Bertie Fielding writes:
When AI writes the words, who is the author?
After an AI detector classified one of my opinion pieces as entirely AI-generated, I found myself questioning where authorship ends, where expertise begins and what readers deserve to know.
FNN thinks this is an important topic in two aspects:
- transparency
- design vs production
Transparency involves being as clear and open as possible as to the use of AI in a piece of text.
Here is a sample of an AI Transparency Statement (AITS) used in the Moviewriter suite of apps:
https://moviewriter.vizihost.com/app/ai-transparency.php?from=publisher
Design vs production is a little more debatable.
Take what Fielding says:
I then give that material to AI and ask it to produce a draft. The first version is often polished. Sometimes it is much too polished. It can sound confident while completely missing what I meant.
That is where the real work starts. I tell it what is wrong. I ask it to rewrite sections, restore details it has removed, add experiences it could not know, challenge the argument and reject neat conclusions that do not reflect the world as I have experienced it. This can take hours, days, weeks or, in some cases, months. I keep returning to the piece until I can recognise myself in it and until I am prepared to stand behind every claim.
In this case Fielding is really operating as a designer, fashioning his article with the help of AI and then using AI to 'produce' it.
I would argue he is still the author since he is responsible for the design of his content, often at a highly detailed level.
I would argue it's a bit like cooking: he iteratively experiments with different sets of ingredients until a perfect combination is found to 'his' taste and then AI cooks it for presentation on the table.