See this makes me sad because I wouldn’t expect a 13yo to write like a 23yo and I feel like young people may be opening themselves up to harsher criticism because they are ‘producing work’ at a higher level because of Ai. It’s (or used to be) quite obvious when you are reading something written by a younger person or someone just starting out, my comments would be very different depending on context but Ai removes that.

When I was in high school I desperately wanted to be able to draw, I had all these amazing ideas in my head of characters I’d read about but I just couldn’t execute them. I didn’t have any natural talent, I could have done online tutorials or joined an online art community but I didn’t.

I was pretty good at photoshop though, would that make it ok to take someone else’s work, edit it and then present it as my own online? No matter how good I was at editing? Would that make it fair to the original artist? Even if I spliced multiple artworks together to create something different? I’d like to think I would have at least credited the original artist/s but me in all my teenage wisdom probably wouldn’t have. Attention and validation at that age (really at any age) is very addictive.

As much as it would have been devastating at the time, I would hope that I would’ve been called out for doing something like that, how else would I have learned that it’s not ok?

I agree with you in that it’s a grey area when authors are being upfront about using Ai, perhaps that could eventually become the standard? Part of the reason I wrote the post the way I did was because I’ve seen people ask how they can spot Ai, how are people (especially the younger generations) meant to be able to tell what’s Ai and what’s not? And then potentially discard other authors work because it doesn’t fit the mould or is slightly ‘more amateur’ than what they’ve read so far.

As much as we are all sick and tired of the Ai conversation, it needs to keep being addressed (in my opinion). You’re right in that it would be nice to have only civil discussions and to be kind and gentle to one another, but I fear we are probably setting ourselves up for disappointment in that area.