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Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

nytimes.com

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Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#31

Post by jrockway »

gtowey wrote: post #16
jambalaya8 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good . It should eventually make writing not a viably profitable career for anyone also. How the heck will people ever stand out and not just be grey goo? How will anyone know what is good versus garbage?

We are going to go back to human-only networks for filtering the garbage into a trusted set of recommendations. Maybe where the only music you can trust are local artists you can see live. Or where the books you read are from a friend-of-a-friend who knows the author. Maybe the world of tomorrow looks more like the world we left behind.

I think 100% of the books I've read in the last year have been recommendations from friends. This is kind of annoying as I'd like to be able to give them recommendations in return, but ... limited time.

I wish that I could doomscroll literature instead of short videos, but the economics apparently don't work out.

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#32

Post by vidarh »

shimman wrote: post #6
aanet wrote: post #3

If sloppy digital pollution is the state of things to come, I fear for our species.

People are allowed to reject things and we've seen the public around the world overwhelming reject LLMs, what SV + VC doesn't like are being told no (shocker). Honestly believe they would rather destroy the planet than be forced to help others, which tracks seeing what you hear coming out of the mouths of these supposed "leaders" (deeply anti-human + anti-democratic sentiment). It's no wonder they are worried for the…

> and we've seen the public around the world overwhelming reject LLMs

Have we?

Where do you see people rejecting them?

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#33

Post by superjan »

janalsncm wrote: post #29
gherkinnn wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As economists, they told me, they’re less concerned with literary quality or customer satisfaction than revenue growth and market expansion. As a human, I am concerned with these economists.

I think they’re saying if AI text is causing people to buy (and presumably read) more, that’s a good thing. As in, if these marginal readers actually prefer AI texts, what does that say about human writing?

It tells you that human attention can be gamed.

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#34

Post by dentemple »

Hansenq wrote: post #22

Given that everything in the book is public information, it's hard to argue that any of this is strictly _illegal_, given the First Amendment. But it's definitely distasteful to write a book about a living individual without their consent (even though this does happen all the time; technically Wikipedia does this too). Though that does raise an interesting point: what's the difference between writing a book about som…

> But it's definitely distasteful to write a book about a living individual without their consent (even though this does happen all the time; technically Wikipedia does this too).

I do wonder about what would happen if the LLM were to hallucinate negative facts about the person.

Like, if some asshat vibe-wrote a biography about me that claimed that I once kicked a sack full of puppies as a child, would I be able to sue the "author" for defamation? At least, would it even be worth it to pursue?

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#35

Post by bluefirebrand »

aanet wrote: post #2

> "Two business school professors, curious about A.I. books and whether anyone actually likes them, gathered data about 10 million books published on Amazon over the last five years. They found that the number of e-books published per month had tripled since the release of ChatGPT, to more than 300,000 at the end of last year, from around 100,000 in 2022. (Amazon said that its internal metrics did not show that level…

> One of the writers, Bill Johns, age 70, a retired cyber security consultant

This is crazy to me. You're 70! Just be retired and fuck off, stop actively making the world a worse place!

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#36

Post by bahbahbahbah »

I expect I'll get a lot of hate for this, and potentially deservedly so, but I've been doing something similar since late last year when Opus came out.

> Because romance sells, the professors thought it would be the genre most susceptible to A.I. intervention, but instead it was nonfiction...

I've been working mostly in erotica but have shifted to some nonfiction series lately.

I stopped for a while, but Fable and GPT 5.6 Sol have reinvigorated me.

I use Claude Code and other CLIs to manage the process, create first drafts, covers, research, etc. I heavily edit most things before I publish it.

The first question is probably one of profitability. So far I have made a little over $40, compared to probably $800 in AI subscription fees. So from that point of view it's been an absolute disaster.

If anyone is curious, I'd be happy to talk about any of it.

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#37

Post by dentemple »

What if we all collectively decided to AI-slop our own auto-biographies here?

It won't stop the Slop-pocalypse, but at least, then, we're funneling some of that money back to ourselves.

If a person's going to buy some vibe-coded slop about me, at least let it be my vibe-coded slop about me.

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#38

Post by Rygian »

bahbahbahbah wrote: post #36

I expect I'll get a lot of hate for this, and potentially deservedly so, but I've been doing something similar since late last year when Opus came out. > Because romance sells, the professors thought it would be the genre most susceptible to A.I. intervention, but instead it was nonfiction... I've been working mostly in erotica but have shifted to some nonfiction series lately. I stopped for a while, but Fable and GP…

Why?

What internal drive moves you forward?

What sense of ownership/pride do you feel when you consider one of your works as "done"?

What would you do differently, if you were back at the starting block and had a budget of $800 to spend on writing nonfiction?

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#39

Post by fatbird »

bahbahbahbah wrote: post #36

I expect I'll get a lot of hate for this, and potentially deservedly so, but I've been doing something similar since late last year when Opus came out. > Because romance sells, the professors thought it would be the genre most susceptible to A.I. intervention, but instead it was nonfiction... I've been working mostly in erotica but have shifted to some nonfiction series lately. I stopped for a while, but Fable and GP…

How much fact checking do you do on the research AI does?

Re: Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me

#40

Post by armchairhacker »

I think the appropriate solution here is a generous, well-advertised refund policy.

People aren't allowed to (not even defame) write about others? Amazon doesn't allow certain books? No, but I imagine most people who actually buy this kind of book (if anyone does) are expecting higher quality.

And on the off chance they're satisfied, everyone wins. Even the author, since apparently the biography is very flattering of her.

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