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What the Shy Girl Conversation Says About AI and Art · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Smantha and welcome to stuff
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I never told you Production by Heart Radio, and today
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: we are so happy to once again be joined by
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: the generous, the genuine Bridget Todd, the real deal, as
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: they might say, Welcome Bridget.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Thank you. I love the G theme. I'll take it.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Yes, I did think about this one beforehand. Sometimes I
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: just come a little.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: But I will admit your skin looks amazing. Oh the
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: glowing here, That's what I'm saying of the G theme. Hello,
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: my God, keep complimenting me. Yes, please, well, Bridget, how
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: have you been?
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Happy? Belated birthday?
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Thank you? Thank you. My birthday is on Pie Day,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: which I always love to throw out. When I was
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: a kid, I would have pie. Even though I'm not
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: a huge pie person, I would have pie instead of
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: cake on my birthday.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: I prefer cake. Really, you, Annie, the face.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: Samantha just made when I said I prefer cake, you looked.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: You looked horrified.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: No, I just know Annie's stance on this, and she's
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: a pie girl. So oh you knew.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: I was on a podcast that argued pie versus cake
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: and I won.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: What were the merits of pie over cake?
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Bridget? I can direct you to the podcast otherwise I
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: have a thirty minute fight right now.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: I love that this is I love that you have
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: such a like a clarified say, I go, I got
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: chuck cake. Here's a resource for you, you know.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: But if that's your preference, then I salute you.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: What kind of cake though? What's your favorite?
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Ooh, what a good question. I'm a pretty traditional cake person.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: First of all, there's no cake that I will not try.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: I like the yellow cake with chocolate icing, like I
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: like cream cheese icing. I love. I am not above
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: just a Duncan Hines box mix funfetti cake. Honestly all
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: cake I am. But you can't see it. But behind
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: me there's a chocolate cream cheese cake on my counter.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: And when I'm done with all my calls and interviews
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: and stuff, that's gonna be a slice of that cake
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: is going to be my reward for that for cheesecake.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: So it is cheesecake? You considered that a cake?
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Or Oh?
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: I'm just gonna ask you all the questions. What a
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: good question, because I that's how I would celebrate my birthday.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: I traditionally my mother would make me a chocolate mini
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: chocolate chip cheesecake for my birthday. It was very specific,
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: and then from then on she would get me a
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: cheesecake of some sort that she was like testing out.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: But I did like The debate was is this an
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: actual cake? Could this be considered cake?
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: I don't know that I would call it cake because
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: the time that I made a cheesecake, I don't think
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: I baked it. I don't, like, really, I think that
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: baking might be something that has to happen for it
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: to be a cake. I believe the time that I
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: made a cheesecake it was no bake. Also, it kind
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: of almost put me off cheesecake. I don't know if
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: you ever made one from scratch, but the ingredients are
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: like eight sticks of butter, eight things of sour cream,
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: eight things that cream cheese are like you never think
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: about what actually goes into a cheesecake, and then when
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: you actually make one, you're like, wow, there's a lot
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: of sugar and cream.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: No, it's intense. So the kind of cheesecakes I would
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: take I would bake is literal as it would be baked,
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: but you had to have the spring form pan and
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: the chick time not to let it crack. That was
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: the true test. I never did have a perfect cheesecake. No.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: This is why I do the no bake, because I
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: that's too much. Your kudos to your mom for figuring
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: that out is really good?
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Oh yes, well cake cake talk aside? You earn self
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: By Southwest? How was that?
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: It was really good? I will say I've been a lot.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: I've been going to south By Southwest on and off
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: for a long time, and I really enjoy it. I
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: usually spent my birthday there. This time I also spent
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: my birthday there. I've seen it go from a kind
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: of hip, little arts and music forward festival. I think
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: that there was a time where it got really tech
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: bro heavy, where they added in tech as its own activation,
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: and like everything was tech. I remember going the year
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: that everybody was talking about NFTs and it was every
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: every session, every talk, every this, every that, every activation
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: was NFTs. And then going the next year and it
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: was like NFTs, who we don't know her? So this
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: year they dialed down the tech a little bit, and
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: I think, even as a tech person, I think that
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: was good. I think that was the right choice. Just
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: little more film, more culture, more art, more music. Tech
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: was still there. People like me were still there, but
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: I think it felt good having you know, you don't
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: want to go to these events and have it to
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: be an AI hype machine, and oftentimes that's what it's
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: felt like. And it felt a little that was dialed.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: It was still there, but dialed down to the point
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: of Okay, I can tolerate this.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: Didn't they do something special with podcast movement? Like they
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: joined together? Right?
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: They did? Podcast Movement happened at at south By Southwest
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: This year they had the iHeartRadio Podcast Awards from south
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: By Southwest. This year, I Heart had a whole activation
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: the iHeart Podcast Hotel. I got to see some familiar
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: faces from the iHeart fam. Yeah. So it was just
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: one big amalgamation of south By podcasts, podcast events, podcast awards.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: I met Killer Mike at one of the events. Ramsey,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: who we all know, was there and I was like,
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: oh my god. Ramsey shot up for a second. I
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: think that's Killer Mike and he was like, not only
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: is that Killer Mike, I am working on a podcast
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: with Killer Mike, and like, would you like to meet him?
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: I'm rarely starstruck. It is rare in my life, and
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: I'm like, this person is someone that I really like
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: and respect. I think Killer Mike might think I'm nonverbal
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: like that. That's how the interaction went.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: Like he is an Atlanta staple, like he is.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Have you seen him around?
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: Yes, so I've seen him around doing a few things
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: here and there.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh my god, you see him about town?
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he got his places to go.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: We started watching some YouTube series and they came to
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: Atlanta and they highlighted Killer Mike because he's such a
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: staple of him of Atlanta. But yes, he is, he's
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: a man about town.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Thinking about it, I guess because you all live in Atlanta,
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: it's probably a lot less exciting to see people like
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: you've probably seen people like that around all the time,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: and it's probably not the same as it is to
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: me where the only living in DC. The only celebrity
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: I might see is like Mitch McConnell, which is not
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: really the same thing.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: Different reactions.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Fair, Although, my friends went to a music festival and
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: they were and they were standing next to AOC so
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: that was exciting.
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's still exciting.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that, yeah, that is exciting. I mean I've never
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: just to be clear, I've seen Killer Mike, but I
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: don't know what would happen if I tried to talk
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: to Killer? So I don't know that would be any
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: better than you no rubbing.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: Of the elbows?
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, just all oh, there is no yes,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: But I actually was curious. And this brings us to
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: our topic, which I'm very excited to talk about. Is
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: if you said that they kind of dialed down the
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: AI at south By Southwest, But were there conversations or
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: anything about what's going on with AI and art there?
