Dissecting Literotica’s AI Policy

[cw5523729]

I've been dealing with machine-translated (and in recent years AI-translated) texts since 1999. All that time, the companies have been throwing millions into their marketing, saying "We're nearly there, it's almost as good as human translation!" And surprise! it never is, at least not beyond a superficial glance.

I mentioned in another thread that I've used Google translate to communicate with some non-English speaking coworkers many times. Seeing how much it butchers just a few sentences, I have to think that anyone using it to translate a 25k word story is being way, way, way optimistic.

 

[PennyThompson]

I don't use it that way, and I never allow it to change the order of my words; I do that myself if I like what it says. It often places the person's name or pronoun at the beginning of the sentence, which is considered bad writing if it exceeds the industry average, and it does if AI is involved.

yeah, and I think that's totally fine and doesn't seem to cause people any trouble!

I'm just saying that generative LLM stuff is most certainly embedded into Grammarly now, and it's possible to let it do stuff to your text that I would consider to be a creative misuse of AI, and that Lit seems to often catch and reject as well.

The companies that make these writing tools don't make any philosophical distinction between helpful grammar suggestions and generative AI, and in fact try to blur those lines in their interface whenever possible.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Well, there are things that AI does that I do. Or used to do. I like to repeat certain lines in stories, as an opening or closing to a scene. Not sure that wasn't what got me flagged the time I was.

yeah, and I think that's totally fine and doesn't seem to cause people any trouble!

I'm just saying that generative LLM stuff is most certainly embedded into Grammarly now, and it's possible to let it do stuff to your text that I would consider to be a creative misuse of AI, and that Lit seems to often catch and reject as well.

The companies that make these writing tools don't make any philosophical distinction between helpful grammar suggestions and generative AI, and in fact try to blur those lines in their interface whenever possible.

 

[AwkwardMD]

The companies that make these writing tools don't make any philosophical distinction between helpful grammar suggestions and generative AI, and in fact try to blur those lines in their interface whenever possible.

I fear the day Laurel and Manu lose faith in their detector's ability to stop anything.

 

[cw5523729]

I fear the day Laurel and Manu lose faith in their detector's ability to stop anything.

And the # of stories released enters the single digits per day?

 

[AwkwardMD]

And the # of stories released enters the single digits per day?

Quadruple digits, more likely.

 

[TheLobster]

If you are worried about Grammarly but want a contextual spellchecker that takes grammar into account, I’ve had good experience with Google Docs. It underlines wrong words even if they’re not misspelled and suggests single-word replacements only.

I don’t remember if I had to reject some more advanced AI features to get that, but if I did, then it was probably some big flashy dialog when I first went to create a doc. Google is generally pretty good about asking users about privacy things like that.

 

[AwkwardMD]

And the # of stories released enters the single digits per day?

Although yeah, that's a possibility too now that I think a little more.

 

[AwkwardMD]

If you are worried about Grammarly but want a contextual spellchecker that takes grammar into account, I’ve had good experience with Google Docs. It underlines wrong words even if they’re not misspelled and suggests single-word replacements only.

I don’t remember if I had to reject some more advanced AI features to get that, but if I did, then it was probably some big flashy dialog when I first went to create a doc. Google is generally pretty good about asking users about privacy things like that.

Google docs is fantastic. It's what I use, and what I recommend whenever I collaborate with another author (co-writing editing, beta reading, etc).

 

[cw5523729]

If you are worried about Grammarly but want a contextual spellchecker that takes grammar into account, I’ve had good experience with Google Docs. It underlines wrong words even if they’re not misspelled and suggests single-word replacements only.

Second Google Docs. It's great at flagging wrong word choice and even wrong tense. And I had no issues with getting flagged for AI for using it

edit: whoops. Make that third.

 

[PennyThompson]

I fear the day Laurel and Manu lose faith in their detector's ability to stop anything.

In 2023 Clarkesworld Magazine suspended their entire story submission system for a while because of how much AI slop they were receiving. Their solution was to make writers sign a no-AI attestation form along with their writing contract, they instituted some detection tools that they keep secret (sounds familiar) and they started ruthlessly blacklisting aspiring authors if they found evidence of AI use.

But that's a printed fiction periodical that only publishes a dozen or so stories per month, and can be discerning in what it chooses to accept. I don't know what the answer is to scale something like that to Lit's size...

 

[AwkwardMD]

In 2023 Clarkesworld Magazine suspended their entire story submission system for a while because of how much AI slop they were receiving. Their solution was to make writers sign a no-AI attestation form along with their writing contract, they instituted some detection tools that they keep secret (sounds familiar) and they started ruthlessly blacklisting aspiring authors if they found evidence of AI use.

But that's a printed fiction periodical that only publishes a dozen or so stories per month, and can be discerning in what it chooses to accept. I don't know what the answer is to scale something like that to Lit's size...

It would be different if there was money to be made (and lost) in the mix.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I lost a couple of regular gigs this month to one or another AI. But at least my fiction writers (and best blogger and podcaster) haven't dropped me for AI yet.

