ChatGPT your way past writer's block

[SimonDoom]

Exactly. 8Letters use was neither.

My other point was that other copiers of others peoples' work were one or another, or both.

I don't agree with that. Arguably, the use wasn't significant enough, and the lines taken insufficient in number or not sufficiently creative and original, to constitute copyright infringement. But it was definitely plagiarism. He took lines from someone else which, while not especially distinctive, were distinctive enough that when you held up the original to his work it was crystal clear that he was using someone else's lines and passing them off as his own. That's plagiarism. It doesn't matter that the lines are buried inside the story in a way that nobody would notice if attention had not been called to it. That's not a mitigating factor.

It's not the biggest offense of all time. I think the whole thing would have blown over quickly if he'd just said "mea culpa," removed the story to rewrite it, and moved on. Leaving the site on a note of indignation wasn't warranted based on what people actually wrote in that thread.

 

[XerXesXu]

I don't agree with that. Arguably, the use wasn't significant enough, and the lines taken insufficient in number or not sufficiently creative and original, to constitute copyright infringement. But it was definitely plagiarism. He took lines from someone else which, while not especially distinctive, were distinctive enough that when you held up the original to his work it was crystal clear that he was using someone else's lines and passing them off as his own. That's plagiarism. It doesn't matter that the lines are buried inside the story in a way that nobody would notice if attention had not been called to it. That's not a mitigating factor.

It's not the biggest offense of all time. I think the whole thing would have blown over quickly if he'd just said "mea culpa," removed the story to rewrite it, and moved on. Leaving the site on a note of indignation wasn't warranted based on what people actually wrote in that thread.

Copying another's words encapsulating general ideas, which Tilan claimed was plagiarism was universally, dismissed as being neither plagiarism or breach of copyright. Correctly so. To reach the threshold for either, the fragment copied must invoke and evoke the other's work, or a coherent part thereof. Think of actions brought in the music industry, for lyrics and melodies. A fragment too small to do either is neither plagiarism nor breach of copyright. Just as the words Tilan found objectionable, taken together, were too small to invoke and evoke the copied person's work or a coherent part thereof, so were 8Letters.

We all note an evocative turn of phrase, when we hear it, and recycle it to evoke an emotion on an appropriate occasion, that's what 8Letters did. His fragmentary excerpts did not invoke the other's whole work, no one would have said, "Ah, that's from the work of young Miss Shakespeare." in the way a few notes on a piano, or one line of anguished lyric can invoke the entire catalogue of another musician's work.

His copying was 'de minimis' and would not be justiciable before a court as vexatious, and a waste of time and money. Nor does it trouble me as plagiaristic. I understand that others are more vexatious and uninhibited in casting stones, despite making free, themselves, with others work, quite promiscuously.

 

[XerXesXu]

But it was definitely plagiarism. He took lines from someone else which, while not especially distinctive, were distinctive enough that when you held up the original to his work it was crystal clear that he was using someone else's lines and passing them off as his own. That's plagiarism. It doesn't matter that the lines are buried inside the story in a way that nobody would notice if attention had not been called to it. That's not a mitigating factor.

That's more or less what Tilan claimed. Be careful whose company you keep.

 

[StrappingMan]

Having never used these programs before I can see how this can be a tool for creativity as well as being abused.

Using AI as a starting point is no different than browsing various sources for inspiration. Give it some parameters and see if anything catches your fancy. Taking it any further than that and to me you seem to be moving into an Editor role. As an Editor you will be given a mostly fleshed out story at some point in it's many revisions. Just because you change the language here and there or add a scene doesn't make it yours.

I personally love editing. The process of editing is it's own type of creativity. The collaboration between a Writer and Editor can lift a story to a whole new level. Just don't kid yourself that editing a work is the same type of process.

Maybe there should be another classification for writings based off of AI. If I were to start reading something like that then the Author would need to keep a detailed appendix to what was changed. Then I could measure what was part of their creative process. This is all assuming someone was publishing for profit. If not then I can accept that someone would be fully in their right to use this as a learning tool.

 

[TadOverdon]

AI doesn't write stories or draw pictures. It generates patterns from data.

 

[djrip]

but the work would certainly be mine.

You might own the work, depending on how copyright law goes in the coming years, but you would not have written it. You would have edited it, perhaps.