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Yes? Oh, good question. It's actually a funny story. Probably
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: shouldn't even say this, but like so I was. I
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: was there for both south By Southwest and Podcast Movement
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: that was happening at the same time, and I was
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: there giving a talk. They were doing this series of
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: talks throughout the day at Podcast Movement, and so I
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: was giving one of the sort of signature talks that
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: I do about why audiences are actually kind of skeptical
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: of AI and their media and their creative work and
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: what that means and like how we should be. Basically,
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: the long and short of it is that you know,
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: especially in a medium like podcasting, the reason why people
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: turn to podcasts is trust. And so if you dial
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: up the AI. You are throwing away the thing that
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: makes the medium not just good but also lucrative, also
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: like a good you know medium. And so I'm deciding
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: my slides, and I use a case study of a
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: specific AI podcast company, and I have a slide that
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: has a picture of their you know, splash landing page.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: It's like, oh, this company has makes the podcasts with
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: AI hosts and AI voices, and they say they can
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: make you know, however, many podcasts for like a dollar,
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: and they're churning them out. And I was using that
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: as like a negative in my opinion, negative use case.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: I'm going over the slides with my producer. I'm like, oh,
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: maybe I should take this out. Like the person who
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: whose company I'm talking about, she could be in the audience,
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: make it awkward. Let me remove the slide. I show
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: up through my talk. Not only is that woman who
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: runs the company there, she's talking right before me about
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: her AI podcast company. So sets me up to be like, Okay,
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: everything that you just heard, here's why I disagree. But
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: I'm so glad that I took out that slide that
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: was like specifically screw this AI podcasting company. Am I right?
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: I didn't actually say that in the in the in
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: the talk, but that would have been the impression given. Yeah, who.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Bullet dodge for her?
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, bullet dodged. Seriously, how would that.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: Have been to be like, ohllo, did she stick around
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: for yours?
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Oh? I don't know. That's actually a very good question.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: I can't imagine anything that I had to say would
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: have moved somebody who is gambling on the idea that
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: audiences want more AI in their creative work, in their podcast,
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: in their media. When I think if you listen to
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: what audiences are telling us, they're telling us the exact opposite.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: They don't want AI in their really anywhere, but especially
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: in their creative work. And that really dovetails nicely with
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: the situation I want to talk about today.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Yes, and I we were talking about this before, Samantha
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: and I never heard of this specific case, but it
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: is a huge conversation right now, and I've heard of
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: other cases and there's a lot to unpack and it
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: is really interesting. So what specific case are we talking
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: about today? Bridge?
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: I am talking about the writer drama unfolding around the
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: book Shy Girl, and I want to talk about this.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: I wanted to sort of get your thoughts as authors
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: and creatives and people who are thinking about AI and
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: how it shows up in creative work in general. We
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: all had a conversation a while back about why it
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: is that women are using AI less in workplaces, and
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: the researchers gave lots of reasons, but one of the
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: reasons that women are less likely to use AI at
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: work is that they are more likely to be accused
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: of using AI as a negative thing and judged more
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: harshly if there is suspicion that they are using AI,
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: and so that was one of the reasons that researchers
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: identified as to why women are using AI less in artwork.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: So this drama with the novel Shy Girl, I think,
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: really reveals a lot of the anxiety that some of
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: us feel around AI, particularly around how AI is being
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: used or not used to produce media like writing. So
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: I'll just give you the top lines of a situation.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Mia Ballard is a black woman poet and fiction writer.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: I had actually not heard of her nor read any
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: of her writing before the situation hit my social media feed.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: It sounds like she writes a lot of stories with
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: themes of feminine rage and it. Actually, I hate at
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: the first time that I'm hearing about hers during a scandal,
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: because it sounds like her genre of like weird girl
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: literature would be very much up my alley.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Yes, is that agreed?
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Is that a style of writing you all rock with?
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah yeah.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: I'm in a subreddit called weird girl Literature and every
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: suggestion I'm like, Ugh, give me a book where a
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: twisted woman does some twisted stuff and I'm I'm set.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: That's my stay in best Night I can have.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: Yes. So, Mia initially self published her novel called Shi Girl,
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: about a young woman who was forced to live as
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: a pet to a man. The book actually had some
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: like pretty good reviews on Goodreads, though I would say
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: they're kind of some are very good, and some are
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: like not so good. I would call them like mixed.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Some people specifically said that they loved the way that
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: Mia writes. Other people were like, oh, I don't like
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: this writing style at all. Last year, one of the
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: big publishing companies, Hashet, their Orbit division, acquired MIA's book
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Shy Girl for its newest imprint run for It, which
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: exclusively publishes horror fiction. So good for Mia. Right, Like,
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: if the story ended here, you would be thinking, oh,
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: good job, girl, your self published book is going to
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: be published by a big publisher.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: You made it, you did it.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: If you don't want to hear like like you know
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: when you watch a horror movie and there's a point
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: of the movie where you're like, oh, this the family.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: The family moved into the and they had their first
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: lovely night together. If you stopped it here, it'd be
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: a happy movie.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: It'd be ten minutes long, but it'd be great.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: So here is where things take a term because about
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: two months ago, readers who read Shy Girl started to
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: publicly ask whether this book was written using AI on
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: a Reddit subreddit called horror Lit, One user, who identified
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: themselves as a book editor with twelve years of experience
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: under their belt, specifically identifying AI pros, asked, does anyone
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: else think this was written by chatgebt? The post reads,
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: I know not an accusation to make lightly. I'm not
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: making it lightly. I have a lot to say and
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: I'll try to organize this post as best I can.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Me book editor of twelve years, I've had people from
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: over the last few years send me chatgypt creative writing.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: My job with these AI pieces was to see if
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: I could humanize them or get them to a point
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: where it was enjoyable to read, or even acceptable. The
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: answer was generally no. Chatgept might be able to write
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: a passage that sounds good, but there are two problems
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: with that. A passage does not a novel make. A
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: novel is not a collection of passable passages. It's a
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: singular thing and needs to work as a singular thing.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: And it seems good at first glance, on second glance,
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: it's not very good. So this was the post that
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: kind of got the conversation of whether or not this
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: book could be AI generated or chat GPT generated going online.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Yes, and I know we've talked about some of these
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: things before, and I definitely will be talking about fan
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: fiction later, but there are some things people look for
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: when they're trying to figure out if something is AI generated, right.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Yes, So this some of this was some of this
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: I knew, but a lot of this was stuff I
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: had never heard. So this user who said that they
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: had all this experience with AI writing, felt that the
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: novel had all of these key hallmarks of AI generated writing,
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: things like emotional or even emotionally overwrought text, the use
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: of adjectives and weather similes, light and dark metaphors, and
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: stock words such as quiet, chaos, and violence. They made
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: an entire exhaustive list of all of the sort of
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: linguistic quirks that they thought made them think like, okay,
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: this could be AI. The phrasing of describing a smell
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: and describing it as something X something, why things being
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: in three a lot, or using the linguistic construction two
