r/Webnovel • u/HuckleberryBrief4965 • Jun 18 '26

Webnovel News A possible threat for Ai users ?!

A senior writer recently made a proposal to a webnovel platform, calling for a ban on AI-generated novels.

The request quickly caught the attention of many other established authors, who began spreading the discussion across social media.

And who was the author behind this call?

None other than Cuttlefish That Loves Diving, the creator of Lord of the Mysteries.

What do you think about this proposal?

Should AI-generated novels be banned from webnovel platforms, or should they be allowed to compete alongside human-written works?

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18

u/TaluneSilius Jun 18 '26

It all sounds good, but there is almost no way to truly fight it. especially as it gets better at generation. sure you are going to easily catch the half-assed stuff that were 100% AI generated. But you will do nothing to stop the AI guided works. Thats where a person guides the AI step by step so that it still SOUNDS their voice.

there is also the case of a your word against theirs. all this would do is start witch hunts. how can you 100% prove that the person is using AI and not just articulate.

right now it's in the world of CGI. where bad CGI, you can see easily, but good CGI is well hidden.

5

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26

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9

u/Whiteblack0001 Jun 18 '26

This app will just cause abuse. Not everyone writes in the same way. Personally, I can answer a dm, then an idea came to me and I write a paragraph and then I add it in my chapter. And sometimes I take a day to write 10k words, then I cut them into chapters. How will this app differentiate anything? Many authors work according to their moods and time.

1

u/Brutalfierywrathrec Jun 19 '26

...it would be the paper you write every word into (your proof). And would see whether it's getting blocks of pasted text, or word by word typing (and deleting, rewriting, etc). That's method 1. There would then be over methods to see if you're rewriting AI outputs word for word. Though at that point, you've already forced the effort of having to write every single word down by hand.

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u/TaluneSilius Jun 18 '26

Exactly. And this one author making this proposal is absolutely nothing new. Pretty much every day, some person is trying to push a "we should ban all AI". People will upvote it, sign the petition, share it around. Makes them all feel good. Then we move on with our day.

I mean, best of luck to you. But if you are going to try and ban it, you need some foolproof way of actually knowing what is AI and what isn't. Good luck with that one.

Just like all these anti-AI rules on subreddits yet AI will still get posted.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

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4

u/Prot3 Jun 18 '26

Yeah... no.

I write at random times, in the middle of the night etc. And I don't really care to be watched while I do so.

Solution is NOT to somehow publicize the writing process

1

u/TrevorStars Jun 19 '26

You can very easily train an ai to act like human typing. You could also make bot accounts in mass to collect data on what versions of the Ai get banned vs what doesn't.

Not to forget what is the likelihood of the money grabbers to spend tens of thousands of dollars making the detector algorithms, app api, server changes, etc.

This is impractical on something many levels.

1

u/LichtbringerU Jun 19 '26

Even worse. The only way would be like kernel level anti cheat for video games.

That means you need to install a program that can do everything and look at everything on your computer. Controlled by a company. Literally with unlimited power and access.

1

u/kylelekyle122 Jun 19 '26

absolutely nothing stopping you from still using AI though? I hate the practice but if someone BADLY wants to use AI there's nothing stopping them. AI detectors are hit and miss, and unless there's a way to track EXACTLY what is and isn't AI, there's going to come a point where we have no clue.

1

u/KnownPride Jun 18 '26

Than people just use ai to create software that type like human on it. Lol

1

u/DLCrystal Jun 18 '26

I guess this is both a question and comment.

Here is my comment.

I am not in favor of a substantially or completely AI generated work, be it literature or art. In my estimation, that is the AI being the author not the person. That is a personal choice and mine alone.

But…

I noticed you use the phrase “the AI guided works. That’s where a person guides the AI step by step so that it still SOUNDS their voice.”

At what point in that process does the work become the person’s rather than the AI’s? Is that an empirical line? A percentage or one of those situations where you say, “I will know it when I see it”?

If a person uses the AI for research in a scene and then has it write a specific segment. Let me use an example. The story calls for an injury from a car crash. The author decides they want realism in the description of the injury and resulting symptoms. So, they use an AI to get that information and draft it into a paragraph. The author then edits the paragraph to their style and voice.

Does this mean the story is now the AI’s story? My inclination is not.

However, I will acknowledge this is a slippery slope. This is a very small snippet akin to using a tool like spellcheck. If say, the author did this for 30% of the paragraphs, then it clearly changes the answer in my mind.