It would be different if there was money to be made (and lost) in the mix.

 

[StillStunned]

I lost a couple of regular gigs this month to one or another AI.

AI has been eating into my client base for years now.

 

[YmaOHyd]

.But that's a printed fiction periodical that only publishes a dozen or so stories per month, and can be discerning in what it chooses to accept. I don't know what the answer is to scale something like that to Lit's size...

Twenty FTEs doing nothing but story evaluation. Whatever the Lit revenue stream is, it certainly doesn't support that.

 

[Nynah]

In 2023 Clarkesworld Magazine suspended their entire story submission system for a while because of how much AI slop they were receiving.

I can't help but wonder how many of those AI slop stories were sent in just to fuck with Neil Clarke's famously draconian submission guidelines:

Science fiction need not be “hard” SF, but rigor is appreciated. Fantasy can be folkloric, contemporary, surreal, etc. Though no particular setting, theme, or plot is anathema to us, the following are likely hard sells:

• zombies or zombie-wannabes (seriously, I’m not kidding)
• sexy vampires, wanton werewolves, wicked witches, or demonic children
• stories about rapists, murderers, child abusers, or cannibals
• stories where the climax is dependent on the spilling of intestines
• stories in which a milquetoast civilian government is depicted as the sole obstacle to either catching some depraved criminal or to an uncomplicated military victory
• stories where the Republicans, or Democrats, or Libertarians, or . . . (insert any political party or religion here) take over the world and either save or ruin it
• stories in which the words “thou” or “thine” appear
• talking cats or swords
• stories where FTL travel or time travel is as easy as is it on television shows or movies
• stories about young kids playing in some field and discovering ANYTHING. (a body, an alien craft, Excalibur, ANYTHING).
• stories about the stuff we all read in Scientific American three months ago
• stories about your RPG character’s adventures
• “funny” stories that depend on, or even include, puns
• stories where the protagonist is either widely despised or widely admired simply because he or she is just so smart and/or strange
• stories originally intended for someone’s upcoming theme anthology or issue (everyone is sending those out, wait a while)
• your trunk stories
• stories that try to include all of the above

I'm not at all saying it was deserved (I certainly don't condone the use of AI to generate slop of any variety, zombies and sexy vampires notwithstanding) but it's an amusing thing to ponder.

 

[cw5523729]

Twenty FTEs doing nothing but story evaluation. Whatever the Lit revenue stream is, it certainly doesn't support that.

Pretty sure that Lit's revenue stream comes from:

View attachment 2577666



And that the whole "story" thing is nothing more than a way to drive people to those paying sources

 

[StillStunned]

You'd think Laurel would get the cam girls to review stories for her in their downtime.

Or even when the cameras are on. Can you imagine how many authors would pay to watch the story vetting process in real time?

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I can't help but wonder how many of those AI slop stories were sent in just to fuck with Neil Clarke's famously draconian submission guidelines:


I'm not at all saying it was deserved (I certainly don't condone the use of AI to generate slop of any variety, zombies and sexy vampires notwithstanding) but it's an amusing thing to ponder.

I'm actually a fan of that guidance.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

You'd think Laurel would get the cam girls to review stories for her in their downtime.

Or even when the cameras are on. Can you imagine how many authors would pay to watch the story vetting process in real time?

Or just have the girls reading the story aloud, making comments as they go.

 

[cw5523729]

Or just have the girls reading the story aloud, making comments as they go.

So kinda like Mystery Science Theater 3000, but with nudity? That's genius!!

 

[SmilingLez]

https://www.literotica.com/faq/publishing/publishing-ai

And it’s kinda precious that Laurel and Manu have outsourced any discussion about the topic to us

"Literotica’s own use of AI is currently limited to improving the way we recommend related works to readers."

So literotica uses an AI tool to see if the stories we write are AI generated. It's like the pot calling the kettle black. This leads me to believe that not every story that gets posted is read by Laurel. YMMV

 

[AwkwardlySet]

You'd think Laurel would get the cam girls to review stories for her in their downtime.

Or even when the cameras are on. Can you imagine how many authors would pay to watch the story vetting process in real time?

I think many BDSM authors would pay to have their story shredded to pieces by some of those cam girls.

I can already imagine the sex talk:

"Yes... Yes! Judge me harshly, call me a hack!"

 

[AwkwardMD]

This leads me to believe that not every story that gets posted is read by Laurel. YMMV

I don't know why people say this like it's still a surprise. An 8 hour work day is 480 minutes / 175 stories (i saw someone repeat this number recently) = 2.74 minutes per story assuming every second of effort went into a story that was successfully published, to say nothing of rejections and comment moderation and whatever else.

Once upon a time? Sure. Now?

 

[cw5523729]

Or just have the girls reading the story aloud, making comments as they go.

Actually, on reflection, having a naked cam girl read my story aloud and comment from her bed "god, what a piece of shit this is" would be even worse than getting a 1-star bomb.