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: x two y in a lot of different passages. Also,
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: they said the book has near perfect grammar, which, according
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: to this post is something that is like very rare
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: in creative writing, which I had not heard nor even considered.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: But you know, I'm not a book editor. They also
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: talked about the tell tell m dashes to separate clauses,
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: which is that is actually an AI tell I've heard of,
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: although tell that to Emily Dickinson, right, girl loved the
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: girl love to dash.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: A lot of people do love a dash, And now
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: it's become a like I'm not AI. I promised.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: It threw me off when I first saw that, because
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: I used to do that a lot, and I'm like,
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: oh damn, I think I'd be like I'd failed classes.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: So I am the person that you've just described Annie
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: where I When I was in grad school, I studied
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: a lot of Emily Dickinson's writing, and I loved her
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: use of dashes. And I was a lot younger, but
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, dashes signal that you are like
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: deep and like a real deep writer, deep thinker. Subsequently,
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: my work has always been dash heavy, but now I
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: take them out because I don't want I don't want
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: anyone getting the wrong idea. And I think that that
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: the way that you put that is so right, because listen,
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: I'm no computer scientist, but I have to imagine that
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: since AI is trained on lots and lots and lots
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: of human writing, often stolen copyrighted writing that has been
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: used to train AI without the author's consent, of course,
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: it is going to be harder to tell what is
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: written by AI and what is written by a human.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: I read this interesting op ed in New York Times
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: by a writer about this whole incident, and she said,
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: humans don't write like AI rights like humans. And I
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: think that really kind of gets at what you're saying that, Oh,
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: a lot of people use these quirks doesn't mean it's
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: AI necessarily.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Yes, And I think that's the heart of the conversation
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: that we're going to get into. But because we live
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: in such a destabilized like, even before AI had become
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: such a presence in our lives, reality just feels so subjective.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Now it just feels like I don't know what's true
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: or not anymore, And now AI is getting involved in that.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: And so you are questioning, did somebody write this or
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: is this AI? Where are these things? Is it the
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: m dash they're talking about the weather like, looking for
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: all of these signs wherein it could be AI or
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: it could be somebody that AI learned from.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's part of this conversation. People were putting in
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: works that were clearly written before AI was ever a thing,
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: like somebody put in the Declaration of Independence or Frankenstein,
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: and a lot of AI detectors settle this is ninety
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: eight percent AI. And obviously the founding flowers were not
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: using chat shebt right, the Declaration of Independence, But of
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: course all of those texts helped train AI. So it
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: kind of weigh it is I think particularly perhaps the
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: overuse of AI detection might be part of that, but
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: I do also just agree. I think that we're in
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: a time where we don't know who to trust. I
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: think we are really really craving authentic voices, and I
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: think media has really gotten to a place where people
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: have reason to be really skeptical, and so I think
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: everybody's just on a hair trigger right now. In some ways,
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: that is how we should be. We should always be
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: very skeptical and very critical and like ask questions about
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: what we're seeing online and in media. But I think
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: this reveals just how kind of fraud it all is
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: right now. I think you're totally right.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Yes, And in this particular case, study does really showcase
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of those anxieties and people looking at this
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: author and trying to prove like, oh, they definitely used
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: AI and here's other instances and the impact it had
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: on her life, but also just why it mattens so
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: much to so many people. So yeah, yes, can we
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: come back to.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: What totally So some people were even saying that a
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: separate interview that Mia did about the book, it seemed
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: like maybe she used AI to generate her answer. So
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: I said that to say that this is not the
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: only project Shy Girl where AI accusations have swirled around
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: this particular writer. So this popular book YouTube channel Frankie's Shelf,
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: which has over two hundred thousand followers, made a two
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: and a half hour long video titled quote I think
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: this is AI slop that over a million people watched.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: I clicked in honestly two and a half hours. I
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: don't got the time, So I don't got the time.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: I did not. I did not watch the video myself.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying. But yeah, that's like Avengers Endgame,
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: that's that's that's the length of a real movie, long one.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: So John Wick Chapter four is the longest movie in
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: the franchise. And I use that as an example because
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: I saw John Wick in the theater and I was like,
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: how longest movie? It's two hours and forty nine minutes long,
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: So about as long as John Wick. The longest John
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Wick movie that I saw in theaters and was counting
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: down the minutes until the movie was over, Like what
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: is it illegal to make a movie that's ninety minutes anymore?
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: But I digress. So in this video, Frankie points out
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: that the word sharp appeared one hundred and fifty nine
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: times across the two hundred and fourteen pages and had
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: been used to describe abstract concepts like guilt or a
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: silence in a room, like sharp is not really a
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: word that you would associate with describing abstract concepts like
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: usually it's like a physical thing, And so he was saying, well,
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: that's some weird quirk. He also found other overused words
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: like weight, which was used ninety four times, edge eighty
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: four times, hum or humming used as a descriptor for atmosphere,
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: like a humming atmosphere, and rhythm or rhythmic forty two times.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: So all of these words that Frankie says, oh, like,
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: nobody would use these words to this amount in one
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: project if they weren't using AI. Now, Frankie is careful
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: to say that this doesn't mean the book was AI
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: generated just because it has repetitive words and words use
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: a particular way, because humans also write in this way,
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: like humans can be formulaic, humans can be repetitive, And
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: just to be super clear, as far as I know,
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: there is no definitive proof that AI was used to
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: write this book. So I don't know, and that's not
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: a question I'm able to answer that I'm going to
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: be trying to answer in this episode, but more on
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: that in a moment. I guess what I would say
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: is that this whole thing, I'm sorry to say, it
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: really showed me that I don't necessarily have a good
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: sense of when text is or is not AI generated
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: like her writing. I read the first few pages of
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: the book. It did not jump out to me as
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: being AI generated. I thought it was. I thought it
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: was a bit unusually written in a style perspective, but
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: it didn't. It did. It would not have jumped out
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: to me as like, oh, that's a telltale AI. I
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: feel like I have a sense of AI writing, and
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: this book to me I was. It didn't jump out
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: to me as AI generated.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I haven't read it obviously, but it is kind
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: of scary to think that, like, because I feel like
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: I can recognize AI writing too, But what if I
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: can anymore? What if it's gotten beyond that point?
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: So yeah, that's my point, And I guess researching this
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: for me personally, I think I am at that point
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: where AI has gotten so good at sounding like a
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: human writer that what I thought I knew, because you know,
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: when you read something AI generated like that's not blank,
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: it's blank. That's just blank blank blank, like you have
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: a I have a sense of it in my mind.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: And researching this, they also as part of researching at
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: the New York Times, had a thing that was like, oh,
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: can you tell which of these was a I generated?
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: I bombed that test, So I I clear I clearly
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: have lost the ability to tell the way that I
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: always And I'm actually curious how you all determine whether
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: or not something's AI generated. There's just a flatness to it.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: There's just like it's like they're they're just a like
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: hollowness to the writing that is kind of it's like
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: kinda know it when I see it kind of thing.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: What about what's what's your benchmark?
