To me there’s a difference between the help of a human editor (formal or informal) / beta reader etc, which has been an accepted and understood part of the process since Grrk first carved out the instruction manual for the wheel, and using an Ai with no feeling for emotion and/or language, and which is only applying statistical methods to a corpus of texts of unknown provenance, which may or may not be relevant.
Beyond that, if you used your editor’s/friends words to actually write the text / draw the artwork, shouldn’t there be an acknowledgement in the text anyway? That’s routine in traditional publishing, so why not “I couldn’t have written this book without GPT, which was unstinting in its efforts to help me write decent English and turned my plot from a nightmarish mass of contradictions into something which resembles coherence. Oh and it did the pictures. Without my kids this book would have been finished sooner.”
But I don’t know either! I do feel that a blasé ‘the technology’s there so I’m going to use it and never mind what the reader thinks’ approach isn’t satisfactory, even though that is probably what’s going to happen, the world and people being what they are.
That’s right. But with these acknowledgements, nobody knows exactly who did what.
It sounds absurd that way. But what if you replace “GPT” with “my friends”? Nobody would write it like that, even if it had happened exactly like that.
And if that’s exactly what happened, that a friend “turned my plot from a nightmarish mass of contradictions into something which resembles coherence”, is it legitimate or a breach of trust towards the reader not to mention it?
I am glad that I am not confronted with such questions for the reasons mentioned above.
Raising the question in my mind of how do you regard ghost writers then? They have real intelligence but their work is passed off as someone else’s and not given credit — other than in the bank — for their work.
“Ghostwriter” covers a fairly vast space, so generalities are risky.
From the ghostwriter’s perspective, they are paid, often quite generously, and know in advance what the terms of the arrangement are.
From the reader’s perspective, it depends. Sometimes the ghost gets cover credit – “By Big Name Celebrity with G. Writer.” Sometimes the named author is a renowned expert who simply doesn’t have time to write but still has vetted the content. Sometimes the named author has been dead for several years and their estate has hired ghosts to continue “the brand.” Sometimes the author does so themselves. These situations may or may not be disclosed to the readers. Personally, I land on the side of reader disclosure.
In conventional publishing, of course a publisher lies between the author and the audience. From the publisher’s perspective, failure to disclose a ghostwriter arrangement (to the publisher, not necessarily the reader) would violate most standard contracts.
Edit: It’s not unusual for the publisher to be paying the ghost, usually because the named author was unable or unwilling to deliver a satisfactory manuscript.
I actually have seen acknowledgments which came close to this. Especially for non-fiction: I was a blithering idiot on this topic when I started, thank you to [named experts] for enlightening me, errors are my own.
Yes – I wasn’t (entirely) joking! There are some gems buried in the acknowledgements sometimes – and I’ve definitely seen the ‘would have been finished in half the time but for the kids’ in the wild…
As a ghostwriter now making as much money (and growing) writing for other ‘authors’ as under my own name I don’t care if I’m acknowledge as long as the $$ hits my bank account on time.
The only downside - a couple of personal projects have had to take the back-burner.
@RuffPub Then we’re in the same business and I think you’re absolutely right But we are mercenaries. Artists see it differently, of course.
I know my way around the world of big companies pretty well. Many CEOs don’t write anything themselves, not their speeches and not even their written interviews. That’s why they need us, the mercenaries.
How is it with authors? Without naming names, how is it possible for a bestselling author to publish two books a year? I’ve always assumed that a collective writes such books. Could that be the case?
Quite often, yes, either openly or not. I’m sure if you search for the name(s) you don’t want to mention and “ghostwriter” you’ll find whatever information is available.
Often, the artists and the mercenaries are the same person, with the commercial work providing essential support for the art.
Which is actually one of the most immediate threats that AI poses. ChatGPT isn’t going to create art anytime soon, but it’s already pretty good at the kind of bland platitudes that populate most corporate writing. (No doubt because of the amount of corporate writing in its training set.)
Interesting. But then I understand the fuss about AI less and less. Why is it important to declare the use of an AI, but it doesn’t matter that people other than the declared “author” wrote a book?
I’m sure that Big Name Author’s publisher is well aware of his use of assistants, and doesn’t care as long as the money keeps rolling in. Probably his audience doesn’t care either, because they are getting what they expect from books sold under his brand. And of course his assistants are voluntary participants in the arrangement.
I used to work at my local library. I can think of one big-name mystery writer who had legions of fans for his books at our branch. They knew he used ghostwriters to churn out his titles, and they preferred the comfort of knowing what to expect from those books.
I tried suggesting other mystery series they might also enjoy, but they wouldn’t be moved. They just added their names to the waiting list for his next book and re-read the others already published.
They also watched only a few TV shows and were thrilled when those shows spun off new “flavors” of their familiar plot in a new locale.
That’s not how I approach my reading or viewing, but I won’t knock it if that’s someone else’s preference. The world contains multitudes, and we’re richer for it.
I do expect that a variety of options remain available to audience members of all stripes.
But, knowing how late-stage capitalism as practiced by the S&P 500 focuses more on investor profits than actual artistic integrity, I’m not holding my breath.
Shrug I don’t read Big Name Author’s work, either.
But the two reasons why AI is a dealbreaker for me are
(1) AI works are (at this time) objectively inferior.
(2) If you’re using AI to this degree, you are demonstrating that you aren’t confident in your own abilities and that you would rather take the “easy” win than do the work to get better. I’m not interested in using my money to support your laziness.
Edit: In contrast, in ghostwritten works, someone is putting in the effort, even if it isn’t the name on the cover.
Haha … of course I know exactly what you mean and I don’t want to torture you. I’m playing the advocate diaboli. Because (unfortunately) the argument against AI is complicated and often contradictory.
(1) also applies to inferior human authors and (2) applies to any author who lets others think and write for them.
Maybe you should look at it the other way around: A text, plot, book is good if it is good. Who wrote it doesn’t matter.
People have been arguing about the difference between artisanal work and mass production since the Industrial Revolution at least. The mass-produced mug from my alma mater and the hand-thrown mug signed by the potter are both up to the task of holding my tea, but they are not the same. There are plenty of serviceable guitars that cost a lot less and are available faster than the ones my friend the luthier makes, but somehow his backlog continues to grow. The ability to care about the difference is fundamental to being human, as is the desire to continue making hand-thrown mugs and hand-polishing guitar tops even though machine-made alternatives exist.
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