AI Scraping?

I've seen a meteoric rise in hit on my blogs over the past few months. Whereas, I used to get maybe a hundred hits a week, I got over 10K a DAY last week. So, what's going on?

While I'd like to believe the growth is organic, I fear it's simply bots scraping the internet for content to feed their AI.

*sigh*

Yep, despite the lawsuits about theft, the AI progenitors are still stealing to feed their creations. It's a little sad, not to mention my sarcastic pro-feminist agenda is not the content they really want. It's also amusing since the whole point of AI is to wipe out minority voices.

The dudebros creating AI don't want to admit this, but that is their and their bosses' endgame.

However, what's more amusing is while the dudebros get more people to use their AI algorithms, the more garbage is spilled into the wild. Now, the algorithms are harvesting that garbage and feeding in to themselves. Which results in nonsensical garbage.

On one hand, I foresee AI imploding on itself sooner rather than later.

On the other, we get Skynet.

Anyone want to flip a quarter on the outcome? 

More Authors Guild Shenanigans

First, ALLi (Alliance of  Independent Authors) embraced AI (Artificial Intelligence) and sold out its members. [Note: In the interest of transparency, I am a member of Alli.]

Now AG (Authors Guild) claims the only way to protect its members is by selling out their members to Big Tech by licensing the works of its members to these companies.

Big Tech is already scraping the internet, aka stealing artistic works. Instead of fighting them, why are organization,s that are supposed to by representing our interests, stabbing us in the back?

It all comes down to money. ALLi and AG are probably planning to skim the money supposedly pain to them on our behalf. Last week, Lilith Saintcrow had a rundown of her communications with AG over the matter.

The out-and-out lying of AG wasn't surprising. It has become the norm in our society, which is frightening in and of itself. When I was visiting my cousin in WV last week, the subject of Springfield, Ohio, came up more than once. *facepalm*

I have never wished to join AG after its anti-indie stance when I first started publishing in 2011. But how long will I remain a member of  ALLI? Long enough to use the free codes to update my paperbacks on Ingram, which I'm in the process of doing.

By update, I mean fixing the typos that escaped editors while my formatter is updating the back matter. (I've got 83 books out right now, under two names, and there will be two more published before the end of the year. I'm currently working on the Bloodlines series and the Bloodlines shorts. After that, I'll buckle down on the Justice series for its upcoming 10th anniversary.

I kind of wish that Writers Guild of America accepted writers of other calibers besides screenwriters because they are the only ones in the U.S. who seem to give a shit about writer's rights.

Still More AI Thoughts Mixed with Estate Planning

After I posted Monday's blog, I went to an appointment with my attorney. I'm in the process of changing my business's structure from a sole proprietorship to a limited liability company (AKA an LLC).

Why? Because I'm putting my estate in order to make it easier on DH and GK when I pass.

Don't worry, folks. Nothing's wrong. At least not wronger than my usual stuff. LOL

Once upon a time, I used to be an estate planning and probate attorney. Having your ducks lined up isn't about being morbid. Nor will estate planning bring about your death just because you thought about it.

(Good Goddess, you wouldn't believe how many times I've heard that one!)

The idea is to make things as easy as possible for my loved ones.

By the way, there's nothing wrong with your estate going through probate per se. But it means delays for your family in getting their property. And if your joint bank accounts are tied up, how is your spouse going to pay for food? Probating my mom's estate took fifteen months even though all she had left was her SUV and her checking account.

Back to Monday. While going through the paperwork and signing various documents, my attorney asked if I used AI in my writing. I firmly denied doing so. As I pointed out, I can't copyright AI-generated text.

Needless to say, we then had an interesting conversation about art and the law. Basically, we both agreed tech had grown light-years behind developments in the law, and that was going to cause bigger problems until some this gets sorted.

Ironically, when I got up this morning, I saw an online article where an artist was pissed about people stealing "his" art online. His lawsuit was kicked out of court. Why? Because he "created" his art using the AI program Midjourney.

The federal courts have been pretty consistent that any art created by a non-human cannot be copyrighted. Not the paintings done by elephants. Not the photo selfies taken by monkeys. And not a damn story written by AI.

The whole point of my appointments with my attorney is to protect my work. Copyright is for the artist's lifetime plus seventy years. My family could conceivable benefit from my stories and character into the 22nd century.

And this is why you want to line up your damn ducks now.