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Well, I I think again, this is something that we're
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: going to get into more towards the like conclusion part
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: is that I'm really struggling with there. Usually when I
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: think something is AI, it does have a flatness to it.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: It does have kind of a either a strange bluntness
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: or a strange like way too much like way way way,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: way way too much and very repetitive. But uh, it
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: is true that someone can have a style or someone
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: could be a bad writer, or someone might be in
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: the world of fan fiction, a non English speaker and
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: they're writing in English, and so it's I have these
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: things that I associate with AI, but I still cannot
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: definitively say that it is AI.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I honestly I couldn't tell you. I really couldn't,
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: mainly because there are so many bad writers in general,
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: not that I know anybody who's a bad writer. I
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: don't know anybody who's a bad writer. Co sure personally
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: personally that when you see some bad write that's like
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: so off the mark that I'm like, this could be AI.
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: That's kind of what I expect sometimes, And that's the
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: one that is too little, too much, like where it
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: sounds like it's a bad infrovercial almost and I'm like, yeah,
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: this also could be AI. So I really have bad
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: like marked when it comes to writing. I feel like
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: videos and pictures and such are little more telltale signs.
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: Still I've gotten I've still gotten got by some of
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: these videos. I'm like, somen of a bescuit, You mean
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: that random animal? It's not doing this really cute thing.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: Videos get me a while. Why do they do this
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: that plays with my emotion. I needed to be real anyway.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: But like, yeah, I think I'm just gonna be real
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: honest to be like, I'm not sure if I would
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: catch it.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Somebody listening is thinking, these three idiots, how can they
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: not catch it? To that person, I say, take that.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: At New York Times AI writing tests, it is harder
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: than you think. And I'm someone who spends a lot
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: of time thinking about AI, and I was surprised by
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: how difficult it was to tell with writing at this point.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: With video, I honestly I have almost kind of looked
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: divested from short form video because so much of it
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: is AI, and I just kept there. It started with
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: a video of bunnies on a trampoline. This was like
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: months and months and months ago, and I sent that
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: to a bunch of my friends. I put it in
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: the group chat. My friend's roasted me. They were like,
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: what are you someone's mema putting AI generated video slop
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: in the group chat. What's the matter with you? I
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: got such a like. I I was like, Okay, well
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: I'll never post another video in the group.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: The telltale sign you have to go into comments, because
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: you got the comments will tell you someone is out
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: there being sleuth because I almost felt for that one too.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: I was like oh, and then up pulled up the comments.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: I was like, damn it, AI. Yeah, you're talking about people.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: I would say, like, when I do the trainings around
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: recognizing AI generated content, like people should know what their
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: triggers are, because I clearly have some sort of a
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: trigger for like cute animal videos. Clearly that is a
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: place where I am totally willing to let my guard
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: down and like suspend my disbelief and I need to
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: stay when I see a cute animal video. Now I'm
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: like extra alert. So get a sense of what your
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: specific triggers are around like content online. Although we were
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: talking about this skit that the comedian Drew Ski made
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: where he's like dressed up as a conservative woman and
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: a lot of people were like, oh, that's Erica Kirk
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: and so that happened, And then there was this almost
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: entirely AI generated, fabricated claim that Erica Kirk was suing him,
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: which is not happening. And I saw this video that
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: purported to show Drewski, who I know what he looks like,
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: talking about how Erica Kirk was suing him, and I
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: had to research this, so I knew it wasn't the case.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: But I would never have looked at that video and
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: thought like, it looks real Like I would never if
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: I didn't already know from researching it that that was
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: not true. I would have never, in a million years
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: thought this was not a video of Drewski talking about
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: a situation happening to him.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: Okay, you just alerted me to that, because I just
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: heard that video and it kind of went on with it,
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: But I didn't think either way. I just went, yeah,
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: that sounds about right and moved on.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, as far as we know, as of our recording,
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Erica Kirk has had no response. So if you see
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: a tweet or a video purporting to say otherwise, it's
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: don't get don't don't get got there that AI tool
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: that they're so good that one would if I didn't
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: know already that one would have got me.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: They're trying to get me. We are both mem Yes.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Well, so there's kind of another interesting side to this too, though,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: is that you know, when we're talking about Shy Girl,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: there was this uproar about oh is there AI? And
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: it went to the publisher. It went like all over
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: the place with people demanding, like, is this say I
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: do something about it?
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, So people were pissed. They were reaching out to me.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: A's publisher hashet asking whether or not this book was
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: AI generated, and so there was a little bit of
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: a witch hunt element to this. I don't want to
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: say that like with like a negative connotation necessarily, but
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: like I just got to say, I think that just
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: shows how much people do not want AI and their writing.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: I personally can ever see myself taking it upon myself
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: to like email a stranger's publisher to ask if AI
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: was used. I understand why people want to know. Maybe
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: you bought the book or read the book and feel misled.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: Now it taps into exactly the kind of distrust that
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: you were talking about earlier. Annie, I personally find the
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: witch hunt angle to be, like, so it surprises me
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: that people are that invested in it that they will
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: take it take it upon themselves to be like I'm
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: going to watch a three hour long video about it
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: and then email of a publisher like that surprises me.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: But I just think it goes to show how much
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: people don't like and don't want and don't trust AI.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: After The New York Times got involved. The publisher dropped
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: the book. So the book is being pulled. It is
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: no more so. The New York Times they did an
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: investigation and they said that they concluded the book was
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: written by AI. This is from the Times. The Times
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: analyzed passages from the novel using several AI detection tools
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: and found recurring patterns characteristic of AI generated text, like
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: Gabson logic, excessive use of melodramatic adjectives, and an over
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: reliance on the rule of three. Max Spiro, who is
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: the founder and chief executive of Pangram, which is like
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: an AI detection program, says that he heard about this controversy,
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: he got a copy of the book and ran his
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: own test, and that test indicated the book was seventy
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: eight percent AI generated. He published those findings on social media,
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: saying I'm confident that this is largely AI generated or
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: heavily AI assisted, and so whether or not this definitively
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: proves it, I cannot say that is like above my
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: pay grade, but that all of that was enough, plus
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: the public pressure for the publisher to drop this book.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Yes, And one thing that I find interesting about this
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: whole conversation is the Winch hunt aspect, because I think
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: there is sometimes you just don't like an ending perhaps
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: and then you're like it was AI. You don't have
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: maybe the proof, you might have something some evidence, but
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: also you know, really relying on these AI detection tools
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: when they are not perfect.
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna ask about that because I saw
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: pretty early on when people are using detection site for
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: papers for young students, and a lot of them were dained,
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: not because they were actually using AI, but they were
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: using things like autocorrect or they use it after like
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: after the fact, which was specific for the program of
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: correcting your grammar like grammarly and that's specific. You can
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: use that, you are encouraged to use that. But that
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: actually brought up the detector and saying they used AI,
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: like is it? How does this work?
