This should be the job of the editor, no? Authors could also leave in typos or previous draft sentences, etc.
Authors are accidentally leaving AI prompts in their novels
21–30 of 77 posts
Re: Authors are accidentally leaving AI prompts in their novels
#22This should be the job of the editor, no? Authors could also leave in typos or previous draft sentences, etc.
The editors are probably using AI too.
Re: Authors are accidentally leaving AI prompts in their novels
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is a mid-century paperback author, who published several books a year (100+ over their career) with the same plot, less of an "author" than someone who publishes a handful of original works over their career? Literary slop long predates AI.
I read that many prolific authors don't write their books. They write an outline, and have a paid staff of writers fill it in, without credit. It's a business like those assembly line Kinkade paintings. (I actually have one of them on the wall, and like it.) In high school, I decided to read all the James Bond novels. After reading about 8 of them, I realized they all had the same plot, and abandoned that project.
Indeed. Even before LLMs you could hire a cheap ghostwriter on upwork. Or even better, hire one to write the outline, another to flesh out the outline into a book, and a third to proof it. Get a cover on fiverr and upload. Then rinse and repeat. Fiction, nonfiction, doesn't matter. Whatever sells. Amazon's KDP program had to institute (very modest) upload limits for this reason. People were turning capital into a deluge of slop books -- hundreds per day in some cases. As usual, the real money is in selling courses that "teach" people how to do this technique.
Re: Authors are accidentally leaving AI prompts in their novels
#24This should be the job of the editor, no? Authors could also leave in typos or previous draft sentences, etc.
The author's job is to write the actual novel instead of pasting it from an AI, but in this case yes, it looks like the editor was as lazy as the author and didn't do his own job.
Re: Authors are accidentally leaving AI prompts in their novels
#25This should be the job of the editor, no? Authors could also leave in typos or previous draft sentences, etc.
Spotting and removing, yes.
Writing the damn book should be the job of the author.
Re: Authors are accidentally leaving AI prompts in their novels
#26https://www.404media.co/authors-are-accidentally-leaving-ai-... > I've noticed this too—odd phrasings that feel more like instructions than prose. It reminds me of early spellcheck glitches, but creepier. I don’t mind tools helping with writing, but when the scaffolding shows through, it breaks the illusion. It’s like seeing stage directions mid-performance. I wonder how many of these slips we’re not catching, especi…
The em dash betrayed it, and the wording is way too elegant compared to an average HN comment.
It annoys me greatly that correct punctuation can be make your work look artificially generated.
Re: Authors are accidentally leaving AI prompts in their novels
#27https://www.404media.co/authors-are-accidentally-leaving-ai-... > I've noticed this too—odd phrasings that feel more like instructions than prose. It reminds me of early spellcheck glitches, but creepier. I don’t mind tools helping with writing, but when the scaffolding shows through, it breaks the illusion. It’s like seeing stage directions mid-performance. I wonder how many of these slips we’re not catching, especi…
I might have fallen for it if not for the em-dash.
Re: Authors are accidentally leaving AI prompts in their novels
#28Re: Authors are accidentally leaving AI prompts in their novels
#29"authors"
Whose reaction to being caught being sloppy is, puzzlingly, to scramble for the righteous ground of victimhood… > Faris said she’d faced a wave of harassment online after the incident and has taken a step back from social media. “I’ve been caught in a situation where people have rushed to condemn without offering the benefit of the doubt,” she said. “And while many were quick to accuse me of knowingly using AI, very…
That's pretty typical of unethical people. Folk psychology knows it as DARVO (an acronym for "deny, attack, reverse victim & offender"). It's common among abusers and cheaters and other people like that.
Re: Authors are accidentally leaving AI prompts in their novels
#30This should be the job of the editor, no? Authors could also leave in typos or previous draft sentences, etc.
Editors aren't perfect. They miss stuff sometimes.