Someone Used AI to Write an Unauthorized Biography of Me • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by Calazon » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 6:45 PM UTC

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.

Knowing that some songs are by local artists who I could go see live doesn't tell me very much about the quality of the music, unfortunately. My friends recommending the music does though, assuming we have similar taste.

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

#42

Post by bahbahbahbah » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 6:45 PM UTC

Rygian wrote: post #38

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?

It started as a bit of curiosity: Can AI write good fiction? Can I create a process that produces better fiction? Will Anthropic even let me write porn? How do different models do?

It was another outlet to explore using AI outside of my 9-5 programming. I've experimented with building custom agents to write stories, custom memory storage methods, custom workflows, etc. I've also used AI to write content management systems and experiment with that.

Like with software, even if "slop", there's a particular joy to having an idea come to life very very quickly. I can start with a premise, a character, a few scene ideas, and get a workable draft.

For some of my ideas (outside of erotica), there are no books that I can find that cover what I'm interested in. So in another sense it's like using AI to do research for my own enjoyment, but I'm also tightening it up and publishing it.

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

It's diminished compared to things I've done completely by myself. But it's non-zero and it's positive. I've actually shipped products rather than sitting on them, and there's joy and pride in that.

But I do still put a lot of work into it, both on the software side managing it, but also manually hand-editing it. I rewrite things until it doesn't feel like AI to me, even if I also use AI to make some of those edits.

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

The lessons are very similar to other lessons on here around software projects.

Like with game development, don't spend your time on the engine. I'd spend less time building scaffolding and structure software.

I'd also be more patient and wait for weekly resets instead of bumping up to the higher tier.

I'd also stick to fewer projects more closely until completion -- I have a queue of about 80 some books to go through before I can publish them.

And then I'd say spend more time on the marketing side of things.

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

#43

Post by InitialLastName » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 6:46 PM UTC

ameliaquining wrote: post #19

adyavanapalli wrote: post #17

Honest question, but since when were biographies ever _authorized_? I would assume you would simply inform the subject out of politeness if at all.

If a biography is authorized, then you can interview the subject, and in some cases those interviews provide a lot of the material. Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs was like this, for example.

In addition to the direct interview, there are other advantages of authorization that often allow the author a much deeper access to research the subject:

- Access to records, correspondence, and journals in the subject's possession

- explicit endorsement from the subject encourages their family, friends and colleagues to work with the author.

- Opportunities for the subject themselves to fact-check and contextualize the research.

That must be balanced against the fact that authorization also often provides the subject an opportunity to review the content, giving them a hand in crafting the narrative and/or suppressing unflattering details.

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

#44

Post by bahbahbahbah » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 6:49 PM UTC

fatbird wrote: post #39

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?

I have the same problem in this project as I do at work: how do you verify the output?

Human review is the bottleneck at my office. I think software will be more and more AI written but also more and more AI validated.

For my nonfiction series, I have attempted adversarial agent fact checking, and I rerun it with newer models as they come out.

So: little human review of citations. I didn't expect this thread to shine on me favorably, but perhaps it's interesting to some.

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

#45

Post by pryelluw » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 6:52 PM UTC

I don’t really get the appeal of using A.I. to write books. It’s a useful research and editorial tool that still requires thoughtful operation. But have it do the writing? It’s too shallow.

I use it to check the spelling and grammas of everything I post on my comedy newsletter[0]. As an ESL speaker, I do need some help with those areas. But the edits it typically recommends are just awful. Hyphen and em dash galore. A/B comparison and analogies that mimic the term “load-bearing”. I have to be extra careful to not let any of that slop slip through. At this point, I’m looking to work with a human editor. The AI is clearly showing not being up to par for it. At least in my experience.

[0] https://open.substack.com/pub/yelluwcomedy/p/the-free-and-wi...

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

#46

Post by janalsncm » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

superjan wrote: post #33

janalsncm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, and I feel something for the authors who are in it to write a high-quality novel.

For the authors who are in it for the game, writing bottom of the barrel airport checkout line garbage, they were already trying to game people’s attention and they lost to a robot.

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

#47

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 6:56 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #12

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?

Would publishers be willing to go to the level of pulling a Milli Vanilli where they hire people to make appearances as the author? Or would a litmus test to see if an author has attended any book signings be valid?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JT_LeRoy#Exposure

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

#48

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC

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…

AI still images don't require a time investment from the viewer. Text and video slop is literally wasting hours of life from those who don't realize what they are consuming is devoid of redeeming value.

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

#49

Post by TRiG_Ireland » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 7:13 PM UTC

bahbahbahbah wrote: post #42

Rygian wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It started as a bit of curiosity: Can AI write good fiction? Can I create a process that produces better fiction? Will Anthropic even let me write porn? How do different models do? It was another outlet to explore using AI outside of my 9-5 programming. I've experimented with building custom agents to write stories, custom memory storage methods, custom workflows, etc. I've also used AI to write content management sy…

I take such a joy in putting words together that I cannot imagine even thinking about doing something like this.

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

#50

Post by jambalaya8 » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 7:18 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #12

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?

Would publishers be willing to go to the level of pulling a Milli Vanilli where they hire people to make appearances as the author? Or would a litmus test to see if an author has attended any book signings be valid?

Fewer and fewer author appearances are in person. Book signings are being limited more and more to the author's name and are done via pre-order, with the readings and chats done online (especially with well-known authors). Book tours are much more rare than they were. Book tours are expensive.