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad that you used that example. You know,
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: I got my start in education and I was teaching
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: right when a lot of these AI plagiarism checker and
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: detector tools were coming up. And the long and short
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: of it is that AI detection platforms they just really
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: cannot be trusted. The time spoke to hit Chaprabardi, who
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: is a professor of computer science at Stonybrook University, and
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: he used that guy I told you about earlier, Max Biro.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: He used Max Biro's program Pangram to check more than
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: fourteen thousand self published novels on Amazon for AI writing,
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: and so that program found that nearly twenty percent of
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: novels had been essentially written by AI. And so he
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: admits that AI detectors sometimes mistakenly flag human writing as
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: AI generated, But still he told The Times that he
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: was confident that Pangram was indeed picking up chapbot language.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: He says the program was built to detect linguistic patterns
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: that are frequently used by large language models like chatgept
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: and Gemini, and has a FoST positive rate of around
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: one and ten thousand, and that it's also designed to
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: catch human efforts to cover up aius through editing. So,
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: I again, I am no computer scientist, but I do
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: think that we should talk about the fact that these
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: tools are not just randomly mistaken. Sometimes they are biased.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: They more frequently flagged text written by non native English
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: speakers as being AI generated. But it's not just like
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: Anny said that you see in the fan fiction community.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Research has consistently shown that these detectors misclassify non native
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: English as AI generated, while Native English is often accurately identified.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: The numbers are to me pretty damning. In one study
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: in patterns called GPT, detectors are biased against non native
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: English writers, more than half of the essays written by
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: non native English speakers were flagged as AI generated, with
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: a false positive rate of sixty one point three percent.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: So that's pretty significant.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't feel confident at all if I knew
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: that the percentage was that high that it would be incorrect.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: So why is this happening?
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question. It sounds like these tools
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: are trained on style guides and writing examples that are
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: dominated by native English syntax and vocabulary, so writing that
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: deviates from those norms are more often to get flagged
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: as machine like. So in other words, they're basically just
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: treating standard American or British English as the baseline for
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: what human writing looks like, and then people can get
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: punished if they deviate from that. And as I said,
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: like in educational settings, this was already a big problem
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: that educators were dealing with. When I was teaching, I
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: was told to use these detectors that we now know
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: are biased and it ever happened in any of my
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: classes specifically, but like students could be accused of cheating
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: and have serious consequences like failing a course or being
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: expelled as a result. There have already been documented cases
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: of students being penalized for work that they insist they
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: wrote themselves simply because their writing style did not match
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: what an algorithm expected human writing to look like. And
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: so whether or not that I can't speak to the
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: New York Times, is AI detection rigor or like how
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: they did it, They don't go into that, but I
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: wanted to mention that because, like, as we're talking about
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: the Shy Girl situation and everyone rushing to cite AI
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: detection scores as proof that this book was AI generated,
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: I do think it's worth asking who do these tools
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: actually protect and who do they kind of keep vulnerable
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: or keep at risk for accusations around AI use that
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: may or may not be unfounded.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Yes, especially when, as you mentioned earlier in previous episodes
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: we were talking about, women are more likely to be
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: penalized for using AI if they are found out that
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: they are, whereas for men it's more likely to be like, oh,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: you're using the system. Great, you know what you're doing.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: And then to put this faith into these detect that
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: do have bias in them does leave a lot of
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: room for error and for marginalized people specifically to be
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: hurt more.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I can't not mention the fact that
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: Mia as a black woman. I have to wonder if
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: that is part of the conversation of why people are
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: kind of going so hard for her and like calling
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: the publisher and all of that like that, that is
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: a reaction that I am surprised by, and I have
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: to wonder if her race and gender is part of it.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: And I did want to make a little comparison because
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: do y'all remember the writer James Fray. He wrote that
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: book One Million Little Pieces.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he was found out for a lying exactly about
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: his book.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah. His memoir was like, I mean this this
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: incident was it like burned in my brain. I was
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: on an episode of Behind the Bastards about Oprah and
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: when we got to this part, I was like, I
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: could tell you everything. I watched the episode in real time.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: What do you want to know? But yeah, Oprah had
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: made it one of her book club picks and then
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: when it was revealed to be largely fabricated, she had
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: him on the show to like scold him, and I
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: remember he had I think he had an outbreak of
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: what is it called when adults get chicken pox? It
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: has a name when its shingles. He had like face
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: shingles at the time. And this, this image of him
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: with face shingles getting scolded by Oprah is just burned
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: in my memory. But so you might. You might think
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: that guy when it was revealed that he basically made
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: up his memoir an Embarrassed Oprah's Book Club, you might
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: think that he has been like shunned by the literary world.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: You would be wrong, because he has a new book
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: out and he's talked about, albeit inconsistently, using AI in
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: his writing. He said that AI helped write parts of
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: his book, that he trained AI to match his writing style.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: He told readers that they would not be able to
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: tell what was AI and what he wrote. He did
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: walk some of this back later when people were like,
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: m I'm not so sure about that. So I'm not
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: sure what the truth is. But it is not like
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: he was pillared for this. And in fact, his newest book,
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: which just came out included a very splashy piece in
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: the British Times under the headline America's literary bad boy
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: is back. So there's you know, there's no accompanying which
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: hunt to find out if this book used AI like
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: there is with me is and Yeah, I just I'm
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: just curious, like who gets to just be called like, yeah,
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: he's the literary bad boy, and who gets like call
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: angry calls to their publisher.
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: That's such a cliche phrase, though, I wonder if they
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: were trying to make fun of him a little bit
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: with that literary bad boy. Yeah, all right, I'm just
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: gonna ask this question in ernest because there's a little
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: part of me in this that people who loved her book,
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: who really enjoyed this book and really seem to it,
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: is it so awful if she did use AI? And
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: I say this in this context of like, we don't
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: want this to be taken Yeah, of course not. We
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: want good storytelling in any ways, in most all that
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: we want genuine writing. But at the same time, we
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: see a lot of smut out there that's just randomly
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: thrown at us, like you know what I mean, Like
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: it's not sincere oftentimes you see series that are picked
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: up by pen writers who are no longer the writers.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: Is that such a bad in the scope of things?
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: And I say this, I know this is a slippery slope,
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: but yeah, just a little bit antagonistic care ask It's
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: a fascinating question.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: And Annie, I'm curious to get your thoughts too, as
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: somebody who does a lot of fan fiction. So, I
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: do think that publishers have not really set a firm
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: boundary around what is or is not acceptable when it
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: comes to AIU so and so I think perhaps there
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: is a spectrum where you just have CHATGETPT spit out
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: of text and then you copy and paste out and
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: that's the book. And did you use chat Gypt or
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: AI to like brainstorm or you know, clean up your
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: pros And if you did that, can you still call
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: it genuine human work? That's not a question I can answer.
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: And the issue is that publishers have not made it
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: clear where they stand. They have not made it clear
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: what is acceptable and what is a breach of contract
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: and what is okay. And I think that they're really
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: allowing public sentiment and public outrage to be the thing
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: that drives what should be hard and fast, clear rules
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: and regulations, right.
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: I mean in all this to say when people steal content,
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: like taking other people's writings as their inspiration and then
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: using that for their chat gypt writings, that's stealing, like
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: we're going to but that as like an od yeahs
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: statement there, Like obviously Mia was already an established writer
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: according to previous history. She had been doing writing previously. Again,
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: they said maybe a couple of her other works had
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: been AI. We don't know. We don't know with all
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: of this, Yeah, what does she say? So?
