Artificial intelligence, Chat GPT, is at the heart of the news with its many excesses. The American literary magazine ‘Clarkesworld’, specialized in science fiction, has been inundated with proposals for short stories to be published, clearly written by a machine.
Clarkesworld is a well-known magazine in the United States: for 17 years it has published science fiction stories from all over the world. He has won several Hugo Awards, a kind of Goncourt prize or Science Fiction Oscars. However, a few days ago, the director of the journal, Neil Clarke, announced that he was temporarily no longer accepting works sent to the editorial staff. “Not hard to guess why“, he explains. He has been inundated in recent weeks with proposals that clearly did not come from real authors.
Prior to October 2022, the magazine rejected about 25 submissions per month for plagiarism or for being written with artificial intelligence. In December 2022, that is to say just after Chat GPT on the Internet, we went to 50 rejections, then 120 last month and more than 500 even before the end of December. So unmanageable while waiting to find a solution, Clarkesworld took a break.
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To recognize these stories written by artificial intelligence, “just read them”, abounds Neil Clarke. It’s pretty clear from the first page. The quality is very mediocre, the turn of phrase curious. He does not want to detail his method for identifying them, we should not give the opportunity to these false authors to adapt. The problem is the mass. Artificial intelligence does not necessarily write better than a human, but it writes much faster. There are many software to detect texts written with AI. But they are expensive and their effectiveness is questionable: they can identify AI when there is none, if the author is not perfectly bilingual, or not see it when there is.
Neil Clarke could change the rules of submission, for example prohibiting production from certain countries, obviously, the news comes from three countries in particular, but legitimate authors from these countries would be penalized, or even not accepting unknown authors, but the science fiction needs new voices. A complicated situation therefore, especially since artificial intelligence is progressing very quickly and risks becoming more and more difficult to identify. In addition, Microsoft, Google and Baidu have developed Chat GPT competitors.
Behind this influx, it is not only a question of literature: Clarkesworld pays 10 to 12 cents per word, a very competitive rate in the market, so those who want to make easy money apply for it. In February, Amazon had at least 200 books in its catalog written by artificial intelligence. They don’t necessarily sell very well, but since the writing is effortless, it’s still a good deal. Concern is also rising in the university ranks or even in high schools, knowing that artificial intelligence is nourished by what has been written, it is the door open to all cheating.