Copying another's words encapsulating general ideas, which Tilan claimed was plagiarism was universally, dismissed as being neither plagiarism or breach of copyright. Correctly so. To reach the threshold for either, the fragment copied must invoke and evoke the other's work, or a coherent part thereof. Think of actions brought in the music industry, for lyrics and melodies. A fragment too small to do either is neither plagiarism nor breach of copyright. Just as the words Tilan found objectionable, taken together, were too small to invoke and evoke the copied person's work or a coherent part thereof, so were 8Letters.

We all note an evocative turn of phrase, when we hear it, and recycle it to evoke an emotion on an appropriate occasion, that's what 8Letters did. His fragmentary excerpts did not invoke the other's whole work, no one would have said, "Ah, that's from the work of young Miss Shakespeare." in the way a few notes on a piano, or one line of anguished lyric can invoke the entire catalogue of another musician's work.

His copying was 'de minimis' and would not be justiciable before a court as vexatious, and a waste of time and money. Nor does it trouble me as plagiaristic. I understand that others are more vexatious and uninhibited in casting stones, despite making free, themselves, with others work, quite promiscuously.

You're being ridiculous bro. I don't care much about 8letters' plagiarism. But it was obviously plagiarism. If you are lifting multiple complete sentences it is unambiguously plagiarism. Whether anyone cares or objects to any particular plagiarism can be an open question and can certainly depend on the amount lifted. But there is no question that it was plagiarism.

 

[rosebudliquor]

It’s an opinion. It’s certainly not an edict.

Write however you like. But don’t pretend an AI-written piece is a rosebudliquor-written piece.

As for your Steve Miller reference, I don’t quite get it. I’m talking about stories (or, in that context, songs), not individual words. Nor even phrases.

You wrote it like an edict, and you wrote about words: "Either the words are yours, or they're not." I'm pointing out that unless you make up all your own words, the lines are not as clear-cut as your opinion makes them out to be.

 

[djrip]

You wrote it like an edict, and you wrote about words: "Either the words are yours, or they're not." I'm pointing out that unless you make up all your own words, the lines are not as clear-cut as your opinion makes them out to be.

It's actually pretty simple. Did you decide what words to put down? Or did a program or another author do it?

 

[rosebudliquor]

You might own the work, depending on how copyright law goes in the coming years, but you would not have written it. You would have edited it, perhaps.

How would I have not written it? I wrote all the material that went into it, I directed the tool that manipulated it, I revised the output. No one else wrote it. At most the AI would be a co-writer, but I don't see even that. If I took every story I've written, cut them up into individual sentences, rearranged them randomly, and then rearranged them again, taking some out, to make a coherent work, I could claim that I wrote it. This is not materially different.

 

[rosebudliquor]

It's actually pretty simple. Did you decide what words to put down? Or did a program or another author do it?

In my example, they're all my words. So I guess we agree?

 

[djrip]

If you cut up your own works and repurpose them, that's obviously your own work. If an AI writes something based on your work, that to me is not particularly different from the AI writing something NOT based on your work. In both cases it was written by the AI. If I read a bunch of your work, and try to write something in your style, did you write it? No. If you were to then utilize what I wrote, making tweaks and changes, you would at that point be editing, not writing. Same if the AI wrote it. In my opinion.

 

[SimonDoom]

That's more or less what Tilan claimed. Be careful whose company you keep.

No, that's a foolish argument. Arguments stand or fall on their merits, not on the basis of who makes them. I disagreed with Tilan constantly, but I don't care whether in a particular case he and I agree on something.

I thought what 8Letters did clearly was plagiarism, whether or not it was copyright infringement. There is not, to my knowledge, a minimum quantity requirement to establish plagiarism. He blatantly took the words of another Literotica author and passed them off as his own. That's plagiarism, pure and simple. Literotica authors shouldn't do that, ever.

I want to be very clear about this: it's not a hanging offense. I didn't want to see him leave. I wish he had just taken his lumps, fixed the problem, continued writing, and moved on. He chose to get indignant, and I think his indignation was unwarranted.

 

[XerXesXu]

There is not, to my knowledge, a minimum quantity requirement to establish plagiarism. He blatantly took the words of another Literotica author and passed them off as his own. That's plagiarism, pure and simple.

"I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." Remember.

You begin to sound more and more like a Federal Court judge. Remember where that leads. If you can't define it in a way prospectively comprehensible to someone who's subject to that rule then the rule is unconstitutional for making the law after the accused's alleged breach. Capricious, retrospective judicial legislation. The decent thing to do is to try harder to define it.