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: In an email to The Times, Balor denied using AI
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: to write Shy Girl. She did contend that an acquaintance
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: that she hired to edit the self published version of
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: the book might have used AI in the editing process.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: She said, the controversy has changed my life in many ways,
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: and my mental health is at an all time low,
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: and my name is ruined for something I didn't even
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: personally do, noting that she could not elaborate on how
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: the book had been edited with AI because she was
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: pursuing legal action, and so that's what she says. She says.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: She says, I didn't use AI. If AI was used,
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: it was somebody that helped me edit this, the self
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: published version of this book. I've never self published a
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: book before. But my understanding is, when do you self
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: publish something, you are kind of just on the line
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: for any of the issues that arise, or just sort
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: of like on the hook for all of that. Because
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: I don't know if that's but again, I've never done
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: that before myself. So don't you know, take that for
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: what it's worth.
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you can do it on Amazon and such,
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: like it's pretty easy to access those types of places.
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: I have a couple of old coworkers who loved writing
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: Mormon romance novels. Oh yeah, if you want to look
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: that up, I'll tell you later. But like, it's interesting
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: because could we come back and see much like some
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: of the students that we were talking about previously who
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: came back trying to fight because they were like expelled
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: completely kicked out of school, being accused of using AI,
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: but it was like grammarly and things that you came
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: back to check their grammar. Could it be something like that,
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: like did she use a system that helped check her
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: or whatnot? And in this moment, all these people went
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: after her as an example.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel the same way. I guess we don't.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: We don't know, and we may never know in what
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: capacity this was AI generated, if at all, but something
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: about the vibe of the entire Internet saying you used
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: AI And I'm not even sure how like if like
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: if if that happened to me, I'm not even sure
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: what I would do to illustrate that I hadn't other
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: than I've just written a book and it's been so
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: heavily track changes, edited by me and the editor going
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: back and forth and back and forth that if somebody
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: wanted to pour through all of that, I guess that
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: would that would illustrate it. But like, it does feel
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: strange that you could write a book and people could
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: just say, oh, this was AI generated and that might
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: not even be true. And it's just it just it's
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: just we're in a very weird dynamic where the public's
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: feelings around this have not caught up with our ability
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: to say, for serve if something is AI generated or not,
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: and publishing companies their own guidelines like they're like they're
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: really behind on the whole AI conversation when it comes
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: to what they will and will not.
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: Accept any need to go to look at our book.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: You know what I learned thanks to fan fiction. Okay,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: the fan fiction community is very, very into this whole thing.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: There's a lot I could talk about. But one thing
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: I learned recently is if you have a Google Doc,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: AI can scrape your Google Doc. So they fan fiction
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: writers recommend you do not use Google Docs, and what
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: we use.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: All I use is Google Docs.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but guess what for the fan fiction I've written,
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: I've never used Google Docs. Even before I knew that,
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: I just write on a doc and then copulate doc. Yeah. Yeah,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: but I did get called out for being somebody. Brown
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: In was like your AI clearly, and I was like,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: I can't prove you're wrong, but I'm not, so it
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: is strange.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: But also you get AI reviews and I'm like, no,
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: this is an AI for sure.
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: So an AI review called out you being AI.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: No, Okay, there's like a spade of You'll get reviews
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: that are just like, what a good story? Did you know?
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: Kyber is from the planet Ilium, And I'm like, yeah,
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: that's a Star Wars fact that's unrelated to anything.
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but anyway, Google Docs, I don't know the specifics,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: but I just know that in the fan fiction community,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: they're like, don't do it.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: Always trust fan fiction folks, and like other niche nerdy
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: in interest people who are gathered by interest in some
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: niche nerdy thing to be ahead that they're always got
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: their finger on the pulse. They're ahead like whatever it is.
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: It's like, oh, we're three steps ahead of y'all. Whole read.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: We've already got a system worked out to avoid this.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: We know about the M dashes, we know that non
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: native English speakers get penalized where we go.
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: On the ready.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, but anyway, writing the book, we did use.
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: Google Docs, so so it would say that we were AI.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: No, it's just going to be if it if it
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: scrapes Google Docs and it's going to take that and
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: run with it.
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I have used Google Docs, like it's all I use.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: So everything I've written is probably being used to train AI.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: You're welcome open AI, sam all, and then you can
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: get me a check anytime, I guess Sundar Pachai, head
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: of Google, Well, you can cut me a check anytime.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know the specifics. We should come back and
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: talk about that though.
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll do some research.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, there's a lot.
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: For you to be talking about right now, Bridget, that's
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: for sure, But in this specific conversation, so you've been
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: talking about the publishers.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: That's kind of the issue is that there aren't clear guidelines,
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: and I think that is I do think that is
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: really important because this actually happens at our local conference,
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: dragon Con, where there's an art room, and they were like,
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: you have to tell people you used AI and if
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: you don't get out, like there has to be that
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: trust you were talking about earlier, Bridget, wherein maybe you
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: do use it for ideas, but even then people might
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: like to know that, and they might be okay with that,
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: but it's sort of that wanting to know, yeah, feeling misled.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: So if there aren't these guidelines and this is a
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: very rapidly changing internet world that we live in, then
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: I think people feel betrayed if they don't know what
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: they're getting.
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and we just don't have a framework for that
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: right now. You would think that publishers would be setting
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: that framework, and I guess there is initiatives where they'll
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: say like, oh, this is a human led work, but
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: there's not really a way. That's all kind of like
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: an honor system right now, and so we're all just
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: sort of waiting for these institutions and mechanisms to catch
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: up with the reality that we're in. And I'll just
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: say it doesn't sound like publishing companies have moved very quickly.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: The Times noted that while publishers have maintained a firm
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: line against AI generated texts and images and require authors
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: to attest that their work is original and their publishing contracts,
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: but few publishing companies have clear policies or measures to
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: prevent users from writing with AI. And with the Shy
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: Girls situation, I will say I was surprised that, and
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: maybe it has to do with her book being self
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: published and then being acquired. I was surprised that a
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: big publishing company like Kshet would not have editors. I
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: feel like so many people have to read a book
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: before it's published, and I was surprised that this was
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: something that would only be being addressed the first time
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: by social media commenters. Like that surprised me, And I
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: think like, even if contracts say that writers need to
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: affirm that their writing is original, what does that mean exactly.
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: The Times reports that publishers are skeptical of AI generated content,
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: partly because it can't be copyrighted, but that since AI
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: is so commonly used in things like outlining and research
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: and other early stages of writing, there's no real consensus,
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: according to The Times, in the publishing industry about where
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: that line should be drawn, and so many people feel
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: like this ambiguity just opens the door to bad actors
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: or even well meaning writers who don't realize that they've
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: maybe gone too far when it comes to AI use
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: in their work.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: And we also don't really know the scope of AI writing, right.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That I found to be so interesting because if
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: you just open up Amazon, you'll find so much obvious
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: AI slop that's like easy to determine, but when it
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: comes to big publishing companies, it seems harder to tell.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: And The Times reported that AI is just leading to
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: more books being published. In general, it's nearly impossible to
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: gauge how much AI writing is getting published, but there's
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: evidence that the technology has led to a surge of books.