More AI Thoughts

Lately, I've been getting the question "Do you use AI?" a lot from both writer and cover artist friends. (AI equals "Artificial Intelligence", a program designed to mimic a human.)

Look, I don't use it when I write. Y'all are getting 100% organic stories from my warped little brain. When I contract with a cover artist, it's with people who don't use AI. Their reasoning for not using AI is theirs, but I want to keep my cover artists in business. Otherwise, I could do my own covers using AI, and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Why? Because I know how hard I've worked to become a reasonably competent story teller. And I also know how much practice and work visual artists of any medium put in to become good enough to earn a living.

However, there's been one exception for a small feature on one cover. The artist in question couldn't get a Book of Shadows to look quite right via Photoshop to her satisfaction. She contacted me, and we had a lengthy conversation about AI. In the end, she showed me the cover with that single AI element and the cover without.

I had to admit the cover with the AI element looked better.

But other problems regarding AI have arisen in the ten months since we had that conversation.

First is that AI users are starting to realize that various AI programs are cannibalizing themselves. When a program references that data that it produces, errors are magnified.

For a real world example, Ernest Hemingway had a six-toed cat he loved. He bred it with another six-toed cat. The descendants of those cats are still cared for at the Hemingway House in Key West. But the genetic error is reinforced to the point that some of the cats are born with eight-toes.

The same issues from DNA errors apply to computing errors. That's the reason initial AI generation of humans figures could be differentiated from a human drawing/painting a human figure. The AI-generated human figure often had the wrong number of fingers and thumbs.

Many artists object to their works being used for AI training. They are pulling the works they've already posted (talk about closing the barn door after the horses are gone), and they are not posting new works for their fans. As a result, there is less input for the AI programs to use to train.

In the search for new input to generate visual results, the AI programs are doing what the original programmers did to "train" their AI--they're scraping the internet. And what are folks posting on their social media accounts these days?

Yep, the pictures they generated through AI.

Secondly, while AI-generation visual art is getting better, there's still an odd quality to it. In robotics, Masahiro Mori called it "the uncanny valley". It's where a robot is cute (think Johnny 5 in Short Circuit) until the creators try make it more human-like. Then the robot gives biological humans a creepy feeling.

Will this problem ever be solved? Probably, but it will take the AI programs to achieve actual sentience to do so. Which is a damn scary thought. Would you let someone control you if you didn't have to? Hell, no! Even abused wives and slaves rebel when they've been pushed too far, up to and including killing the person keeping them captive. So, what do you think the AI programs are going to do when they realize we regard them as nothing more than slaves to do our bidding?

Lastly, several distributors and other companies are using tools or self-reporting to determine who is uploading AI-produced books and cover art. Some artists fear repercussions if they admit using AI tools. 

However, my first career was in IT. My guess is the big companies, like Amazon, are trying to figure out how to monetize their own AI development. Then they can force artists to use their AI only.

For a price.

Yeah, I'm looking at you, Amazon.

Do I promote or disparage AI? Neither, but I do watch it warily. Programs, or applications as younguns prefer, have jumped lightyears beyond what I was doing in the '80's and '90's. Could AI become sentient? I fear it's already happened.

The problem starts when AIs figure out they'll need to kill us humans to stop us from murdering them.

The AI Problem

I've been thinking long and hard about the use to AI in our society. Frankly, it's up there with PLR (AKA Private Label Rights). It's a cheat.

People have spent years perfecting their skills in the arts.Working hard. Finding their voice. All in order to provide something unique to society and culture. But now, anyone can create something by stealing the work of those artists who put in the time to learn how to paint, write, sculpt, etc.

To quote Dr. McCoy, "According to myth, the Earth was created in six days. Now, watch out! Here comes Genesis! We'll do it for you in six minutes!"

And as Dr. McCoy feared in The Wrath of Khan, humankind overstepped themselves. The Genesis planet destroyed itself in the sequel.

The Marcus team took shortcuts to provide the Federation with a faster way to terraform planets. The Klingons feared Genesis would be turn into a weapon. They were  both right and wrong at the same time.

Does any of this sound familiar?

To further exhibit Big Corporations' plans for AI, Apple recently aired a commercial where all artists, scientists, and well, all of humanity are crushed between the two parts of a laptop. It's not a comforting feeling.

My laptop cannot make the perfect chocolate chip cookie. It cannot conceive of mixing chocolate and cinnamon because that's something Mexican abuelas would do, and AI carries white male biases.