Tilan alleged that another author took his words and the structural concepts they evoked, in his story, and passed them off as his own. I checked. That was the case. But, whatever the two were up to, which was never clear, the latter didn't copy the former's story idea, on the contrary. You can't plagiarise evocative words, phrases or sentences - the neat turns of phrase we all pick up and recycle because they're appropriate to evoke a transient emotion, sensation or confusion eg: 'I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.' You'll notice I've translated it into English, but that's neither here nor there, I haven't plagiarised it. 8Letters said he was looking for neat expressions to evoke transient emotions and sensations which he couldn't articulate, that's what he did and no more. That's where the line's drawn. Now, you do know the requirement.

If The Supreme Court of The United States finds your position, capricious, irrational, absurd and unconstitutional, I have nothing to add to their opinion.

 

[Bramblethorn]

It's actually pretty simple. Did you decide what words to put down? Or did a program or another author do it?

I'm not sure that does entirely resolve it, though.

Many of the "AI-written" essays I've seen in reporting on GPT etc. do in fact involve a lot of human choice - somebody might get the AI to generate ten different responses to the same prompt for a single paragraph, then pick the one they like best, and repeat for the next paragraph.

At the finest level, every writer does this. Our keyboard offers us a choice of a few dozen letters to assemble into words. When we have difficulty at the level of individual words, a spellchecker or a thesaurus may offer us a few options. If I get stuck trying to remember the musical word for a medium-fast tempo, Google will find me suggestions and I get to evaluate those search results and pick the one that fits best.

There's usually some mix of technological assistance and authorial choice between options provided by the technology - often with the further choice to modify one of those options. The question is really how much authorial judgement needs to be involved, vs. how much aid from technology or other people, before one can reasonably be viewed as the "writer". I'm not sure there's a simple way to draw that boundary.

 

[djrip]

But, whatever the two were up to, which was never clear, the latter didn't copy the former's story idea, on the contrary

Story ideas are fine to copy.

You can't plagiarise evocative words, phrases or sentences

Yes, phrases and sentences are exactly what you can plagiarize.

 

[djrip]

I'm not sure that does entirely resolve it, though.

Many of the "AI-written" essays I've seen in reporting on GPT etc. do in fact involve a lot of human choice - somebody might get the AI to generate ten different responses to the same prompt for a single paragraph, then pick the one they like best, and repeat for the next paragraph.

At the finest level, every writer does this. Our keyboard offers us a choice of a few dozen letters to assemble into words. When we have difficulty at the level of individual words, a spellchecker or a thesaurus may offer us a few options. If I get stuck trying to remember the musical word for a medium-fast tempo, Google will find me suggestions and I get to evaluate those search results and pick the one that fits best.

There's usually some mix of technological assistance and authorial choice between options provided by the technology - often with the further choice to modify one of those options. The question is really how much authorial judgement needs to be involved, vs. how much aid from technology or other people, before one can reasonably be viewed as the "writer". I'm not sure there's a simple way to draw that boundary.

I think it works well to imagine that the assistance is coming from a person, and see what you think. If I ask my friend how to spell something, or what a synonym for a word is, that seems reasonable to me. If I ask my friend to write my next paragraph, and then either tweak it or use it or ask them to try it again, and keep doing that for each paragraph, I am at best co-writing with my friend, or editing their story. In my view.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Story ideas are fine to copy.

Yes, phrases and sentences are exactly what you can plagiarize.

I don't think he understands the meaning of plagiarism at all. These "definitions" are all his own and as is usual with his arguments, go off on bizarre tangents that are impossible and pointless to follow.

 

[XerXesXu]

Story ideas are fine to copy.

Yes, phrases and sentences are exactly what you can plagiarize.

A turd by any other name would smell as sweet.

 

[XerXesXu]

I don't think he understands the meaning of plagiarism at all.

Go on then, tell us all what it means. You're an expert at it, remember, so you should know.

 

[Bramblethorn]

"I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." Remember.

You begin to sound more and more like a Federal Court judge. Remember where that leads. If you can't define it in a way prospectively comprehensible to someone who's subject to that rule then the rule is unconstitutional for making the law after the accused's alleged breach. Capricious, retrospective judicial legislation. The decent thing to do is to try harder to define it.

You keep invoking legal principles in a discussion that isn't about the law. As far as I can see, nobody in this discussion is arguing that what 8letters did broke any laws; the focus has been on plagiarism, which is in general an ethical issue but not a legal one. (Caveat here because I haven't checked every jurisdiction in the world to see whether somebody has legislated "plagiarism".)

