What the Shy Girl Conversation Says About AI and Art

Bridget Todd joins us to break down the ongoing drama around the book Shy Girl and the accusations that it was written with AI, the ramification and implications of the backlash and how it happened in the first place. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Smantha and welcome to stuff
I never told you Production by Heart Radio, and today
we are so happy to once again be joined by
the generous, the genuine Bridget Todd, the real deal, as

(00:26):
they might say, Welcome Bridget.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Thank you. I love the G theme. I'll take it.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yes, I did think about this one beforehand. Sometimes I
just come a little.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
But I will admit your skin looks amazing. Oh the
glowing here, That's what I'm saying of the G theme. Hello,
my God, keep complimenting me. Yes, please, well, Bridget, how
have you been?

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Happy? Belated birthday?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Thank you? Thank you. My birthday is on Pie Day,
which I always love to throw out. When I was
a kid, I would have pie. Even though I'm not
a huge pie person, I would have pie instead of
cake on my birthday.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
I prefer cake. Really, you, Annie, the face.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Samantha just made when I said I prefer cake, you looked.
You looked horrified.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
No, I just know Annie's stance on this, and she's
a pie girl. So oh you knew.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
I was on a podcast that argued pie versus cake
and I won.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
What were the merits of pie over cake?

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Bridget? I can direct you to the podcast otherwise I
have a thirty minute fight right now.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
I love that this is I love that you have
such a like a clarified say, I go, I got
chuck cake. Here's a resource for you, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
But if that's your preference, then I salute you.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
What kind of cake though? What's your favorite?

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Ooh, what a good question. I'm a pretty traditional cake person.
First of all, there's no cake that I will not try.
I like the yellow cake with chocolate icing, like I
like cream cheese icing. I love. I am not above
just a Duncan Hines box mix funfetti cake. Honestly all

(02:15):
cake I am. But you can't see it. But behind
me there's a chocolate cream cheese cake on my counter.
And when I'm done with all my calls and interviews
and stuff, that's gonna be a slice of that cake
is going to be my reward for that for cheesecake.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
So it is cheesecake? You considered that a cake?

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Or Oh?

Speaker 3 (02:32):
I'm just gonna ask you all the questions. What a
good question, because I that's how I would celebrate my birthday.
I traditionally my mother would make me a chocolate mini
chocolate chip cheesecake for my birthday. It was very specific,
and then from then on she would get me a
cheesecake of some sort that she was like testing out.
But I did like The debate was is this an

(02:53):
actual cake? Could this be considered cake?

Speaker 2 (02:56):
I don't know that I would call it cake because
the time that I made a cheesecake, I don't think
I baked it. I don't, like, really, I think that
baking might be something that has to happen for it
to be a cake. I believe the time that I
made a cheesecake it was no bake. Also, it kind
of almost put me off cheesecake. I don't know if
you ever made one from scratch, but the ingredients are

(03:19):
like eight sticks of butter, eight things of sour cream,
eight things that cream cheese are like you never think
about what actually goes into a cheesecake, and then when
you actually make one, you're like, wow, there's a lot
of sugar and cream.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
No, it's intense. So the kind of cheesecakes I would
take I would bake is literal as it would be baked,
but you had to have the spring form pan and
the chick time not to let it crack. That was
the true test. I never did have a perfect cheesecake. No.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
This is why I do the no bake, because I
that's too much. Your kudos to your mom for figuring
that out is really good?

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Oh yes, well cake cake talk aside? You earn self
By Southwest? How was that?

Speaker 2 (04:01):
It was really good? I will say I've been a lot.
I've been going to south By Southwest on and off
for a long time, and I really enjoy it. I
usually spent my birthday there. This time I also spent
my birthday there. I've seen it go from a kind
of hip, little arts and music forward festival. I think

(04:24):
that there was a time where it got really tech
bro heavy, where they added in tech as its own activation,
and like everything was tech. I remember going the year
that everybody was talking about NFTs and it was every
every session, every talk, every this, every that, every activation
was NFTs. And then going the next year and it

(04:45):
was like NFTs, who we don't know her? So this
year they dialed down the tech a little bit, and
I think, even as a tech person, I think that
was good. I think that was the right choice. Just
little more film, more culture, more art, more music. Tech
was still there. People like me were still there, but
I think it felt good having you know, you don't

(05:07):
want to go to these events and have it to
be an AI hype machine, and oftentimes that's what it's
felt like. And it felt a little that was dialed.
It was still there, but dialed down to the point
of Okay, I can tolerate this.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Didn't they do something special with podcast movement? Like they
joined together? Right?

Speaker 2 (05:24):
They did? Podcast Movement happened at at south By Southwest
This year they had the iHeartRadio Podcast Awards from south
By Southwest. This year, I Heart had a whole activation
the iHeart Podcast Hotel. I got to see some familiar
faces from the iHeart fam. Yeah. So it was just
one big amalgamation of south By podcasts, podcast events, podcast awards.

(05:50):
I met Killer Mike at one of the events. Ramsey,
who we all know, was there and I was like,
oh my god. Ramsey shot up for a second. I
think that's Killer Mike and he was like, not only
is that Killer Mike, I am working on a podcast
with Killer Mike, and like, would you like to meet him?
I'm rarely starstruck. It is rare in my life, and

(06:10):
I'm like, this person is someone that I really like
and respect. I think Killer Mike might think I'm nonverbal
like that. That's how the interaction went.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
Like he is an Atlanta staple, like he is.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Have you seen him around?

Speaker 3 (06:25):
Yes, so I've seen him around doing a few things
here and there.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, oh my god, you see him about town?

Speaker 3 (06:32):
Yeah, he got his places to go.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
We started watching some YouTube series and they came to
Atlanta and they highlighted Killer Mike because he's such a
staple of him of Atlanta. But yes, he is, he's
a man about town.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Thinking about it, I guess because you all live in Atlanta,
it's probably a lot less exciting to see people like
you've probably seen people like that around all the time,
and it's probably not the same as it is to
me where the only living in DC. The only celebrity
I might see is like Mitch McConnell, which is not
really the same thing.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
Different reactions.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Fair, Although, my friends went to a music festival and
they were and they were standing next to AOC so
that was exciting.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
Yeah, it's still exciting.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, that, yeah, that is exciting. I mean I've never
just to be clear, I've seen Killer Mike, but I
don't know what would happen if I tried to talk
to Killer? So I don't know that would be any
better than you no rubbing.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
Of the elbows?

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, no, no, just all oh, there is no yes,
But I actually was curious. And this brings us to
our topic, which I'm very excited to talk about. Is
if you said that they kind of dialed down the
AI at south By Southwest, But were there conversations or
anything about what's going on with AI and art there?

