[tinkelenberg]

I like the term “organic literature.” A significant amount of readers have no interest whatsoever in generated prose, so there is definitely a viable market in human provenance.

An independent certification body is quite an old-world solution for a problem like this, but I’m not sure this is something that can be done mathematically. A web of trust may be all we have.

[DrewADesign]

Unfortunately, like most other kinds of commercial art, the mere presence of generated literature waters down the market enough to make actual literature essentially a leisure activity. Sure there was always crap, derivative filler books — it’s just that the ratio will now be 1000x worse and the better of the books just won’t justify the funding for intensive work and novel research that they used to, so even the good ones will probably be worse. Yet another example of the efficiency-obsessed more cheaper > less more expensive mentality making our world worse.

[boznz]

My last novel took over a year to write and edit, going through dozens of revisions. The novel before that took almost five years.

For a laugh I used grok to generate a 35,000-word slop novel, it took twenty prompts and a few hours, it even threw in a nice cover. From there it would have took me another 30 minutes to release it as an ebook on Amazon under a different pen-name. This is what I and the world of indie authors are up against. It is already hard for non-established authors, this may be the final nail in the coffin for most. My first book is now free, but good luck anyone ever finding it.

[qingcharles]

I had Grok write a post-apocalyptic novel as a test, and I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of it. The problem was running out of context. The quality fell off drastically and I tried to come up with ways to continue it, e.g. asking it to summarize each previous chapter and feeding the summaries in, but they always lacked some tiny detail I thought was key to a character's personality and it ended up being too much work.

A year from now though...?

We're really cooked, though. Whenever I see a cool pic I wonder if it's AI and I have to spin up a TinEye or Google Images search and hope it was once posted to some random Facebook wall in 2011 so I can be pretty sure it's real.

[piltdownman]

A markov-chain or sufficiently advanced decision tree can only serve to cargo-cult the insight into the human condition and the various contexts and lenses through which we interpret and shape our existence.

Where AI shines - and to the uninitiated, apparently subsumes - is in the fields of lexicon and grammar. However, we do not read Homer's Iliad and Odyssey as an exemplar of dactylic hexameter - we do so to engage with a structured expression of grief for the motivations of man.

Epic (Patrick Kavanagh - 1960)

I have lived in important places, times When great events were decided; who owned That half a rood of rock, a no-man’s land Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.

I heard the Duffys shouting ‘Damn your soul!’ And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen Step the plot defying blue cast-steel – ‘Here is the march along these iron stones’

That was the year of the Munich bother. Which Was more important? I inclined To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin

Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind. He said: I made the Iliad from such A local row. Gods make their own importance.

[lethologica]

> but good luck anyone ever finding it.

Get what you’re saying but hasn’t that always been the case without extensive marketing and promotion?

My understanding that writing and finishing the book is just the start. Then you need to sell the thing.

[boznz]

You're right, it's the bit nobody tells you (or you ignore) at the start of the writing adventure. AI just makes it even harder to get noticed.