Simon and the other folk who expressed their disapproval of 8letters are not a government imposing sanctions, just private individuals expressing a personal judgement of another individual's actions as they relate to a community norm. There's no question of "constitutionality" there. As a lawyer you presumably understand that social censure of this kind is not subject to the rules of a court case, so I'm at a loss to understand why you keep suggesting they're applicable.

He said it himself: "If people feel I crossed a line, I crossed a line".

Tilan alleged that another author took his words and the structural concepts they evoked, in his story, and passed them off as his own. I checked. That was the case. But, whatever the two were up to, which was never clear, the latter didn't copy the former's story idea, on the contrary. You can't plagiarise evocative words, phrases or sentences - the neat turns of phrase we all pick up and recycle because they're appropriate to evoke a transient emotion, sensation or confusion eg: 'I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.' You'll notice I've translated it into English, but that's neither here nor there, I haven't plagiarised it. 8Letters said he was looking for neat expressions to evoke transient emotions and sensations which he couldn't articulate, that's what he did and no more. That's where the line's drawn. Now, you do know the requirement.

I'd dispute the accuracy of that "and no more", but even if one accepts it for the sake of argument... why would any more be needed for this to be a problem? "Articulating expressions which evoke transient emotions and sensations" is at the heart of authoring an erotic story.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Go on then, tell us all what it means. You're an expert at it, remember, so you should know.

You are being deliberately obtuse.

Plagiarism
Noun
the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.
SIMILAR:
copying
infringement of copyright
piracy
theft
stealing
poaching
appropriation

But I suspect you have your own definitions of those words, too, and like Humpty Dumpty, will define them as you will for your own purpose.

Or this: https://www.plagiarism.org/article/what-is-plagiarism

 

[alohadave]

You begin to sound more and more like a Federal Court judge. Remember where that leads. If you can't define it in a way prospectively comprehensible to someone who's subject to that rule then the rule is unconstitutional for making the law after the accused's alleged breach. Capricious, retrospective judicial legislation. The decent thing to do is to try harder to define it.

That is how Fair Use works. There are no definitions of what actually is, or how much can be used before it's no longer fair use. Just four broad categories.

It's not defined, so you have to defend yourself in court and try to convince others that your usage is valid or not.

 

[XerXesXu]

That is how Fair Use works. There are no definitions of what actually is, or how much can be used before it's no longer fair use. Just four broad categories.

It's not defined, so you have to defend yourself in court and try to convince others that your usage is valid or not.

'including' means that there are more than 4 categories expressly excluded by 'fair use' in US copyright law. It's nothing to do with plagiarism.
In Court, the burden of proof falls upon the Plaintiff. What do you think he has to prove in copyright law? In an action for breach of contract by an employee against his employer, or a student against his University, who would have to prove what and what evidence would they need to call to prove plagiarism?

 

[Bramblethorn]

Here's a different way that GPT can be useful to a writer: as a tool for gauging the originality of a story.

For instance, suppose I'm planning to write a story with a blind character. If I prompt it with a few variations on "write a story about a blind person who ..." I find that tropes like these come up a lot:

She was born blind, but that never stopped her from living her life to the fullest.

Growing up, Jenna faced many challenges, but she was determined to not let her blindness define her. After high school, she decided to pursue a degree in engineering. She faced many obstacles along the way, but she was determined to succeed.

Despite the challenges she faced, Jenna's skills and determination impressed her colleagues and her clients.

Jenna's story is an inspiration to many, and she has become a role model for young people who have disabilities. She proved that anything is possible with hard work and determination.

Years passed and Jenna was now a renowned engineer, she had helped design and build some of the most impressive structures and systems that the world had ever seen, she was proud of her accomplishments, but she was most proud of the fact that she had shown that being blind was not a limitation but a strength, and she had helped change the perception of what people with disabilities were capable of.

If the story I had in mind leans heavily on those same "inspiration", "role model", "faced many challenges" elements, the fact that GPT keeps coming up with these is my warning that these have been used a lot and I need to think about how I'm going to make that character something other than a walking bundle of disability clichés.

Not to say that tropes are always bad - some things are popular for a reason. But if that's all I have, it's probably not enough.

 

[ElectricBlue]

If the story I had in mind leans heavily on those same "inspiration", "role model", "faced many challenges" elements, the fact that GPT keeps coming up with these is my warning that these have been used a lot and I need to think about how I'm going to make that character something other than a walking bundle of disability clichés.

Not to say that tropes are always bad - some things are popular for a reason. But if that's all I have, it's probably not enough.

That's an interesting application. It would never occur to me to do that.

Now I'll have to not do it, for fear of discovering that I'm writing tediously repetitive tropes. Bloody hell!