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yes? Oh, good question. It's actually a funny story. Probably
shouldn't even say this, but like so I was. I
was there for both south By Southwest and Podcast Movement
that was happening at the same time, and I was
there giving a talk. They were doing this series of
talks throughout the day at Podcast Movement, and so I
was giving one of the sort of signature talks that
I do about why audiences are actually kind of skeptical

(08:19):
of AI and their media and their creative work and
what that means and like how we should be. Basically,
the long and short of it is that you know,
especially in a medium like podcasting, the reason why people
turn to podcasts is trust. And so if you dial
up the AI. You are throwing away the thing that
makes the medium not just good but also lucrative, also
like a good you know medium. And so I'm deciding

(08:43):
my slides, and I use a case study of a
specific AI podcast company, and I have a slide that
has a picture of their you know, splash landing page.
It's like, oh, this company has makes the podcasts with
AI hosts and AI voices, and they say they can

(09:04):
make you know, however, many podcasts for like a dollar,
and they're churning them out. And I was using that
as like a negative in my opinion, negative use case.
I'm going over the slides with my producer. I'm like, oh,
maybe I should take this out. Like the person who
whose company I'm talking about, she could be in the audience,
make it awkward. Let me remove the slide. I show

(09:27):
up through my talk. Not only is that woman who
runs the company there, she's talking right before me about
her AI podcast company. So sets me up to be like, Okay,
everything that you just heard, here's why I disagree. But
I'm so glad that I took out that slide that
was like specifically screw this AI podcasting company. Am I right?

(09:47):
I didn't actually say that in the in the in
the talk, but that would have been the impression given. Yeah, who.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Bullet dodge for her?

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, bullet dodged. Seriously, how would that.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Have been to be like, ohllo, did she stick around
for yours?

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Oh? I don't know. That's actually a very good question.
I can't imagine anything that I had to say would
have moved somebody who is gambling on the idea that
audiences want more AI in their creative work, in their podcast,
in their media. When I think if you listen to
what audiences are telling us, they're telling us the exact opposite.

(10:24):
They don't want AI in their really anywhere, but especially
in their creative work. And that really dovetails nicely with
the situation I want to talk about today.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yes, and I we were talking about this before, Samantha
and I never heard of this specific case, but it
is a huge conversation right now, and I've heard of
other cases and there's a lot to unpack and it
is really interesting. So what specific case are we talking
about today? Bridge?

Speaker 2 (10:55):
I am talking about the writer drama unfolding around the
book Shy Girl, and I want to talk about this.
I wanted to sort of get your thoughts as authors
and creatives and people who are thinking about AI and
how it shows up in creative work in general. We
all had a conversation a while back about why it
is that women are using AI less in workplaces, and

(11:18):
the researchers gave lots of reasons, but one of the
reasons that women are less likely to use AI at
work is that they are more likely to be accused
of using AI as a negative thing and judged more
harshly if there is suspicion that they are using AI,
and so that was one of the reasons that researchers
identified as to why women are using AI less in artwork.

(11:42):
So this drama with the novel Shy Girl, I think,
really reveals a lot of the anxiety that some of
us feel around AI, particularly around how AI is being
used or not used to produce media like writing. So
I'll just give you the top lines of a situation.

(12:04):
Mia Ballard is a black woman poet and fiction writer.
I had actually not heard of her nor read any
of her writing before the situation hit my social media feed.
It sounds like she writes a lot of stories with
themes of feminine rage and it. Actually, I hate at
the first time that I'm hearing about hers during a scandal,

(12:24):
because it sounds like her genre of like weird girl
literature would be very much up my alley.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yes, is that agreed?

Speaker 3 (12:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Is that a style of writing you all rock with?

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
I'm in a subreddit called weird girl Literature and every
suggestion I'm like, Ugh, give me a book where a
twisted woman does some twisted stuff and I'm I'm set.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
That's my stay in best Night I can have.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yes. So, Mia initially self published her novel called Shi Girl,
about a young woman who was forced to live as
a pet to a man. The book actually had some
like pretty good reviews on Goodreads, though I would say
they're kind of some are very good, and some are
like not so good. I would call them like mixed.

(13:20):
Some people specifically said that they loved the way that
Mia writes. Other people were like, oh, I don't like
this writing style at all. Last year, one of the
big publishing companies, Hashet, their Orbit division, acquired MIA's book
Shy Girl for its newest imprint run for It, which
exclusively publishes horror fiction. So good for Mia. Right, Like,

(13:41):
if the story ended here, you would be thinking, oh,
good job, girl, your self published book is going to
be published by a big publisher.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
You made it, you did it.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
If you don't want to hear like like you know
when you watch a horror movie and there's a point
of the movie where you're like, oh, this the family.
The family moved into the and they had their first
lovely night together. If you stopped it here, it'd be
a happy movie.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
It'd be ten minutes long, but it'd be great.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
So here is where things take a term because about
two months ago, readers who read Shy Girl started to
publicly ask whether this book was written using AI on
a Reddit subreddit called horror Lit, One user, who identified
themselves as a book editor with twelve years of experience
under their belt, specifically identifying AI pros, asked, does anyone

(14:41):
else think this was written by chatgebt? The post reads,
I know not an accusation to make lightly. I'm not
making it lightly. I have a lot to say and
I'll try to organize this post as best I can.
Me book editor of twelve years, I've had people from
over the last few years send me chatgypt creative writing.
My job with these AI pieces was to see if

(15:02):
I could humanize them or get them to a point
where it was enjoyable to read, or even acceptable. The
answer was generally no. Chatgept might be able to write
a passage that sounds good, but there are two problems
with that. A passage does not a novel make. A
novel is not a collection of passable passages. It's a
singular thing and needs to work as a singular thing.
And it seems good at first glance, on second glance,

(15:25):
it's not very good. So this was the post that
kind of got the conversation of whether or not this
book could be AI generated or chat GPT generated going online.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
Yes, and I know we've talked about some of these
things before, and I definitely will be talking about fan
fiction later, but there are some things people look for
when they're trying to figure out if something is AI generated, right.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Yes, So this some of this was some of this
I knew, but a lot of this was stuff I
had never heard. So this user who said that they
had all this experience with AI writing, felt that the
novel had all of these key hallmarks of AI generated writing,
things like emotional or even emotionally overwrought text, the use

(16:13):
of adjectives and weather similes, light and dark metaphors, and
stock words such as quiet, chaos, and violence. They made
an entire exhaustive list of all of the sort of
linguistic quirks that they thought made them think like, okay,
this could be AI. The phrasing of describing a smell

(16:34):
and describing it as something X something, why things being
in three a lot, or using the linguistic construction two
x two y in a lot of different passages. Also,
they said the book has near perfect grammar, which, according
to this post is something that is like very rare
in creative writing, which I had not heard nor even considered.