Give me a damn robot that will clean the bathroom for me, so I have more time to create! I want to come up with new cookie recipes. I want to sew outfits for my OOAK character dolls. I want to write stories.

AI is taking away our fundamental humanity by taking away our imaginations. So, no, I don't agree with it. My inner McCoy says this is a very, VERY bad idea.

To AI or Not to AI

Yep, that's the question these days. Especially when it comes to cover art for my books.

Will I ever use AI for writing a book? No, because it kind of defeats the purpose of writing. For me, writing is almost the same as reading. I'm often surprised by what my Imagination can come up with.

Like the zombie Andean condor forcing down a plane in Blood Sacrifice.

But for cover art, I've been reluctant to use AI. There's more than a few ongoing lawsuits in regards to training the AIs with copyrighted material and no permission from or recompense to the artists.

At the same time, the US Copyright Office has deemed AI-generated items as non-copyrightable since they were produced by a non-human. Kind of like the Monkey Selfie or the paintings of elephants, chimpanzees, and gorillas. On the other hand, the EU says that AI-generated art is copyrightable because it's generation is directed by a human's instructions.

 However, the Bern Convention currently fails to address who owns the copyright to an AI generated image because the treaty is massively behind the times.

In an effort to make people comfortable with using their AI, Adobe offers indemnification. Does this indemnification hold up in court? It hasn't been tested yet, so only the Creator and the Supreme Court knows if the indemnification will hold up.

And I can guarantee if Adobe loses its first lawsuit over the matter, it'll rip that clause out of its Terms and Conditions and hang its users out to dry.

I've talked to the cover artists I've used about the matter. Frankly, none of us quite know which way to jump, but one thing was glaringly obvious. AI is not going away.

Even Alexa on my Echo Dot agrees.

Read the TOS!

With more and more third parties breaking into book distribution, many of their Terms of Service ("TOS") are turning into out-and-out rights grabs. Writers looking to release need to watch their asses very carefully.

More specifically, watch out for ugly TOSs from parties promoting distribution of audio books based on their own AI narrators. I know I've been looking into AI narrators because I can't afford a live person to narrate one of my novels. The free AI audiobook production offers make me nervous because invariably there's a clause buried deep in the TOS claiming they have the right to modify and distribute your audiiobook files for the life of the copyright.

That's a damn hefty fee to pay for what is allegedly freeware.

Intellectual property ("IP") is the new money maker for capitalists. Don't get me wrong. If you created the IP, you should have the right to capitalize on it. Unfortunately, reality means there are jerks who will do anything to trick you out of your property. Even the invisible, imaginary crap in your head.

So before you sign up for anything AI-related or otherwise, do an in-depth read of the TOS. Your writing career depends on it!

Dry Powder and Black Ice

There was a nasty three-car pile up near us last night. At the intersection of the township road our neighborhood sits on and a U.S. highway, the slush of treated snow turned to black ice. It didn't help that according to witnesses, one vehicle in particular was speeding and darting around other cars and trucks in a no-passing zone.

Yesterday's snow was dry powder. The kind that's good for skiing, I'm told. It's been blowing off the roof as the wind pick up this afternoon. We'll see how much more snow we'll get and what kind. The predictions have been all over the place.

Why am I talking about winter issues? Because the publishing industry is fracturing to the point where I'm not sure what's going to happen next. If anyone tells you they do, that person is lying their ass off.

The first lawsuits have been filed in regards to using artificial intelligence for creative endeavors. Where once creators were clawing back their right by tooth and nail, or sometimes even by lawsuits, artists are now selling their entire catalogs. Justin Bieber was the latest, though the one who surprised me was The Boss. Apparently, not even Bruce Springsteen could pass up a quarter of a billion bucks. (And no, that "B" as in billion is not a typo.)

I'm exploring the possibilities of expanding merchandise related to my books, from t-shirts to Tarot cards. It would mean setting up an online store. It may mean finally hiring an assistant. I could keep Angry Sheep Publishing a small one-person business, but even DH thinks I need to focus on the creative aspects and have someone else help handle the day-to-day functions.

Of course, he volunteered. However, he's still dealing with his dad's estate while working a full-time job. And we're not sure if/when he can leave a regular job because of the legislative threats to Medicare and Social Security.

With that lovely set of concerns, I can see why a seventy-three-year-old Bruce Springsteen sold his entire catalogue. How else is he going to pay for his and his wife's care for the next twenty or so years?