The debate over AI content in books made me reflect on what I expect from media in general

I appreciate it when things are authentic. Books, as well as TV shows, movies, etc, often contain interesting tidbits of information or perspectives that aren't necessarily part of the plot or obvious. Fiction can be instructive, a window to the world, or a window into the creator's thoughts.

None of this mutually exclusive with media that's also entertaining. Books don't have to be snobby literature to have these things. Pop culture "trash" can still be interesting in a "meta" sort of way. Maybe a book from another country or culture, for example. Or a bygone era. Or a lot of people like it and you want to feel that too.

Finally there's something about having a parasocial connection to a human by reading/viewing their stuff.

The thing about AI is no matter how good it gets, it doesn't live in the real world. It parrots and rearranges existing information. So it's not going to be a primary source for an idea or observation that a person would make. AI can, or will eventually be able to, generate a work of art, and can mimic profound ideas or trivia present in whatever media it trained on, but lot of it is just going to be boring and meaningless.

I like to be entertained too obviously. And you might be thinking, a lot of entertaining media is just 100% pure fiction. Something that doesn't contain meaning, or unique ideas. Some hugely popular fantasy novels that people on Reddit love IMO are notoriously formulaic and shallow and basically "human-created slop". Not that this makes them bad per se, everyone loves what they love.

But then on the other hand, if we are being super honest, I don't have an enormous appetite for that in book form, or any form. Even when I want to turn my brain off, other things come into play. A looming side effect of AI slop "dumping" is that it creates excess choice. Often I'd prefer something that's a 8/10 on my preference scale but massively popular that I could talk to a friend about, over something that's my 10/10 ideal but comes at the cost of decision paralysis and which I'll never connect with or over.

All of this to say, as a consumer if I have to wade through low effort AI on your platform or website then I'm out. And I do think that as readers and consumers we deserve labels that say if a piece of media was created "substantially" with AI. As for enforceability or practicality, here's the deal: there's a difference between a well-meaning human using AI as a tool for fixing their amateurish rough draft, versus a scammer who enters a brief prompt and then publishes dozens of 80k word novels they'll never actually read on Amazon, and no I don't think it's impossible to draw a line somewhere on that. Even if it's just a promise or attestation from the author, it doesn't matter, because the mere act of taking ownership of your work is a big deal that incentives authenticity.

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I realize there's edge cases that challenge my logic here. Whatever, don't care. For instance a human writer of historical fiction or creative nonfiction that contains "interesting ideas" would also be a secondary perspective holder operating purely off other sources, so hypothetically AI could be given access to the same source material and produce something of equivalent merit per my reasoning. But then the human could add value by injecting commentary about the present into the story or empathize in a way a robot can't with the subjects involved…