(16:56):
But you know, I'm not a book editor. They also
talked about the tell tell m dashes to separate clauses,
which is that is actually an AI tell I've heard of,
although tell that to Emily Dickinson, right, girl loved the
girl love to dash.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
A lot of people do love a dash, And now
it's become a like I'm not AI. I promised.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
It threw me off when I first saw that, because
I used to do that a lot, and I'm like,
oh damn, I think I'd be like I'd failed classes.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
So I am the person that you've just described Annie
where I When I was in grad school, I studied
a lot of Emily Dickinson's writing, and I loved her
use of dashes. And I was a lot younger, but
I was like, oh, dashes signal that you are like

(17:47):
deep and like a real deep writer, deep thinker. Subsequently,
my work has always been dash heavy, but now I
take them out because I don't want I don't want
anyone getting the wrong idea. And I think that that
the way that you put that is so right, because listen,
I'm no computer scientist, but I have to imagine that

(18:09):
since AI is trained on lots and lots and lots
of human writing, often stolen copyrighted writing that has been
used to train AI without the author's consent, of course,
it is going to be harder to tell what is
written by AI and what is written by a human.
I read this interesting op ed in New York Times
by a writer about this whole incident, and she said,

(18:30):
humans don't write like AI rights like humans. And I
think that really kind of gets at what you're saying that, Oh,
a lot of people use these quirks doesn't mean it's
AI necessarily.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Yes, And I think that's the heart of the conversation
that we're going to get into. But because we live
in such a destabilized like, even before AI had become
such a presence in our lives, reality just feels so subjective.
Now it just feels like I don't know what's true

(19:02):
or not anymore, And now AI is getting involved in that.
And so you are questioning, did somebody write this or
is this AI? Where are these things? Is it the
m dash they're talking about the weather like, looking for
all of these signs wherein it could be AI or

(19:22):
it could be somebody that AI learned from.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah, it's part of this conversation. People were putting in
works that were clearly written before AI was ever a thing,
like somebody put in the Declaration of Independence or Frankenstein,
and a lot of AI detectors settle this is ninety
eight percent AI. And obviously the founding flowers were not
using chat shebt right, the Declaration of Independence, But of

(19:49):
course all of those texts helped train AI. So it
kind of weigh it is I think particularly perhaps the
overuse of AI detection might be part of that, but
I do also just agree. I think that we're in
a time where we don't know who to trust. I
think we are really really craving authentic voices, and I

(20:16):
think media has really gotten to a place where people
have reason to be really skeptical, and so I think
everybody's just on a hair trigger right now. In some ways,
that is how we should be. We should always be
very skeptical and very critical and like ask questions about
what we're seeing online and in media. But I think
this reveals just how kind of fraud it all is
right now. I think you're totally right.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yes, And in this particular case, study does really showcase
a lot of those anxieties and people looking at this
author and trying to prove like, oh, they definitely used
AI and here's other instances and the impact it had
on her life, but also just why it mattens so

(21:00):
much to so many people. So yeah, yes, can we
come back to.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
What totally So some people were even saying that a
separate interview that Mia did about the book, it seemed
like maybe she used AI to generate her answer. So
I said that to say that this is not the
only project Shy Girl where AI accusations have swirled around
this particular writer. So this popular book YouTube channel Frankie's Shelf,

(21:27):
which has over two hundred thousand followers, made a two
and a half hour long video titled quote I think
this is AI slop that over a million people watched.
I clicked in honestly two and a half hours. I
don't got the time, So I don't got the time.

(21:48):
I did not. I did not watch the video myself.
That's what I'm saying. But yeah, that's like Avengers Endgame,
that's that's that's the length of a real movie, long one.
So John Wick Chapter four is the longest movie in
the franchise. And I use that as an example because

(22:08):
I saw John Wick in the theater and I was like,
how longest movie? It's two hours and forty nine minutes long,
So about as long as John Wick. The longest John
Wick movie that I saw in theaters and was counting
down the minutes until the movie was over, Like what
is it illegal to make a movie that's ninety minutes anymore?
But I digress. So in this video, Frankie points out

(22:32):
that the word sharp appeared one hundred and fifty nine
times across the two hundred and fourteen pages and had
been used to describe abstract concepts like guilt or a
silence in a room, like sharp is not really a
word that you would associate with describing abstract concepts like
usually it's like a physical thing, And so he was saying, well,
that's some weird quirk. He also found other overused words

(22:56):
like weight, which was used ninety four times, edge eighty
four times, hum or humming used as a descriptor for atmosphere,
like a humming atmosphere, and rhythm or rhythmic forty two times.
So all of these words that Frankie says, oh, like,
nobody would use these words to this amount in one
project if they weren't using AI. Now, Frankie is careful

(23:18):
to say that this doesn't mean the book was AI
generated just because it has repetitive words and words use
a particular way, because humans also write in this way,
like humans can be formulaic, humans can be repetitive, And
just to be super clear, as far as I know,
there is no definitive proof that AI was used to

(23:39):
write this book. So I don't know, and that's not
a question I'm able to answer that I'm going to
be trying to answer in this episode, but more on
that in a moment. I guess what I would say
is that this whole thing, I'm sorry to say, it
really showed me that I don't necessarily have a good
sense of when text is or is not AI generated

(24:00):
like her writing. I read the first few pages of
the book. It did not jump out to me as
being AI generated. I thought it was. I thought it
was a bit unusually written in a style perspective, but
it didn't. It did. It would not have jumped out
to me as like, oh, that's a telltale AI. I
feel like I have a sense of AI writing, and
this book to me I was. It didn't jump out

(24:22):
to me as AI generated.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Yeah. I haven't read it obviously, but it is kind
of scary to think that, like, because I feel like
I can recognize AI writing too, But what if I
can anymore? What if it's gotten beyond that point?

Speaker 2 (24:38):
So yeah, that's my point, And I guess researching this
for me personally, I think I am at that point
where AI has gotten so good at sounding like a
human writer that what I thought I knew, because you know,
when you read something AI generated like that's not blank,

(25:00):
it's blank. That's just blank blank blank, like you have
a I have a sense of it in my mind.
And researching this, they also as part of researching at
the New York Times, had a thing that was like, oh,
can you tell which of these was a I generated?
I bombed that test, So I I clear I clearly
have lost the ability to tell the way that I

(25:20):
always And I'm actually curious how you all determine whether
or not something's AI generated. There's just a flatness to it.
There's just like it's like they're they're just a like
hollowness to the writing that is kind of it's like
kinda know it when I see it kind of thing.
What about what's what's your benchmark?