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: Last year, more than three point five million books for
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: self published, up from two point five million in twenty
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: twenty four, according to industry data, And so it does
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: seem like more and more books are being traditionally published,
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: and some of those books are probably in part written
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: with or buy AI, and so a publishing company not
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: having clear rules around it is really a problem. And
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: another thing they pointed out in that piece is that
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: one reason why publishing companies might be a little less
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: willing to set a firm boundary is because they might
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: want to be able to use AI in house for
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: things like marketing or translation or narration. Right, so if
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: they can't, really they're in a little bit of a
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: rub where they can't really say we have banned AI
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: usage altogether only for our writers in house. We'll use
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: AI however we see it, and we don't have to
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: tell you. Like, I understand the sort of rub that
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: they're in where they want to use it in some capacities,
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: but they want to control when and how and who.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: Yes, and I do think it's really important that this
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: whole public perspective on it as well, of how the
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: public is viewing the usage of AI in art and
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: how companies are reacting to it, because it's clear that
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: companies do they're like, yes, I would like to use
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: it for this, this and this. Let us please not
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: have this conversation and move on but something like this
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: with what happened with Shy Girl, kind of forced the
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: company to come out make a statement.
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: So Hashet did come out with a public statement. I
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: really think that the heart of their statement is like,
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: do whatever, just don't embarrass us. I genuinely think that's
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: what it is. So they only put out this statement
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: when the Shy Girl controversy blew up on social media.
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: Their statement says, we encourage responsible experimentation with AI for
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: operational uses and recognize the benefits of remaining curious and
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: embracing technology. Our industry relies on the creative talent of
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: humans and would not exist without it. The value of
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: our partnerships with our creative contributors cannot be overstated. We
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: draw a distinction between operational uses uses that help us
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: fulfill our mission and make it easy for more people
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: to have access to our books and other products, and
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: creative uses IE uses that harness AI to replace the
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: creative work of a human author, designer, illustrator, translator, or photographer.
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: For this reason, we are opposed to machine creativity in
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: order to protect original creative content produced by humans. We
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: recognize that this is a fast moving area and will
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: continue to be guided by industry standards and the needs
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: of key creative rights holders. So to me, that is
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: that is exist. I'm no lawyer, but reading that statement,
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: to me, it sounds like we use AI when we
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: want to. What are you crazy? We're not gonna use AI,
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: but we don't think our writers should use it, and
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: we'll continue to update that as we see fit.
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: Thanks that phrase machine creativity. That's a whole like oxymoron.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, And I guess that's my whole kind of
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: So what And this is just my opinion. I think
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: that big publishing companies are kind of hanging writers out
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: to dry by not having clear policies. It's like they're
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: waiting for a big embarrassing dust up that will put
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: the burden on the individual writer to deal with, rather
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: than proactively come up with a clear policy because they
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: want to make sure that they have carveouts for how
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: for how they want to use AI or how they
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: might want to use AI going down the line. So
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: and I think in twenty twenty six, it's just common
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: sense that you need to have a policy around AI.
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: It sounds like they're opening themselves up to a lawsuit.
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: That's what I think yeah, I mean it feels like
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: very discriminatory.
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: Well, so again, I don't know what's going to happen
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: with the Mia Ballard shy girl situation, but let's say
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: that for the sake of argument. She says, Okay, well,
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: my editor used AI in this editing process, but the
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: only stipulation in my contract is that AI will not
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: be used to create the first pass or something. Is
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: she able to sue for breach of contract because they
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: dropped her book like not having I'm just a big
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: believer in the power of contracts. I'm like, I can't
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: tell you how many times having a good contract negotiated
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: by the lawyer has saved my butt. And I think
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: having just a just a And again I've not seen
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: her contracts, so I don't know what it says. But
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: just having a line that says, oh, authors will attest
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: that the work is original is not enough. And I want,
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: I just wonder what kind of legal precedent that setting
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: or what kind of holes are being left open, because
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: it's just it's just so ambiguous what that actually means.
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: I mean, it sounds original. Yeah, the idea, yeah.
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: I just read is that right before we came on
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: to to talk. I just read that. You know, the
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: romance publisher Harlequin. So just today it was announced that
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: they struck a multi year deal with dash Verse, which
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: is an AI entertainment company, to make forty animated micro
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: dramas based on Harlequin titles using dash versus AI tool Framio,
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: which generates complete short films from text prompts in about
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: three weeks each. And so the details of this are
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: that authors will get royalties through monetized AD then subscriptions,
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: though Harlequin did not give deal specifics on what that
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: looks like, and they say that the videos are illustrator assisted.
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: I'm not one hundred percent sure what they mean by that,
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: but I think that they're positioning it as a human
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: AI creative collaboration rather than fully automated. I think I
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: think that's how they are trying to frame it. I
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: cannot speak to whether or not that is actually the case,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: but it's just goes to show that some big publishers
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: are clearly fine with AI.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: That's an interesting take though, to take the old school
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: Harlequin romance, cause there's numerous amouths believe. Yeah, as a child,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: when I was taking to my you know, not my
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: mom for some mod reason, but for other moms that
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: had the closet full of all of the romances. I'm like, hey,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: let me go find that I was a weird teenager.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: But like there's tons of that. So that's an interesting
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: idea to go back to taking some of those which
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: is still beloved obviously in ways, and then making these
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: types of creations and also noting that they're going to
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: get royalties, but is it like fifty cents like they
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: get the residual weirdly checks like from streaming type of thing.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: That's an interesting guy, but it's an interesting idea.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean the head of dash Verse, their CEO,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: said exactly what you just said, that they're excited that
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: this is bringing global entertainment franchises existing IP powered by
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: AI and so, and it kind of like I kind
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: of get what he's saying that, like if you have
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: a bunch of existing titles in IP that they're like, oh, well,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: why wouldn't we use AI to just like get to
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: squeeze more revenue out of that. I get what they
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: are saying, but I think that there is no one
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: clear standard around AI in publishing. In some cases, it's fine,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: and it's celebrated in this you know, splashy press release
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: about how this is going to use AI to get
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: more revenue and value out of your IP. In some
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: cases people are losing their book deals, right, And so
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: I guess I guess it's we're just in a we're
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: just in a new territory, and I think we need
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: more guidance, more guard rails, more clarity around it because
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: we're all sort of navigating it in real time, and
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: I don't think it has to be that way.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: Is Fabio still alive because I need to know his
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: take on these harlequin romance.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: Is still alive because he got hit by a what
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: if he get hiphie, he was by a bird that
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: was forever. I guess that was nineteen ninety nine.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: Forever, go, bridget.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: Everything.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: He was in Sharknado. Come on, okay.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: I was like, that was nineteen ninety nine. That was
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: like what ten years ago? Someone say like it was
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: ten years ago, and I was like, you're talking about
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: it was like two years ago. Like tell me, no,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: don't tell me about how long. Like in my mind
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: the year two thousand was ten years ago. I won't
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: hear anything else and anything else that you say I
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: had to say about that to me is wrong.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: It's wrong, it's true. But I need to know if
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: he's to get his second wind, that he's about to
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: come to relevance again because of this, specifically, Parlican romance
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: is coming back. Dig Yeah, but they better, they better.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: If they're gonna do this, they better have some like
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: blowing long hair and some heaving bosoms.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: On the on the uh on the pirate ship first.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, well see this is also the issue though,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: are they going to pay Are they going to pay Fabio?
