Many interesting threads there. I'm not even sure where to start.
I feel like this has ties to my frequent soapbox about people being unwilling to pay for quality or unable to tell the difference between quality and crap.
Software has (in my opinion) always been a prime example of this paradigm. Everyone complains about software and the complaints are justified. There is a metric shit ton of craptacular software out there. However, we have seen over and over in the last 40-50 years that in the software market sooner and cheaper beats better when customers are voting with their wallets.
I don't know to what extent this is mirrored in publishing.
The main concern I have been hearing from Authors and Visual artists is not about the market being inundated with shoddy work, it is that the "learning" algorithms of the AIs feed off of existing published works without any compensation to the people who created those works.
I think I agree with you that there will always be a market for cheap or free AI generated art and literature. As you say, "good enough" tends to win out. Does McIlroy’s article address the IP issues involved?
The IP issues are touched on in his article, but not thoroughly addressed. Personally I tend to put those in a separate bucket entirely; it is a complex and fraught issue both legally and ethically, and I'm not convinced it will be "resolved" any time soon. I look to spotify for this kind of thing, in the sense of how long challenges to its payment structure took to wind through the legal system, and how the fact that "spotify does not pay artists fairly!" had, like, .0005% impact on its growth b/c users by and large did not care or did not know (I cancelled my subscription over their producing Joe Rogan's podcast, and I'm sure no one at spotify cares. LOL!). Anyway, most artists and authors simply have no idea that they signed away their rights on training AI when they clicked the "accept TOS" button...some things never change.
I think people can tell the difference between quality and crap, but generally, if the crap is "good enough" they are not going to fork out money for the quality version if they don't have to. I use the Affinity software suite for graphic design, and for sure, Photoshop has more features and plugins, but eh, Affinity is $50 (or was, when I bought it).
I think in publishing the issue is that by and large readers are used to a flat fee - ebooks are X dollars, paperbacks are X dollars, hardbacks are X dollars. You can buy a masterpiece of literature for the same price as a Harlequin novel. KU brought in the "flat price for endless books!" paradigm and it's been successful, but again, quality vs. crap is not an issue there at all.
It's kind of like the same, the more things change, the more they stay the same. With AI, I see a bunch of people ringing their hands about the text lacks some je ne sais quoi human spark connecting the reader to the author. As a reader, I could care less about connecting with an author. I want to connect to the story. A certain story, over and over again. And that's clearly a large segment of the market, considering that "write to market" is a whole thing. And it's just the indie publishing version of pulp from the 20th century. We tie ourselves up into knots over things like awards and best seller tags that the average reader doesn't care about in the slightest.
I said this before when somebody brought up a similar kind of topic in one of those Facebook groups, but if There was a button that I could click to generate a story about a gay teenage dragonrider with a telepathic dragon on an adventure to save the world, I would click that button until the banks rook my credit card away from me. It wouldn't matter how rote or unoriginal the stories were.
I keep arguing that your demographic of reader is going to be a big part of the numbers in the next five to ten years as the tech becomes easier to use, but authors by and large are in denial about that. Personally I'd love to tap into that, and basically be the producer who comes up with settings and characters and then lets readers buy a license to create their own stories; that is, wholly legal AI generated fanfiction. I mean, free fanfic will always be there, and that doesn't bother me, but I see a lot of possibilities in the future along those lines b/c there are people who want the fanfic of their dreams but aren't writers (or don't want to be).
And that's a really good point about "write to market." It's a VERY successful tactic and has led to SO MUCH utter dreck entirely written by humans and devoured by readers. I've read some badly written books in my time because they just happen to hit that sweet spot of tropes and characters I want. 😂
Many interesting threads there. I'm not even sure where to start.
I feel like this has ties to my frequent soapbox about people being unwilling to pay for quality or unable to tell the difference between quality and crap.
Software has (in my opinion) always been a prime example of this paradigm. Everyone complains about software and the complaints are justified. There is a metric shit ton of craptacular software out there. However, we have seen over and over in the last 40-50 years that in the software market sooner and cheaper beats better when customers are voting with their wallets.
I don't know to what extent this is mirrored in publishing.
The main concern I have been hearing from Authors and Visual artists is not about the market being inundated with shoddy work, it is that the "learning" algorithms of the AIs feed off of existing published works without any compensation to the people who created those works.
I think I agree with you that there will always be a market for cheap or free AI generated art and literature. As you say, "good enough" tends to win out. Does McIlroy’s article address the IP issues involved?
The IP issues are touched on in his article, but not thoroughly addressed. Personally I tend to put those in a separate bucket entirely; it is a complex and fraught issue both legally and ethically, and I'm not convinced it will be "resolved" any time soon. I look to spotify for this kind of thing, in the sense of how long challenges to its payment structure took to wind through the legal system, and how the fact that "spotify does not pay artists fairly!" had, like, .0005% impact on its growth b/c users by and large did not care or did not know (I cancelled my subscription over their producing Joe Rogan's podcast, and I'm sure no one at spotify cares. LOL!). Anyway, most artists and authors simply have no idea that they signed away their rights on training AI when they clicked the "accept TOS" button...some things never change.
I think people can tell the difference between quality and crap, but generally, if the crap is "good enough" they are not going to fork out money for the quality version if they don't have to. I use the Affinity software suite for graphic design, and for sure, Photoshop has more features and plugins, but eh, Affinity is $50 (or was, when I bought it).
I think in publishing the issue is that by and large readers are used to a flat fee - ebooks are X dollars, paperbacks are X dollars, hardbacks are X dollars. You can buy a masterpiece of literature for the same price as a Harlequin novel. KU brought in the "flat price for endless books!" paradigm and it's been successful, but again, quality vs. crap is not an issue there at all.
Hey there, fellow Pixel 7'er!
It's kind of like the same, the more things change, the more they stay the same. With AI, I see a bunch of people ringing their hands about the text lacks some je ne sais quoi human spark connecting the reader to the author. As a reader, I could care less about connecting with an author. I want to connect to the story. A certain story, over and over again. And that's clearly a large segment of the market, considering that "write to market" is a whole thing. And it's just the indie publishing version of pulp from the 20th century. We tie ourselves up into knots over things like awards and best seller tags that the average reader doesn't care about in the slightest.
I said this before when somebody brought up a similar kind of topic in one of those Facebook groups, but if There was a button that I could click to generate a story about a gay teenage dragonrider with a telepathic dragon on an adventure to save the world, I would click that button until the banks rook my credit card away from me. It wouldn't matter how rote or unoriginal the stories were.
I keep arguing that your demographic of reader is going to be a big part of the numbers in the next five to ten years as the tech becomes easier to use, but authors by and large are in denial about that. Personally I'd love to tap into that, and basically be the producer who comes up with settings and characters and then lets readers buy a license to create their own stories; that is, wholly legal AI generated fanfiction. I mean, free fanfic will always be there, and that doesn't bother me, but I see a lot of possibilities in the future along those lines b/c there are people who want the fanfic of their dreams but aren't writers (or don't want to be).
And that's a really good point about "write to market." It's a VERY successful tactic and has led to SO MUCH utter dreck entirely written by humans and devoured by readers. I've read some badly written books in my time because they just happen to hit that sweet spot of tropes and characters I want. 😂