Speaker 1 (25:40):
Well, I I think again, this is something that we're
going to get into more towards the like conclusion part
is that I'm really struggling with there. Usually when I
think something is AI, it does have a flatness to it.
It does have kind of a either a strange bluntness

(26:03):
or a strange like way too much like way way way,
way way too much and very repetitive. But uh, it
is true that someone can have a style or someone
could be a bad writer, or someone might be in

(26:24):
the world of fan fiction, a non English speaker and
they're writing in English, and so it's I have these
things that I associate with AI, but I still cannot
definitively say that it is AI.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
Yeah, I honestly I couldn't tell you. I really couldn't,
mainly because there are so many bad writers in general,
not that I know anybody who's a bad writer. I
don't know anybody who's a bad writer. Co sure personally
personally that when you see some bad write that's like
so off the mark that I'm like, this could be AI.

(27:05):
That's kind of what I expect sometimes, And that's the
one that is too little, too much, like where it
sounds like it's a bad infrovercial almost and I'm like, yeah,
this also could be AI. So I really have bad
like marked when it comes to writing. I feel like
videos and pictures and such are little more telltale signs.

(27:27):
Still I've gotten I've still gotten got by some of
these videos. I'm like, somen of a bescuit, You mean
that random animal? It's not doing this really cute thing.
Videos get me a while. Why do they do this
that plays with my emotion. I needed to be real anyway.
But like, yeah, I think I'm just gonna be real
honest to be like, I'm not sure if I would

(27:48):
catch it.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
Somebody listening is thinking, these three idiots, how can they
not catch it? To that person, I say, take that.
At New York Times AI writing tests, it is harder
than you think. And I'm someone who spends a lot
of time thinking about AI, and I was surprised by
how difficult it was to tell with writing at this point.

(28:12):
With video, I honestly I have almost kind of looked
divested from short form video because so much of it
is AI, and I just kept there. It started with
a video of bunnies on a trampoline. This was like
months and months and months ago, and I sent that
to a bunch of my friends. I put it in
the group chat. My friend's roasted me. They were like,

(28:32):
what are you someone's mema putting AI generated video slop
in the group chat. What's the matter with you? I
got such a like. I I was like, Okay, well
I'll never post another video in the group.

Speaker 3 (28:46):
The telltale sign you have to go into comments, because
you got the comments will tell you someone is out
there being sleuth because I almost felt for that one too.
I was like oh, and then up pulled up the comments.
I was like, damn it, AI. Yeah, you're talking about people.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
I would say, like, when I do the trainings around
recognizing AI generated content, like people should know what their
triggers are, because I clearly have some sort of a
trigger for like cute animal videos. Clearly that is a
place where I am totally willing to let my guard
down and like suspend my disbelief and I need to

(29:21):
stay when I see a cute animal video. Now I'm
like extra alert. So get a sense of what your
specific triggers are around like content online. Although we were
talking about this skit that the comedian Drew Ski made
where he's like dressed up as a conservative woman and
a lot of people were like, oh, that's Erica Kirk
and so that happened, And then there was this almost

(29:46):
entirely AI generated, fabricated claim that Erica Kirk was suing him,
which is not happening. And I saw this video that
purported to show Drewski, who I know what he looks like,
talking about how Erica Kirk was suing him, and I
had to research this, so I knew it wasn't the case.
But I would never have looked at that video and
thought like, it looks real Like I would never if

(30:07):
I didn't already know from researching it that that was
not true. I would have never, in a million years
thought this was not a video of Drewski talking about
a situation happening to him.

Speaker 3 (30:17):
Okay, you just alerted me to that, because I just
heard that video and it kind of went on with it,
But I didn't think either way. I just went, yeah,
that sounds about right and moved on.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
Yeah, as far as we know, as of our recording,
Erica Kirk has had no response. So if you see
a tweet or a video purporting to say otherwise, it's
don't get don't don't get got there that AI tool
that they're so good that one would if I didn't
know already that one would have got me.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
They're trying to get me. We are both mem Yes.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
Well, so there's kind of another interesting side to this too, though,
is that you know, when we're talking about Shy Girl,
there was this uproar about oh is there AI? And
it went to the publisher. It went like all over
the place with people demanding, like, is this say I

(31:13):
do something about it?

Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yes, So people were pissed. They were reaching out to me.
A's publisher hashet asking whether or not this book was
AI generated, and so there was a little bit of
a witch hunt element to this. I don't want to
say that like with like a negative connotation necessarily, but
like I just got to say, I think that just
shows how much people do not want AI and their writing.

(31:38):
I personally can ever see myself taking it upon myself
to like email a stranger's publisher to ask if AI
was used. I understand why people want to know. Maybe
you bought the book or read the book and feel misled.
Now it taps into exactly the kind of distrust that
you were talking about earlier. Annie, I personally find the

(31:58):
witch hunt angle to be, like, so it surprises me
that people are that invested in it that they will
take it take it upon themselves to be like I'm
going to watch a three hour long video about it
and then email of a publisher like that surprises me.
But I just think it goes to show how much
people don't like and don't want and don't trust AI.
After The New York Times got involved. The publisher dropped

(32:22):
the book. So the book is being pulled. It is
no more so. The New York Times they did an
investigation and they said that they concluded the book was
written by AI. This is from the Times. The Times
analyzed passages from the novel using several AI detection tools
and found recurring patterns characteristic of AI generated text, like
Gabson logic, excessive use of melodramatic adjectives, and an over

(32:44):
reliance on the rule of three. Max Spiro, who is
the founder and chief executive of Pangram, which is like
an AI detection program, says that he heard about this controversy,
he got a copy of the book and ran his
own test, and that test indicated the book was seventy
eight percent AI generated. He published those findings on social media,

(33:06):
saying I'm confident that this is largely AI generated or
heavily AI assisted, and so whether or not this definitively
proves it, I cannot say that is like above my
pay grade, but that all of that was enough, plus
the public pressure for the publisher to drop this book.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
Yes, And one thing that I find interesting about this
whole conversation is the Winch hunt aspect, because I think
there is sometimes you just don't like an ending perhaps

(33:50):
and then you're like it was AI. You don't have
maybe the proof, you might have something some evidence, but
also you know, really relying on these AI detection tools
when they are not perfect.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
Yeah, I was gonna ask about that because I saw
pretty early on when people are using detection site for
papers for young students, and a lot of them were dained,
not because they were actually using AI, but they were
using things like autocorrect or they use it after like
after the fact, which was specific for the program of
correcting your grammar like grammarly and that's specific. You can

(34:28):
use that, you are encouraged to use that. But that
actually brought up the detector and saying they used AI,
like is it? How does this work?

