Understanding this is probably a sensitive topic, I thought about this in respect to two works with very different content
– The Trial, Franz Kafka
– The Shepherd’s Crown, Terry Pratchett (while yes it is technically finished, it doesnt have the same polish as other Discworld novels due to Pratchett simply running out of time)
Ive had thoughts about the rather ghoulish ethical implications of editing these works, but lets say we feed an AI their author’s entire language style, writing, genre and so forth. Could they passably be called a final “AI Edition” of these works, if the AI produces an ending from the foundations given?
Anyway thats the question – what would your opinion be on AI replica authors finishing unfinished works? Would you read them?
by Pearse_Borty
21 Comments
The estate could do such a thing if they were so inclined. I think they’d get a better quality product from using a human to finish the works, myself.
Anyone else doing it would run into IP issues.
Nᴏ. Hᴜᴍᴀɴs ɴᴇᴇᴅ ғᴀɴᴛᴀsʏ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ʜᴜᴍᴀɴ.
It could, but it could never (at least not now or in the near future) do as good a job as a human for many reasons.
Have you read LLM written work? It’s awful to unreadable at best.
People can do whatever they want, but I would legitimately laugh at any author’s estate doing so.
I think we should leave unfinished and finished books alone. If a writer didn’t write it, don’t make it up or change it, just leave it.
I’d rather a human with a competent understanding of the writer’s personality and sense of nuance handle the job.
So…are we already preparing for an AI to finish the Game of Thrones series then?
The copyright holder can certainly create a version with the added ending as long as the LLM is legal for use.
Since the last part us currently under litigation we will see how legal it ends up being.
I see it as highly unlikely that we will see it for shepherd’s crown as Rhianna Pratchett doesn’t want to touch it.
We don’t need no stochastic plagiarism bots.
I’ll never touch anything written by AI
I really can’t imagine another human being writing sufficiently like Kafka, never mind an AI.
If I respected an authors work, I could never appreciate some software hacking at it. Why the heck would I want a work finished by anyone other than the author. Seems wrong. JMHO
I don’t think there’s anything that would distinguish that from fanfiction. I might be interested in reading what a specialized LLM might produce, but it’d be a long time before they’re competent enough to tell a whole story, let alone accurately reproduce a style.
Especially with someone like Pratchett who made it very clear about his thoughts on posthumous release of his work, I’d likely move to an immediate boycott of whichever publisher tried it. Author’s don’t owe you anything, if a series isn’t finished in a way you like that’s a you problem.
I have my doubts that there is an author with a large enough body of work to properly train an AI on exclusively their own work. LLMs take a MASSIVE amount of input to train. And if the AI is adulterated with that much other input, the end product would be the product of of a completely different set of influences anyway,
In the US, only humans can hold a copyright. An AI work is not copyright eligible. I’m not attorney, but I hope that key point will protect writers from AI generated literature.
Could? Yes. I don’t see why the machine algorithm would be limited to this scope.
Should? Absolutely not. Art is the domain of the human. To sully it with the profane movements of the abominable intelligence spits in the face of human artistic integrity and in the face of whoever it was used to circumvent.
To even suggest it is an insult. An insult to the craft, to their memories, to the nature of humanity.
I guess, but I won’t have any interest in reading it.
What?
Firstly, AI isn’t anywhere near good enough for that.
Secondly, just no
No, let it be as it is.
I find the idea of this completely abhorrent
If you respect someone you wouldn’t steal their work and art and create a butchery of it in my opinion