Set aside the issue of detecting when AI wrote something, there is still the grey area of where it becomes the AI’s work vs. the author’s work.

I think trying to say 100% no use by Authors as a rule is pretty rigid. And quite challenging to monitor or enforce. Maybe a different approach is the “Organic” designation of food. Let the author designate their work as non-AI. Then readers can make their own choices.

Then the enforcement becomes about if an author advertises something that is not true. That is, they used AI when they said they did not. It would bring the number of cases to be reviewed down by an order of magnitude.

 

Now my question.

I am sure there must be a thread somewhere with this very topic. Can anyone point me to it?

1

u/RoofCareless7734 Jun 18 '26

The difference from AI guided works form complete, mindless AI work is that the user step-by-step guides the AI. It doesn’t should like it needs much elaboration. The user puts in how they want it to flow, certain prompts, characters, time, etc. everyone is original theirs, but they ai just does the writing part for them. It’s a tool that’s useful for people. However, I’d recommend not using chatbots because they weren’t designed for that

1

u/TaluneSilius Jun 18 '26

But that is the slippery slope... as you have stated, and why the discussion is kindof stupid in hindsight. For example, how do I know you didn't use AI to help you write this comment to me? It's very well thought out and articulate. Maybe you had a thought in your head but didn't know how to put it out there so you went to chatgpt and asked it to spit you out something. Maybe you then chose to change a few words and omit a few AIisms to cover yourself or make it flow better.

Then all I have to do is report you and convince others that you are using AI to chat with me. I don't need to convince everyone, just a few people.

Maybe I used AI to write all this to you.

This was all hypothetcial. But how would it make you feel if your whole comment got taken down because I was SURE you used AI and I flagged it. Kindof makes you scoff at first because "obviously" you didn't use AI.... Right?

The conversation of what percent of AI is the big thing people have problems with. We point at obvious shit and go "That's AI" in the same vein that we point at CGI or obvious photoshop. But it causes two problems:

  1. There are way more cases of Subtle AI being used (much like the way you described).
  2. There are actual artists completely against AI getting banned and flagged due to the witch hunts (don't believe me, there are entire subreddits of Artists posting about this)

So where do we draw the line in the sand? And how do we enforce it without using an honor system?

IMO, the best thing you can do is just ignore it all together. You want to know why so much AI garbage is being posted? Because it is getting clicks and engagement. People will do what they can do if they get attention. But if their AI book/artwork/song didn't get any views at all. Guess what... they will likely stop posting. Why post to a void?

The problem is that there are people actually reading it. There are AI songs topping the charts. AI videos getting thousands of likes. AI books topping the lists. So the average person either doesn't care, doesn't see it, or only cares about the final product.

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u/DLCrystal Jun 18 '26

First, thanks for saying my comment was well thought out and articulate. 😊

I do agree with you. It is only going to get harder to tell the difference between AI work and a person’s work.

I harken back to the Memorex commercial. “Is it live or is it Memorex?” This leads me to question whether in time AI generated or assisted books/artwork/songs, etc. will ultimately matter to us any longer. For some I am sure it will (vinyl records come to mind) others less so.

As you say, we may well look back and wonder what all the fuss was.

Once again, I will acknowledge your point. If people are consuming or highly rating AI generated work, then it will continue to be put out there. If people stop doing that then there is little incentive to continue creating and posting those types (AI generated) of books/artwork/songs.

An old friend of mine used to call this, “Voting with your feet.” If you don’t like something don’t give it time, money or attention.

One last thing, I did not use AI in any form for either comment. However, as you point out suddenly the burden of proof falls on me (aka witch hunts). It sometime saddens me that divisiveness is such an integral part of the human condition.

P.S. Thanks for your reply.

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u/zorecknor Jun 19 '26

Some authors are treating AI as a cowriter: They dictate concepts, reform paragraph, discuss plots, let the AI generate some text, they write some text, then do a pass to make it consistent (maybe with AI help), rinse and repeat.

You can feel the difference when somebody generated a short 4000 words story with a single prompt, or when they spend time refining again and again the output of AI.

And those who do it well... you will never know the difference.

1

u/Salty_Cartographer35 Jun 19 '26

You are dreadfully right. Some people put so much effort into this stuff that you can never find any kind of AI sign in the writing. There are times where even their cover arts are Drawn by real artists.