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Yeah, I'm glad that you used that example. You know,
I got my start in education and I was teaching
right when a lot of these AI plagiarism checker and
detector tools were coming up. And the long and short
of it is that AI detection platforms they just really
cannot be trusted. The time spoke to hit Chaprabardi, who

(35:01):
is a professor of computer science at Stonybrook University, and
he used that guy I told you about earlier, Max Biro.
He used Max Biro's program Pangram to check more than
fourteen thousand self published novels on Amazon for AI writing,
and so that program found that nearly twenty percent of
novels had been essentially written by AI. And so he

(35:23):
admits that AI detectors sometimes mistakenly flag human writing as
AI generated, But still he told The Times that he
was confident that Pangram was indeed picking up chapbot language.
He says the program was built to detect linguistic patterns
that are frequently used by large language models like chatgept
and Gemini, and has a FoST positive rate of around

(35:46):
one and ten thousand, and that it's also designed to
catch human efforts to cover up aius through editing. So,
I again, I am no computer scientist, but I do
think that we should talk about the fact that these
tools are not just randomly mistaken. Sometimes they are biased.
They more frequently flagged text written by non native English

(36:09):
speakers as being AI generated. But it's not just like
Anny said that you see in the fan fiction community.
Research has consistently shown that these detectors misclassify non native
English as AI generated, while Native English is often accurately identified.
The numbers are to me pretty damning. In one study
in patterns called GPT, detectors are biased against non native

(36:32):
English writers, more than half of the essays written by
non native English speakers were flagged as AI generated, with
a false positive rate of sixty one point three percent.
So that's pretty significant.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yeah, I wouldn't feel confident at all if I knew
that the percentage was that high that it would be incorrect.
So why is this happening?

Speaker 2 (36:57):
Yeah, that's a great question. It sounds like these tools
are trained on style guides and writing examples that are
dominated by native English syntax and vocabulary, so writing that
deviates from those norms are more often to get flagged
as machine like. So in other words, they're basically just
treating standard American or British English as the baseline for

(37:19):
what human writing looks like, and then people can get
punished if they deviate from that. And as I said,
like in educational settings, this was already a big problem
that educators were dealing with. When I was teaching, I
was told to use these detectors that we now know
are biased and it ever happened in any of my

(37:39):
classes specifically, but like students could be accused of cheating
and have serious consequences like failing a course or being
expelled as a result. There have already been documented cases
of students being penalized for work that they insist they
wrote themselves simply because their writing style did not match
what an algorithm expected human writing to look like. And

(38:00):
so whether or not that I can't speak to the
New York Times, is AI detection rigor or like how
they did it, They don't go into that, but I
wanted to mention that because, like, as we're talking about
the Shy Girl situation and everyone rushing to cite AI
detection scores as proof that this book was AI generated,

(38:22):
I do think it's worth asking who do these tools
actually protect and who do they kind of keep vulnerable
or keep at risk for accusations around AI use that
may or may not be unfounded.

Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yes, especially when, as you mentioned earlier in previous episodes
we were talking about, women are more likely to be
penalized for using AI if they are found out that
they are, whereas for men it's more likely to be like, oh,
you're using the system. Great, you know what you're doing.

(38:55):
And then to put this faith into these detect that
do have bias in them does leave a lot of
room for error and for marginalized people specifically to be
hurt more.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, I mean, I can't not mention the fact that
Mia as a black woman. I have to wonder if
that is part of the conversation of why people are
kind of going so hard for her and like calling
the publisher and all of that like that, that is
a reaction that I am surprised by, and I have
to wonder if her race and gender is part of it.

(39:34):
And I did want to make a little comparison because
do y'all remember the writer James Fray. He wrote that
book One Million Little Pieces.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
Yeah, he was found out for a lying exactly about
his book.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yes, yeah. His memoir was like, I mean this this
incident was it like burned in my brain. I was
on an episode of Behind the Bastards about Oprah and
when we got to this part, I was like, I
could tell you everything. I watched the episode in real time.
What do you want to know? But yeah, Oprah had
made it one of her book club picks and then
when it was revealed to be largely fabricated, she had

(40:08):
him on the show to like scold him, and I
remember he had I think he had an outbreak of
what is it called when adults get chicken pox? It
has a name when its shingles. He had like face
shingles at the time. And this, this image of him
with face shingles getting scolded by Oprah is just burned

(40:29):
in my memory. But so you might. You might think
that guy when it was revealed that he basically made
up his memoir an Embarrassed Oprah's Book Club, you might
think that he has been like shunned by the literary world.
You would be wrong, because he has a new book
out and he's talked about, albeit inconsistently, using AI in
his writing. He said that AI helped write parts of

(40:52):
his book, that he trained AI to match his writing style.
He told readers that they would not be able to
tell what was AI and what he wrote. He did
walk some of this back later when people were like,
m I'm not so sure about that. So I'm not
sure what the truth is. But it is not like
he was pillared for this. And in fact, his newest book,

(41:14):
which just came out included a very splashy piece in
the British Times under the headline America's literary bad boy
is back. So there's you know, there's no accompanying which
hunt to find out if this book used AI like
there is with me is and Yeah, I just I'm

(41:35):
just curious, like who gets to just be called like, yeah,
he's the literary bad boy, and who gets like call
angry calls to their publisher.

Speaker 3 (41:44):
That's such a cliche phrase, though, I wonder if they
were trying to make fun of him a little bit
with that literary bad boy. Yeah, all right, I'm just
gonna ask this question in ernest because there's a little

(42:06):
part of me in this that people who loved her book,
who really enjoyed this book and really seem to it,
is it so awful if she did use AI? And
I say this in this context of like, we don't
want this to be taken Yeah, of course not. We
want good storytelling in any ways, in most all that

(42:26):
we want genuine writing. But at the same time, we
see a lot of smut out there that's just randomly
thrown at us, like you know what I mean, Like
it's not sincere oftentimes you see series that are picked
up by pen writers who are no longer the writers.
Is that such a bad in the scope of things?
And I say this, I know this is a slippery slope,
but yeah, just a little bit antagonistic care ask It's

(42:49):
a fascinating question.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
And Annie, I'm curious to get your thoughts too, as
somebody who does a lot of fan fiction. So, I
do think that publishers have not really set a firm
boundary around what is or is not acceptable when it
comes to AIU so and so I think perhaps there
is a spectrum where you just have CHATGETPT spit out

(43:12):
of text and then you copy and paste out and
that's the book. And did you use chat Gypt or
AI to like brainstorm or you know, clean up your
pros And if you did that, can you still call
it genuine human work? That's not a question I can answer.
And the issue is that publishers have not made it

(43:32):
clear where they stand. They have not made it clear
what is acceptable and what is a breach of contract
and what is okay. And I think that they're really
allowing public sentiment and public outrage to be the thing
that drives what should be hard and fast, clear rules
and regulations, right.

Speaker 3 (43:49):
I mean in all this to say when people steal content,
like taking other people's writings as their inspiration and then
using that for their chat gypt writings, that's stealing, like
we're going to but that as like an od yeahs
statement there, Like obviously Mia was already an established writer
according to previous history. She had been doing writing previously. Again,

(44:11):
they said maybe a couple of her other works had
been AI. We don't know. We don't know with all
of this, Yeah, what does she say? So?

