Beta Reader Group discussion

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but if a beta reader puts my work into AI without my knowledge, does that hurt my chances at traditional publications?

There are far too many beta readers using AI and I'm worrying myself over this (not that my work is something worth stealing).

It's not a stupid question, it is one worthy of deeper thought and discussion.

I am in the process of writing an NDA with help from legal aid for any future beta reads by unknown people of my work. Purley because of Ai. If your story has concepts unique to you, they are worth protecting, any way you can.

Not a stupid question, as Laura said!

I can't speak to chances of publishing. Your best bet is to thoroughly review potential betas. Go through the list of known scammers on our thread here. Look at the typical behavior.

Does the person have a profile picture? If so, does it look fake? Was the account created recently? Are they writing generic messages like:

"would love to read your manuscript kindly drop a mail at _________"

Are they spamming all over the board?

If so, the person is likely a scammer and would probably use AI.

There are people here who are thoroughly vetted though who you could take a look at. I would also recommend Upwork, although you would have to pay in that instance.

Good luck and I hope this helped!

You could also try in-person literary groups in your area!

Laura wrote: "It's not a stupid question, it is one worthy of deeper thought and discussion.

I am in the process of writing an NDA with help from legal aid for any future beta reads by unknown people of my work..."

I think I'll be doing this moving forward. Thank you! I've just been growing paranoid over AI. Not only as a writer, but as an artist as well.

Liz wrote: "Not a stupid question, as Laura said!

I can't speak to chances of publishing. Your best bet is to thoroughly review potential betas. Go through the list of known scammers on our thread here. Look ..."

Thank you so much!

Liz wrote: "You could also try in-person literary groups in your area!"

oh, I wish! I live a non-English speaking country, so it's a bit difficult finding in-person. But I'd honestly love something like that.

My opinion is that a beta reader requires your express consent to go anywhere near your work with AI.

If your writing is put into an AI system, it is contributing to that system’s learning, and this means that their system could, in theory, be trained and programmed to mimic your writing style.

I’m not sure about the short-term implications for publishing, but the long term implications are that anyone will be able to programme an AI to write a manuscript regardless of that person’s actual talent.

If a beta reader plans to use AI, this should be disclosed from the very beginning, and they must get the author’s consent.

Ronan O’Callaghan wrote: "My opinion is that a beta reader requires your express consent to go anywhere near your work with AI.

If your writing is put into an AI system, it is contributing to that system’s learning, and th..."

I understand how AI works, but unfortunately, those who use AI rarely care about consent when they're using something built on training itself using other's works.

I agree, and I think this is a big part of the problem.

AI companies are currently being brought to court for copyright infringement. They have argued that their company models would not be sustainable if they had to pay authors to use their writing to train their AI systems.

From the top to bottom of the recent AI boom, nobody is concerned with author consent, and this is why I strongly feel that any beta reader that is using AI should be required to disclose this. Enforcement, obviously is a big problem here.

Ronan O’Callaghan wrote: "I agree, and I think this is a big part of the problem.

AI companies are currently being brought to court for copyright infringement. They have argued that their company models would not be sustai..."

I'm just glad that the publishing industry is against the use of AI (at least in the US because Italian publishing companies lean towards pro AI).

It certainly doesn't help that the current laws surrounding AI tend to be vague/or with easy work arounds.

Ronan O’Callaghan wrote: "If a beta reader plans to use AI, this should be disclosed from the very beginning, and they must get the author’s consent."

This needs to be a prerequisite for any beta reading and a requirement. Either agree not to use it or, suffer the consequences if they do.

The other thing to be wary of, if one used Ai for beta reading is, as already mentioned—the training aspect, also concepts of your story that are unique to you can bleed "into the system" and any element of a story you've worked on for years becomes fair game once it's fed into Ai. names, places, things, objects, themes etc. That was my reasoning for the NDA (non disclosure agreement).

If a reader can not agree to the terms set in the NDA, and not use AI. Don't touch them. If any unique aspects of your story are found elsewhere in someone elses writing, and the use of AI was found to be the cause, they are liable for damages. How do we know if someone isn't feeding sections into co-pilot? problem is, we don't.

The publishing industry might be against the use of Ai on one hand, but they'll openly use it on the other hand to detect the use of. especially in writing competitions. If competitions use AI to scan your content, dont enter it.
As I have already mentioned before to people both here and elswhere, AI to detect AI is flawed. AI already flags human written content as AI, especially when various pieces of writing have been written using elevated language.