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: Are they going to stand ins that you would literally
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: take art from real life people to make these covers,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: So I'll wonder exactly.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: So that's like if you're bringing this AI element to it,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: because contracts back then didn't know about AI, they didn't
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: know about any of that, so probably not, probably not
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: going to get anything. And then you're watching yourself in
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: an AI video like, oh that is a whole other
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: I'll come back and well that's a whole like that
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: is happening.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: It sounds black mirror, but that is happening.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: I wonder how successful this will be because part of
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: the Harlequinn wrote romance, the books, the muddy books that
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: we love is because you can imagine it for yourself.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: So you create these pictures. So and then what happens
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: in when movies. When books are made into movies, people
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: have a lot of feels because you've picked the wrong
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: people in their minds, you know, the people they pictured.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: So now that they're taking this from these very descriptive
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: books that really play into your imagination and then playing
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: in into this, I wonder how successful it will be.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: That's a good question. And I mean part of it
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: is like I cannot imagine that this is takes a
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: lot of human labor to feed the whatever book prompts
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: into their emit their video generator. I'm sure it takes
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: not not zero human labor, but you know, I wonder
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: if they've just made like a cost benefit analysis of
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: even if hardly any I mean, it kind of goes
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: back to what I was talking about with AI podcasts.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: I don't think, I mean, AI podcasts exist. If you
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: wanted to listen to them, you absolutely could. There's plenty
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: of them to choose from. People don't want to listen
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: to them, And I think that the mass that these
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: people are doing are that like, oh, well, they're cheap
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: to make. So even if not a lot of people
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: want this kind of content, and boy do they not
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: want that's kind of AI generated content. Even if a
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: few people engage with it, that might make it worth it.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: That's what I kind of That's the sort of math
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: I bet they're doing.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: It's interesting to see how many cases of this are
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: playing out right now of maybe companies seeing oh there
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: is something more to this math that is not just
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: the monetary because it has become like you as a creative,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: you do not want to get the AI thing attached
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: to you. No, that is not good. It is something
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: that you try to avoid. And I do think that
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: it touches on some anxieties we have, but also what
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: people want, like what you were talking about earlier, like
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: that trust, which I think personally, as someone in this
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: industry a company should pay attention to.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean in my talk about AIU, that was
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: my entire kind of so what. Yes, it might be
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: cheap and quick and easy to produce AI generative content,
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: but in doing so, it's not just the warm, fuzzy,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: squishy reasons why somebody would want to prioritize human voices
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: in content because we all trust humans, yah yah, YadA.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: It's also a business question do you want your brand
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: associated with quick, cheap, lazy slop. I know that I
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: do not want my brand associated with quick, cheap, lazy
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: slop that might not even be accurate, might not even
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: be true. And so that's not an at that's not
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: just like an ethical, squishy question. It's also a dollars
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: and cents business question of would that be good for
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: your brand? Would that be a positive association with your
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: brand to have your brand be associated with AI content
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: that we know can be, let's face it, just trash,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: And so I think that we have kind of I
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: would like to see the conversation reframed in that way
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: so that you don't associate people who are talking about
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: why it's so important to champion human voices and creative work.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: We're not sort of being cast aside of like you know, warm,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: fuzzy do gooders. We're actually talking hardline dollars and cents,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: the kind of stuff that people who are financial decision
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: makers that media companies ought to be paying attention to.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: Well, we're guaranteed humans, so.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: Ah, that's right, guaranteed human I'm not saying it even worse,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: And I guess I want to end on this because
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: I think the big takeaway here is how much audiences
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: are telling us they do not want AI generated content
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: in their writing. And for all the stuff I've talked about,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: it actually kind of makes me feel excited about being
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: a creative professional. I really liked this hopeful advice from
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: writer Andrea Bart's in The New York Times. She writes,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: I fear it could follow on us authors to prove
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: our writing as our own. The advice I often hear
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: from fellow authors is hopeful, if a bit hippy write
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: something weird, break all the rules, pour your heart and
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: soul into it, because nobody can tell a story quite
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: like you, baby. And yeah, this whole kerfuffle has really
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: got me appreciating the fact that I have terrible grammar.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: I really can't spell you know, I you know it's
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: you know, and AI didn't write it. Look how badly
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: written it is.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: All the astericks are mine, damn it.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah that's quite a silver learning. Yes, but it is
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: true because I think when you see that, like if
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: we made a mistake on the podcast, we are people,
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: and people will write in and be like, you made
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: this mistake and then we'll respond to it, and that
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: having that kind of connection, but also having that moment
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: of like, oh, yeah, it wasn't perfect because I am
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: a human person who does make mistakes.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I was reading there was some celebrity that did
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: I can't remember who it was, but that did something
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: bad for which they had to publish like a notes
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: app apology. And I remember the top comment and it
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: was a bad apology, and the top comment was, well,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: at least we know they didn't use AI to write
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: this apology. At least it came from the heart.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine going to AI being like, write this
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: apology for me.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: Please, here's what they used to use their publicists.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, is that any better?
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: That's true? That's true. Well, once again, I have so
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: many thoughts. We could keep going and going and going.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: But thank you so much Bridget for bringing this to us.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: I had not heard of it, and I learned a lot.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: Try to follow up on this case.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, we should check back in. Well before we
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: do that, where can the good listeners find you? Bridget?
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: You can pre order my audio book Love at First Prompt,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: all about Intimacy and AI at Love at First prompt
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: dot ai. You can follow my podcast there art articles
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: on the internet or check me out on Instagram at
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: bridget Marie and DC.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: Yes and listeners, go and do all of that. If
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: you haven't already, If you would like to email us,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: you can. You can email Hello, It's stuffonnevertold you dot com.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: You can find us on Blue Sky I'm Mom Stuff
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: podcast or on Instagram and TikTok and Stuff I've Never
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: Told You for also on YouTube. We have some merchandise
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: to Cottmuau and we have a book and can get
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: wherever you get Brooks. Thanks as always to our superduce
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: Christine or executive producer, my anti contributor Joey. Thank you
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: and thanks to you for listening Stuff Won't Never Told
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: You to protection by heart Radio. For more podcasts from
• 1:10:40
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• 1:10:42
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