Speaker 2 (44:21):
In an email to The Times, Balor denied using AI
to write Shy Girl. She did contend that an acquaintance
that she hired to edit the self published version of
the book might have used AI in the editing process.
She said, the controversy has changed my life in many ways,
and my mental health is at an all time low,

(44:41):
and my name is ruined for something I didn't even
personally do, noting that she could not elaborate on how
the book had been edited with AI because she was
pursuing legal action, and so that's what she says. She says.
She says, I didn't use AI. If AI was used,
it was somebody that helped me edit this, the self
published version of this book. I've never self published a
book before. But my understanding is, when do you self

(45:04):
publish something, you are kind of just on the line
for any of the issues that arise, or just sort
of like on the hook for all of that. Because
I don't know if that's but again, I've never done
that before myself. So don't you know, take that for
what it's worth.

Speaker 3 (45:18):
Yeah, I think you can do it on Amazon and such,
like it's pretty easy to access those types of places.
I have a couple of old coworkers who loved writing
Mormon romance novels. Oh yeah, if you want to look
that up, I'll tell you later. But like, it's interesting
because could we come back and see much like some

(45:40):
of the students that we were talking about previously who
came back trying to fight because they were like expelled
completely kicked out of school, being accused of using AI,
but it was like grammarly and things that you came
back to check their grammar. Could it be something like that,
like did she use a system that helped check her

(46:00):
or whatnot? And in this moment, all these people went
after her as an example.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
Yeah, I feel the same way. I guess we don't.
We don't know, and we may never know in what
capacity this was AI generated, if at all, but something
about the vibe of the entire Internet saying you used
AI And I'm not even sure how like if like

(46:30):
if if that happened to me, I'm not even sure
what I would do to illustrate that I hadn't other
than I've just written a book and it's been so
heavily track changes, edited by me and the editor going
back and forth and back and forth that if somebody
wanted to pour through all of that, I guess that
would that would illustrate it. But like, it does feel

(46:52):
strange that you could write a book and people could
just say, oh, this was AI generated and that might
not even be true. And it's just it just it's
just we're in a very weird dynamic where the public's
feelings around this have not caught up with our ability
to say, for serve if something is AI generated or not,

(47:13):
and publishing companies their own guidelines like they're like they're
really behind on the whole AI conversation when it comes
to what they will and will not.

Speaker 3 (47:22):
Accept any need to go to look at our book.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
You know what I learned thanks to fan fiction. Okay,
the fan fiction community is very, very into this whole thing.
There's a lot I could talk about. But one thing
I learned recently is if you have a Google Doc,
AI can scrape your Google Doc. So they fan fiction
writers recommend you do not use Google Docs, and what

(47:50):
we use.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
All I use is Google Docs.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
Yeah, but guess what for the fan fiction I've written,
I've never used Google Docs. Even before I knew that,
I just write on a doc and then copulate doc. Yeah. Yeah,
but I did get called out for being somebody. Brown
In was like your AI clearly, and I was like,
I can't prove you're wrong, but I'm not, so it

(48:18):
is strange.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
But also you get AI reviews and I'm like, no,
this is an AI for sure.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
So an AI review called out you being AI.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
No, Okay, there's like a spade of You'll get reviews
that are just like, what a good story? Did you know?
Kyber is from the planet Ilium, And I'm like, yeah,
that's a Star Wars fact that's unrelated to anything.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
Yeah, but anyway, Google Docs, I don't know the specifics,
but I just know that in the fan fiction community,
they're like, don't do it.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
Always trust fan fiction folks, and like other niche nerdy
in interest people who are gathered by interest in some
niche nerdy thing to be ahead that they're always got
their finger on the pulse. They're ahead like whatever it is.
It's like, oh, we're three steps ahead of y'all. Whole read.
We've already got a system worked out to avoid this.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
We know about the M dashes, we know that non
native English speakers get penalized where we go.

Speaker 3 (49:24):
On the ready.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
Yes, yes, but anyway, writing the book, we did use.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
Google Docs, so so it would say that we were AI.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
No, it's just going to be if it if it
scrapes Google Docs and it's going to take that and
run with it.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
Yeah. I have used Google Docs, like it's all I use.
So everything I've written is probably being used to train AI.
You're welcome open AI, sam all, and then you can
get me a check anytime, I guess Sundar Pachai, head
of Google, Well, you can cut me a check anytime.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
I don't know the specifics. We should come back and
talk about that though.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
Yeah, I'll do some research.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Yes, there's a lot.

Speaker 4 (50:10):
For you to be talking about right now, Bridget, that's
for sure, But in this specific conversation, so you've been
talking about the publishers.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
That's kind of the issue is that there aren't clear guidelines,
and I think that is I do think that is
really important because this actually happens at our local conference,
dragon Con, where there's an art room, and they were like,
you have to tell people you used AI and if

(50:42):
you don't get out, like there has to be that
trust you were talking about earlier, Bridget, wherein maybe you
do use it for ideas, but even then people might
like to know that, and they might be okay with that,
but it's sort of that wanting to know, yeah, feeling misled.
So if there aren't these guidelines and this is a

(51:02):
very rapidly changing internet world that we live in, then
I think people feel betrayed if they don't know what
they're getting.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
Exactly, and we just don't have a framework for that
right now. You would think that publishers would be setting
that framework, and I guess there is initiatives where they'll
say like, oh, this is a human led work, but
there's not really a way. That's all kind of like
an honor system right now, and so we're all just
sort of waiting for these institutions and mechanisms to catch

(51:38):
up with the reality that we're in. And I'll just
say it doesn't sound like publishing companies have moved very quickly.
The Times noted that while publishers have maintained a firm
line against AI generated texts and images and require authors
to attest that their work is original and their publishing contracts,
but few publishing companies have clear policies or measures to
prevent users from writing with AI. And with the Shy

(52:01):
Girls situation, I will say I was surprised that, and
maybe it has to do with her book being self
published and then being acquired. I was surprised that a
big publishing company like Kshet would not have editors. I
feel like so many people have to read a book

(52:21):
before it's published, and I was surprised that this was
something that would only be being addressed the first time
by social media commenters. Like that surprised me, And I
think like, even if contracts say that writers need to
affirm that their writing is original, what does that mean exactly.
The Times reports that publishers are skeptical of AI generated content,
partly because it can't be copyrighted, but that since AI

(52:44):
is so commonly used in things like outlining and research
and other early stages of writing, there's no real consensus,
according to The Times, in the publishing industry about where
that line should be drawn, and so many people feel
like this ambiguity just opens the door to bad actors
or even well meaning writers who don't realize that they've

