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Are readers generating fiction with AI models?

arxiv.org

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Re: Are readers generating fiction with AI models?

#11

Post by plastic-enjoyer »

sriramgopalan wrote: post #2

This is interesting. We have seen the internet change many fields and democratize them. For instance, only a few media outlets produced news stories and analysis, the rest of us consumed it. Blogging changed that. Only a few studios produced shows. With Youtube etc., many of the consumers could become producers themselves. If I read this correctly, books and fiction are headed in the same direction.

> If I read this correctly, books and fiction are headed in the same direction.

I don't really see how AI 'democratizes' fiction and book writing?

Re: Are readers generating fiction with AI models?

#12

Post by overgard »

sriramgopalan wrote: post #2

This is interesting. We have seen the internet change many fields and democratize them. For instance, only a few media outlets produced news stories and analysis, the rest of us consumed it. Blogging changed that. Only a few studios produced shows. With Youtube etc., many of the consumers could become producers themselves. If I read this correctly, books and fiction are headed in the same direction.

Why would you need to "democratize" fiction? There's literally zero cost of entry already. Fiction probably needs more gate keeping.

Re: Are readers generating fiction with AI models?

#14

Post by rhdunn »

overgard wrote: post #13
MarkusQ wrote: post #10

> Are readers generating fiction with AI models? Why not? Journalists, lawyers and pundits of various stripes are already doing it. Why shouldn't readers?

Because nobody wants to read AI generated text?

Tell that to the LLM RP crowd.

Re: Are readers generating fiction with AI models?

#15

Post by CookieCrisp »

overgard wrote: post #13
MarkusQ wrote: post #10

> Are readers generating fiction with AI models? Why not? Journalists, lawyers and pundits of various stripes are already doing it. Why shouldn't readers?

Because nobody wants to read AI generated text?

You do not represent everyone

Re: Are readers generating fiction with AI models?

#17

Post by idle_zealot »

ctoth wrote: post #8
idle_zealot wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about that comparison. For news and television your analogues of blogs and YouTube overcome a distribution bottleneck. Books have for a long time had a low barrier to entry for distribution and that fell further with the internet. There are mountains of amateur fiction and fanfiction online, requiring only an internet-connected device to produce and consume. LLM-written fiction as explored in the study i…

> Actually, it might be closer to say this is similar to a child playing pretend alone with their toys, except perhaps a bit less challenging in that creative roadblocks or narrative building is instantly abdicatable to the machine. Wouldn't the obvious analogue be a video game? Especially one where you can edit the asset files (making your weapons super-strong, for instance?)

No, actually. In a video game the rules of engagement and the content you're engaging with are authored by other people. It's interactive media, but it's still a form of communication with boundaries and intent behind it. You can break those bounds with cheats or tools in the same way you can mark up a novel and write in your own ending with whiteout and a pen, but you're still fundamentally engaging with someone's creation.

An LLM-authored interactive fiction is a sandbox with no author, with no boundaries and no intent. It's a canvas, and all limitations on content are self-imposed. It's closer to making a game than to playing one, but there is no game in the end that you can share. You're left with a transcript that only really appeals to you. It is not the game. The game fundamentally lives in the player's imagination, and the LLM is there to ease the realization of that imagination and, if I'm being uncharitable, do the hard part of synthesizing ideas and impulses into something semi-coherent, limiting the potential for the player to grow and develop creative skills.

Re: Are readers generating fiction with AI models?

#19

Post by lubujackson »

So fans have fan fiction because they love certain worlds and characters and want more of it, or to riff on the base to take stories in new directions. We have things like TV tropes so it is no small stretch to, say, generate sitcom-type stories from Harry Potter or GoT that can continue forever. But where does all of this lead?

Music has sinilar issues, but I think of this like the compression/loudness issue in music production. Everything gets amplified so the range of everything is compressed. And then it gets boring and people slowly jump ship for something else.

I think there will be a wave of AI slop that improves and might actually be exciting on some vector, but we will get bored eventually. Humans crave newness, even if that new thing is worse in exactly the ways that defined good previously, like punk in response to complex rock albums.

AI can combine ideas in interesting ways, but it is by design a predictor of what is most likely. This is directly odds with the concept of newness (and arguably, human-ness) which is baked in to what we consider interesting and relevant.

Re: Are readers generating fiction with AI models?

#20

Post by fluoridation »

overgard wrote: post #13
MarkusQ wrote: post #10

> Are readers generating fiction with AI models? Why not? Journalists, lawyers and pundits of various stripes are already doing it. Why shouldn't readers?

Because nobody wants to read AI generated text?

No, nobody wants to read someone else's AI-generated text. Some people don't mind reading text generated to their own specifications.
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