[Sol-]

EU once again at the frontier of AI.. regulation.

Hard to assess what this rule will actually accomplish. Ultimately AI will be involved in all creative processes going forward, so all pieces of media will have at least some basic AI disclaimer. At the same time, the bad actors that the EU is so paranoid about (Russians secretly undermining our democracy and other boogeymen) will obviously not use the label.

But it's another tool in the EU's toolkit to arbitrarily enforce fines on big tech when politically convenient, of course. That's one thing we remain good at.

[DarkNova6]

I'm surprised by the sentiment.

With enough money you can already buy attention and presence. Now you can even facilitate a fake discourse to claim legitimacy and steer manipulation into entirely new realms. If this is not counteracted not only will rogue nations destroy democracies even faster, but powerful corporations and rich individuals will also use this to increase their power further and damage simple consumers.

Nothing about this concerns any creative process.

[brindleth]

Rogue nations will not apply this AI label to the content they generate, so they will end up looking more authentic in comparison.

[DarkNova6]

More authentic because of what, a missing watermark? It still has 2 positive outcomes:

1: It gives legal leverage against vectors of misinformation. Misinformation is tricky to combat legally and this is a first obvious measure that can be taken.

2: Reputation will become more important in the future, and if you are found to have repeatedly posted AI content claiming it is not it will damage you. Not to mention that users can point out the obvious discrepancy.

[kubelsmieci]

> Reputation will become more important in the future,

Citation needed

[rsynnott]

> Ultimately AI will be involved in all creative processes going forward

What on earth makes you think that? Do you honestly think that literally all creatives will just start making lazy crap because… it’s cool? Because I can assure you, outside of this little corner of the internet, it very much is not.

Proper authors, journalists and artists are, generally, not keen.

[DarkNova6]

There's creativity and there's the creative process. I like to dictate documentation in long form monologue, and then give instructions how to structure it. Then I give it a final pass with manual adjustments and the end-result is exactly how it would have looked if I had written it from scratch but without the bsywork.

Don't be stupid enough to let machines do your own thinking, treat them as a dishwasher.

[rsynnott]

Writing docs is, at best, only marginally creative work.

Though honestly, still probably skip the LLM if you’ve any pride in your work; LLM-‘assisted’ docs are generally worse than those written by people.

[DarkNova6]

So what are journalistic texts if not docs? At this point, an LLM is just another evolution from the typewriter.

You are still responsible for your work. What is important are the semantics and statements of the text. Less so how the exact arrangement of letters came to be.

[rsynnott]

Journalists should not be using LLMs. Most proper papers ban them from using LLMs to write their stuff, for instance see https://www.rte.ie/news/2026/0319/1564281-mediahuis-peter-va...

[DarkNova6]

You are not wrong, but here's the catch:

"Even I - with all my years of experience and knowledge - fell into the trap of hallucinations. I summarised reports using AI tools and worked from those summaries, trusting they were accurate.

He used an LLM to perform research instead of using it as a mere writing tool. I think large language models are great at formatting text, formatting, structuring and giving a stylecheck. But the last pass and review must always be a human. Everything posted by an LLM under your name is still under your name and you are liable for every single word. It's about the outcome and everybody who uses it is responsible for it.

[mosura]

> Proper authors, journalists and artists are, generally, not keen

The AI Scotsman fallacy.

[rsynnott]

In this context by proper authors I mean authors published by real publishers, for a start. Generally, most are hostile to LLM writing.

Also, like… why do you think people write books or make art? In the vast, vast majority of cases it is not to make money (virtually none of them do). It’s to _make_ something. Where’s the feeling of accomplishment in making them if you just told an LLM to shit something out? Like, who would bother?

[II2II]

Publishing is a business. There will be real publishers who are interested in using AI for the sake of making money. Even when a publisher has integrity and refuses to sell AI generated books, they have to contend with authors who are only interested in making money.

I'm not sure if I'm using the right term here, but publishers have been using rotating ghost writers to write series for generations and many of the authors have been happy to translate outlines into books just to earn a living. (I know of ghost written series that my father read as a child. I'm by no means young, and he had children late in life before it became fashionable to wait to have children until they were older.)

> In the vast, vast majority of cases it is not to make money (virtually none of them do).

If you're suggesting that virtually no authors write books to make money, I would suggest that is not true and the landscape is going to change for the worse. There are constraints on how many authors write books purely to make money because writing takes time and effort, with the returns being notoriously low. AI eliminates the time and effort factor. Returns don't have to be high if it is being generated by a content mill. If anything, diluting the market will result in lower returns for human authors -- discouraging them from writing in the first place.

[rsynnott]

> they have to contend with authors who are only interested in making money.

This isn’t _really_ a thing. If you’re into writing for the money, you’re probably in the wrong business. Even some quite successful/popular authors have a day job; only a very few can support themselves on it.

[II2II]

My apologies for a lack of clarity in that sentence, but I meant that publishers have to contend with people who are willing to use generative AI to make money by writing books for them.

That said, real people write for all sorts of reasons. Money is definitely one of them. Sometimes it is out of ignorance (e.g. they don't know that few books earn much money). Sometimes it is out of delusion (e.g. some authors are clearly raking in the money, they think they will too).

[mosura]

> Where’s the feeling of accomplishment in making them if you just told an LLM to shit something out? Like, who would bother?

Exactly. Find something else to do.

From this perspective the mere existence of AI tools for this stuff devalues all competing possible results, whether the tools are used or not, simply because there will be so much possible everything (media wise) on demand to match the whims of any consumer so they lose interest.

[seanmcdirmid]

I’m pretty sure the big techs get safe harbor in this, otherwise they would have to stop serving up third party content in the EU all together.