(53:06):
maybe gone too far when it comes to AI use
in their work.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
And we also don't really know the scope of AI writing, right.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
Yeah. That I found to be so interesting because if
you just open up Amazon, you'll find so much obvious
AI slop that's like easy to determine, but when it
comes to big publishing companies, it seems harder to tell.
And The Times reported that AI is just leading to
more books being published. In general, it's nearly impossible to
gauge how much AI writing is getting published, but there's

(53:40):
evidence that the technology has led to a surge of books.
Last year, more than three point five million books for
self published, up from two point five million in twenty
twenty four, according to industry data, And so it does
seem like more and more books are being traditionally published,
and some of those books are probably in part written
with or buy AI, and so a publishing company not

(54:04):
having clear rules around it is really a problem. And
another thing they pointed out in that piece is that
one reason why publishing companies might be a little less
willing to set a firm boundary is because they might
want to be able to use AI in house for
things like marketing or translation or narration. Right, so if

(54:27):
they can't, really they're in a little bit of a
rub where they can't really say we have banned AI
usage altogether only for our writers in house. We'll use
AI however we see it, and we don't have to
tell you. Like, I understand the sort of rub that
they're in where they want to use it in some capacities,
but they want to control when and how and who.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
Yes, and I do think it's really important that this
whole public perspective on it as well, of how the
public is viewing the usage of AI in art and
how companies are reacting to it, because it's clear that
companies do they're like, yes, I would like to use
it for this, this and this. Let us please not
have this conversation and move on but something like this

(55:15):
with what happened with Shy Girl, kind of forced the
company to come out make a statement.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
So Hashet did come out with a public statement. I
really think that the heart of their statement is like,
do whatever, just don't embarrass us. I genuinely think that's
what it is. So they only put out this statement
when the Shy Girl controversy blew up on social media.
Their statement says, we encourage responsible experimentation with AI for
operational uses and recognize the benefits of remaining curious and

(55:47):
embracing technology. Our industry relies on the creative talent of
humans and would not exist without it. The value of
our partnerships with our creative contributors cannot be overstated. We
draw a distinction between operational uses uses that help us
fulfill our mission and make it easy for more people
to have access to our books and other products, and
creative uses IE uses that harness AI to replace the

(56:11):
creative work of a human author, designer, illustrator, translator, or photographer.
For this reason, we are opposed to machine creativity in
order to protect original creative content produced by humans. We
recognize that this is a fast moving area and will
continue to be guided by industry standards and the needs
of key creative rights holders. So to me, that is

(56:32):
that is exist. I'm no lawyer, but reading that statement,
to me, it sounds like we use AI when we
want to. What are you crazy? We're not gonna use AI,
but we don't think our writers should use it, and
we'll continue to update that as we see fit.

Speaker 3 (56:50):
Thanks that phrase machine creativity. That's a whole like oxymoron.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
Yeah, yes, And I guess that's my whole kind of
So what And this is just my opinion. I think
that big publishing companies are kind of hanging writers out
to dry by not having clear policies. It's like they're
waiting for a big embarrassing dust up that will put
the burden on the individual writer to deal with, rather

(57:20):
than proactively come up with a clear policy because they
want to make sure that they have carveouts for how
for how they want to use AI or how they
might want to use AI going down the line. So
and I think in twenty twenty six, it's just common
sense that you need to have a policy around AI.

Speaker 3 (57:37):
It sounds like they're opening themselves up to a lawsuit.
That's what I think yeah, I mean it feels like
very discriminatory.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
Well, so again, I don't know what's going to happen
with the Mia Ballard shy girl situation, but let's say
that for the sake of argument. She says, Okay, well,
my editor used AI in this editing process, but the
only stipulation in my contract is that AI will not
be used to create the first pass or something. Is

(58:08):
she able to sue for breach of contract because they
dropped her book like not having I'm just a big
believer in the power of contracts. I'm like, I can't
tell you how many times having a good contract negotiated
by the lawyer has saved my butt. And I think
having just a just a And again I've not seen
her contracts, so I don't know what it says. But

(58:28):
just having a line that says, oh, authors will attest
that the work is original is not enough. And I want,
I just wonder what kind of legal precedent that setting
or what kind of holes are being left open, because
it's just it's just so ambiguous what that actually means.

Speaker 3 (58:43):
I mean, it sounds original. Yeah, the idea, yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
I just read is that right before we came on
to to talk. I just read that. You know, the
romance publisher Harlequin. So just today it was announced that
they struck a multi year deal with dash Verse, which
is an AI entertainment company, to make forty animated micro
dramas based on Harlequin titles using dash versus AI tool Framio,

(59:21):
which generates complete short films from text prompts in about
three weeks each. And so the details of this are
that authors will get royalties through monetized AD then subscriptions,
though Harlequin did not give deal specifics on what that
looks like, and they say that the videos are illustrator assisted.

(59:42):
I'm not one hundred percent sure what they mean by that,
but I think that they're positioning it as a human
AI creative collaboration rather than fully automated. I think I
think that's how they are trying to frame it. I
cannot speak to whether or not that is actually the case,
but it's just goes to show that some big publishers
are clearly fine with AI.

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
That's an interesting take though, to take the old school
Harlequin romance, cause there's numerous amouths believe. Yeah, as a child,
when I was taking to my you know, not my
mom for some mod reason, but for other moms that
had the closet full of all of the romances. I'm like, hey,
let me go find that I was a weird teenager.
But like there's tons of that. So that's an interesting

(01:00:28):
idea to go back to taking some of those which
is still beloved obviously in ways, and then making these
types of creations and also noting that they're going to
get royalties, but is it like fifty cents like they
get the residual weirdly checks like from streaming type of thing.
That's an interesting guy, but it's an interesting idea.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
Yeah. I mean the head of dash Verse, their CEO,
said exactly what you just said, that they're excited that
this is bringing global entertainment franchises existing IP powered by
AI and so, and it kind of like I kind
of get what he's saying that, like if you have
a bunch of existing titles in IP that they're like, oh, well,
why wouldn't we use AI to just like get to

(01:01:12):
squeeze more revenue out of that. I get what they
are saying, but I think that there is no one
clear standard around AI in publishing. In some cases, it's fine,
and it's celebrated in this you know, splashy press release
about how this is going to use AI to get
more revenue and value out of your IP. In some

(01:01:34):
cases people are losing their book deals, right, And so
I guess I guess it's we're just in a we're
just in a new territory, and I think we need
more guidance, more guard rails, more clarity around it because
we're all sort of navigating it in real time, and
I don't think it has to be that way.

Speaker 3 (01:01:51):
Is Fabio still alive because I need to know his
take on these harlequin romance.

