you care how the images were generated?
But maybe WaPo will help us with more complicated consumer decisions — like genre novels and inspiring memoirs and self-help books. Let's see...
Won't AI be able to do its own social media? Won't real authors — replete with social media presence — be motivated to use AI to generate their books?
Being a self-published author is not a sign something is AI, but books churned out by AI will typically be independently published. The descriptions are frequently created with AI chatbots, so read closely to see if they make sense and are describing the listed product. Check the page count to see if the length makes sense.
This is, again, assuming AI will keep making basic mistakes. I think it's already very good at writing texts that "make sense." But sure, be wary of outright crap. That has always been good advice for anyone buying a book.
“I would look for tells that it is very new in the store and that it seems to imitate something that is very popular and older from a known publisher,” said Jacob Metcalf, program director of the “AI on the Ground” initiative at the nonprofit Data & Society. “A pattern I found was the scammers are using common tropes from popular books.”
This is good advice for avoiding bad books whatever the method of writing, but a lot of people want books that are like other books. Isn't this the most prevalent kind of book-buying — readers looking for more of what they already love?
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“A pattern I found was the scammers are using common tropes from popular books.”
And so has it always been ...
Gardner depicts [Perry] Mason as a lawyer who fights hard for his clients and who enjoys unusual, difficult or nearly hopeless cases. He frequently accepts clients on a whim based on his curiosity about their problem, for a minimal retainer, and finances the investigation of their cases himself if necessary.
Wikipedia
The Estates of Tom Clancy and Vince Flynn are certainly thinking about using AI for new content. No mistakes there!
“Make it the same; but different.” Sam Goldwyn.
"the book is just 26 pages of beautiful women with impressive bone structure"
Susanna "I'm a man's woman" Gibson is on page 17.
Maybe the real fear is loss of the gatekeeping role of publishers. The commoditization of literature, movies will be next, threatens the power of those who decide what ideas can and cannot be published. I have played with writing with AI, think of it like directed dreaming, or "lucid dreaming" they call it. You can write some good stuff if you are willing to edit it in detail to remove any nonsense, but keep the happenstance new stuff you never would have thought of, but which is good nonetheless. A lot of creativity amounts from recognizing when a happy accident has taken place. The problem with AI for so many is that it can replicate a facility with language that a lot of people have used to build careers.
Not to worry though, ChatGPT 4 was amazing when it was first released, but it has gotten more lame as the weeks and months go by, probably due to training it to be politically correct in all of its answers.
Spookily elongated hands? Do they mean like Michelangelo’s David.
So, I wonder how long it'll be before a human artist deliberately tries to make her work look like AI, either playfully or to make some kind of statement*. Or are some already doing that?
* I'm musing on what the statement might be and all I come up with is postmodern nihilism stuff - see how the supposed creative impulse that separates us from the animals was so easy to replicate that it only took one human generation of AI research to produce. Doesn't that imply that we're not nearly as special as we think we are?
But then I remind myself that the model of creativity today can be a banana taped to a wall or a chair placed askew in a gallery, and I take a little heart. I suppose when a machine can produce an original "Vermeer," I'll be back in the pit of despair. And when a machine produces an original "Hieronymus Bosch" woodcut, and can give a coherent explanation for each terrible element of it, I might just decide that we're in the end times.
"It's funny to worry about protecting people who buy adult coloring books. You can see at the Amazon page what the pictures look like. If you want to color something like that, why would you care how the images were generated?"
Not that I'd worry. I might avoid buying it so as not to finance more AI-generated products, but it may be harder to tell as time goes on.
Bizarre AI-generated products are in stores. Here’s how to avoid them.
AI-generated coloring books, plant guides and home goods are filling online stores as sellers try to make a quick buck
Could the title of that WaPo article be more judgmental?
It is bizarre that there are coloring books for women, but that's what makes the world an interesting place.
The WaPo article was too boring for me to learn why consumers should avoid AI-generated coloring books for women.
Why should coloring books only be produced by people with the skill to create drawings? Everyone wants to make a quick buck.
There was an AI-generated book that came out right after (like, 1 or 2 days after!) the Lahaina Fire. Widely panned now.
You mean from now on, we're going to have to exercise scrutiny and judgment before we make a purchase, to avoid being disappointed? But I'm entitled to shop uncritically! It's a human right !
What we have seen from AI so far is it plagiarizes other works, and, when it gets confused, which is often since it has no understanding of what it is spitting out, it makes stuff up. It is intelligent on the same level as a stoned tween submitting a book report for a book he or she has never read and is basically the first two paragraphs of the Wikipedia article followed by some random drug references because it seemed funny at the time.
It is neither science nor art.
Admittedly, stoned book reports are occasionally funny, but not usually intentionally.
What if it’s we’re offending AI?
What if we’re hurting its feelings?
AI already knows how to generate images of humans with the proper number of fingers and proper proportions of limbs and digits. Which suggests that the book isn’t necessarily AI-generated.
AI-generated coloring books, plant guides and home goods are filling online stores as sellers try to make a quick buck
Dollar store since Biden is now a buck and a quarter.
Facebook is selling fake AI friends that will troll your phone trying to find out stuff about you.
These Facebook AI Bots Are Horrible Flirts
I just realized dreams are the original AI.
Instapundit found this doozy, which almost certainly AI. It appears the Germans, did indeed, bomb Pearl Harbor.
https://instapundit.com/605893/
Six-fingered people, even artificially generated, need love too...
One good way to tell if an image of people is AI is if the people depicted are white and look normal/well-adjusted.
That never occurs in the real world of advertising and marketing.
How do we know Kamala Harris actually exists?
I haven't seen her in person.
What if she's a computer simulation?
And the AI is writing her speeches?
Earlier this month, Harris addressed Association of Southeast Asian Nations delegates at the State Department. She told the southeast Asia-focused conference that it and the United States hold a "shared belief that our world is increasingly more interconnected and interdependent."
"That is especially true when it comes to the climate crisis, which is why we will work together and continue to work together to address these issues, to tackle these challenges, and to work together as we continue to work, operating from the new norms, rules, and agreements that we will convene to work together on to galvanize global action," she said.
"With that, I thank you all," Harris added. "This is a matter of urgent priority for all of us, and I know we will work on this together."
I vote for her external shell!
If the AI can generate useless schlock that has the same qualities as the useless schlock you were already purchasing, why shouldn't you purchase AI-generated useless schlock?
Caveat emptor! That caviar container you just bought may be empty. Check it carefully, and in the same way inspect ALL proposed purchases and other things you want to make use of. Why I don't like electronic mail order---which is on-line selling essentially. But it would be interesting to see what AI might do to music and imitating composers. Orchestrate Schubert's 7th symphony. Create more minor-mode Middle Haydn maybe; something useful like that!
Caveat emptor! That caviar container you just bought may be empty. Check it carefully, and in the same way inspect ALL proposed purchases and other things you want to make use of. Why I don't like electronic mail order---which is on-line selling essentially. But it would be interesting to see what AI might do to music and imitating composers. Orchestrate Schubert's 7th symphony. Create more minor-mode Middle Haydn maybe; something useful like that!
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