I have recently learned through the writer side of my personal fb account, and furthermore via rightfully outraged and upset writers on Threads, that Meta (formerly Facebook) has been using pirated work to power Lib Gen. Read more about it here. If you’re a writer with works out (including, and I’m not joking, fan fiction), check that link to see what of yours was scraped.

If you have discovered Meta has cribbed your works as well, fill out this quick and easy cease & desist from the Author’s Guild – DON’T do their “human verified” program, that has issues also.

I write sci-fi. I also have a science background, which heavily includes tech. (I build my own robots. I have a 3D printer. I own a VR headset. I worked at NIST. This is the short list.) AI is not new to me. The tech doesn’t 100% bother me – the greed does. The people do. It could help get rid of animal testing, for example, but instead, it’s scraping my stories, robbing my artist of clients and worrying my narrators of the sustainability of their jobs. It helps boil oceans and make talentless, deeply deluded people think they can actually create while doing zero work. (If you think you can write better than me using AI, one: the AI is doing the writing, you’re still doing nothing & two: the AI is trained on past me, you’re still trained on nothing except stealing lol Try getting a paper and pen and learn a skill.) It’s all a major abuse.

I’m miffed but I’m not as angry and upset as I thought I would be. For me, I already wrote basically this (and the issues surrounding it) in a work that will be eventually released, A.I. Rockstar, about a year or two ago. So I’m not super surprised. I’ve also been watching let’s plays of the new game “Split Fiction”, which sums up pretty completely the whole issue of AI in the arts – the literary arts, in this video game’s case. Also if you use AI to “write books”, just get used to being laughed out of a room by actual writers and artists. They’ll stop when you finally come up with something of your own on your own. But good luck selling anything once you get the “uses AI” rep. Even people who get mistakenly accused of it suffer, it’s worse when it’s confirmed.

Personally, I’ve never seen AI books net a payload of money, develop fame, the “writers” lauded, nothing. It’s not even a work that can be copyrighted so anyone can crib the work so what’s the point? Anyone who says they got rich from AI books is most likely lying – they already lie and say they’re an author, what would keep them from lying twice over? It’s like NFTs, but make it books.

I think people who use AI to make art, be it books, pictures, etc., don’t really get art. At least not the intrinsic nature of art. Art for art’s sake and all that jazz. They just see it as Just Another Get Rich Quick Scheme – But With Little Effort. Kind of like scratching off a lotto ticket … but this time with real, drastic harm on real careers. Lotto ticket scratchers don’t call themselves hedge managers, financial wunderkinds, nothing. They don’t call themselves “luck artists”, either. Nor do they get smug about what they do.

Times are hard, no doubt, but art shouldn’t be used as a fast-cash-dash grift. If you want to get into art, actually do it, don’t steal it.

I will be tag teaming with the Author’s Guild the best I can on this. You don’t have to be a member of the Guild to use their site or resources on this matter.

If you want to be a writer, actually learn the craft. If you just want to rinse unsuspecting people of their money and art means nothing to you, head back into NFTs and go find new people to rug.