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
Is still alive because he got hit by a what
if he get hiphie, he was by a bird that
was forever. I guess that was nineteen ninety nine.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
Forever, go, bridget.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
Everything.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
He was in Sharknado. Come on, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
I was like, that was nineteen ninety nine. That was
like what ten years ago? Someone say like it was
ten years ago, and I was like, you're talking about
it was like two years ago. Like tell me, no,
don't tell me about how long. Like in my mind
the year two thousand was ten years ago. I won't

(01:02:35):
hear anything else and anything else that you say I
had to say about that to me is wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
It's wrong, it's true. But I need to know if
he's to get his second wind, that he's about to
come to relevance again because of this, specifically, Parlican romance
is coming back. Dig Yeah, but they better, they better.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
If they're gonna do this, they better have some like
blowing long hair and some heaving bosoms.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
On the on the uh on the pirate ship first.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Yes, yes, well see this is also the issue though,
are they going to pay Are they going to pay Fabio?

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
Are they going to stand ins that you would literally
take art from real life people to make these covers,
So I'll wonder exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
So that's like if you're bringing this AI element to it,
because contracts back then didn't know about AI, they didn't
know about any of that, so probably not, probably not
going to get anything. And then you're watching yourself in
an AI video like, oh that is a whole other
I'll come back and well that's a whole like that
is happening.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
It sounds black mirror, but that is happening.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
I wonder how successful this will be because part of
the Harlequinn wrote romance, the books, the muddy books that
we love is because you can imagine it for yourself.
So you create these pictures. So and then what happens
in when movies. When books are made into movies, people
have a lot of feels because you've picked the wrong
people in their minds, you know, the people they pictured.

(01:04:02):
So now that they're taking this from these very descriptive
books that really play into your imagination and then playing
in into this, I wonder how successful it will be.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
That's a good question. And I mean part of it
is like I cannot imagine that this is takes a
lot of human labor to feed the whatever book prompts
into their emit their video generator. I'm sure it takes
not not zero human labor, but you know, I wonder
if they've just made like a cost benefit analysis of

(01:04:36):
even if hardly any I mean, it kind of goes
back to what I was talking about with AI podcasts.
I don't think, I mean, AI podcasts exist. If you
wanted to listen to them, you absolutely could. There's plenty
of them to choose from. People don't want to listen
to them, And I think that the mass that these
people are doing are that like, oh, well, they're cheap
to make. So even if not a lot of people

(01:04:57):
want this kind of content, and boy do they not
want that's kind of AI generated content. Even if a
few people engage with it, that might make it worth it.
That's what I kind of That's the sort of math
I bet they're doing.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
It's interesting to see how many cases of this are
playing out right now of maybe companies seeing oh there
is something more to this math that is not just
the monetary because it has become like you as a creative,
you do not want to get the AI thing attached

(01:05:31):
to you. No, that is not good. It is something
that you try to avoid. And I do think that
it touches on some anxieties we have, but also what
people want, like what you were talking about earlier, like
that trust, which I think personally, as someone in this

(01:05:53):
industry a company should pay attention to.

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
Yeah, I mean in my talk about AIU, that was
my entire kind of so what. Yes, it might be
cheap and quick and easy to produce AI generative content,
but in doing so, it's not just the warm, fuzzy,
squishy reasons why somebody would want to prioritize human voices

(01:06:17):
in content because we all trust humans, yah yah, YadA.
It's also a business question do you want your brand
associated with quick, cheap, lazy slop. I know that I
do not want my brand associated with quick, cheap, lazy
slop that might not even be accurate, might not even
be true. And so that's not an at that's not
just like an ethical, squishy question. It's also a dollars

(01:06:40):
and cents business question of would that be good for
your brand? Would that be a positive association with your
brand to have your brand be associated with AI content
that we know can be, let's face it, just trash,
And so I think that we have kind of I
would like to see the conversation reframed in that way
so that you don't associate people who are talking about

(01:07:02):
why it's so important to champion human voices and creative work.
We're not sort of being cast aside of like you know, warm,
fuzzy do gooders. We're actually talking hardline dollars and cents,
the kind of stuff that people who are financial decision
makers that media companies ought to be paying attention to.

Speaker 3 (01:07:21):
Well, we're guaranteed humans, so.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
Ah, that's right, guaranteed human I'm not saying it even worse,
And I guess I want to end on this because
I think the big takeaway here is how much audiences
are telling us they do not want AI generated content
in their writing. And for all the stuff I've talked about,

(01:07:43):
it actually kind of makes me feel excited about being
a creative professional. I really liked this hopeful advice from
writer Andrea Bart's in The New York Times. She writes,
I fear it could follow on us authors to prove
our writing as our own. The advice I often hear
from fellow authors is hopeful, if a bit hippy write
something weird, break all the rules, pour your heart and

(01:08:03):
soul into it, because nobody can tell a story quite
like you, baby. And yeah, this whole kerfuffle has really
got me appreciating the fact that I have terrible grammar.
I really can't spell you know, I you know it's
you know, and AI didn't write it. Look how badly
written it is.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
All the astericks are mine, damn it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:27):
Yeah that's quite a silver learning. Yes, but it is
true because I think when you see that, like if
we made a mistake on the podcast, we are people,
and people will write in and be like, you made
this mistake and then we'll respond to it, and that

(01:08:50):
having that kind of connection, but also having that moment
of like, oh, yeah, it wasn't perfect because I am
a human person who does make mistakes.

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
Yeah. I was reading there was some celebrity that did
I can't remember who it was, but that did something
bad for which they had to publish like a notes
app apology. And I remember the top comment and it
was a bad apology, and the top comment was, well,
at least we know they didn't use AI to write
this apology. At least it came from the heart.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
I can't imagine going to AI being like, write this
apology for me.

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
Please, here's what they used to use their publicists.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
So yeah, I mean, is that any better?

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
That's true? That's true. Well, once again, I have so
many thoughts. We could keep going and going and going.
But thank you so much Bridget for bringing this to us.
I had not heard of it, and I learned a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:09:50):
Try to follow up on this case.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
Yes, yes, we should check back in. Well before we
do that, where can the good listeners find you? Bridget?

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
You can pre order my audio book Love at First Prompt,
all about Intimacy and AI at Love at First prompt
dot ai. You can follow my podcast there art articles
on the internet or check me out on Instagram at
bridget Marie and DC.

Speaker 1 (01:10:13):
Yes and listeners, go and do all of that. If
you haven't already, If you would like to email us,
you can. You can email Hello, It's stuffonnevertold you dot com.
You can find us on Blue Sky I'm Mom Stuff
podcast or on Instagram and TikTok and Stuff I've Never
Told You for also on YouTube. We have some merchandise
to Cottmuau and we have a book and can get
wherever you get Brooks. Thanks as always to our superduce

(01:10:34):
Christine or executive producer, my anti contributor Joey. Thank you
and thanks to you for listening Stuff Won't Never Told
You to protection by heart Radio. For more podcasts from
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