The use of AI in competitions and beloved public literary events has become its own subgenre in a crowded news field. The two highest-profile instances have been the announcement by the Grammys that they would allow the use of AI in eligible tracks and albums and NaNoWriMo's statement that it would allow AI and criticizing those who would oppose such an approach.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
The new controversy that has flared up is around the Nebula Awards. The Nebulas, run by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA), are one of the best-loved and highest-profile awards on the calendar. It is particularly known as one of the most indie-friendly awards, welcoming self-published works.
In December, it looked as if the Nebulas were about to become welcoming to something, er, less welcome to many authors. New rules were introduced that would have permitted the inclusion of parts of works generated by large language models, provided the use of LLMs was fully disclosed. There was a massive backlash from members of the SFWA. The rules were then changed to prohibit the use of AI.
A Second Wave of Concern
There has been a second reaction, with some claiming this could render almost every work ineligible if authors tell the truth about its creation, as it would exclude any work where LLMs had been involved in research or administrative functions such as spell-checking.
Such concerns are at the heart of a very high-profile and highly detailed open letter to the SFWA from author Erin Underwood, which I highly recommend reading. The thing that most chimed in her letter is a sense of exasperation that we are only now having conversations about circumstances we could clearly see coming for years. At the heart of what she says is a plea for nuance (for instance, she outlines six different uses of AI in the literary world), something all too quickly lost in all debates, not just those around AI.
Finding Clarity amid Complexity
There are some powerfully crafted sentences in her letter: “We need a clear distinction between authorship and process,” “Penalizing creators for incidental or third-party AI use in surrounding business processes doesn't protect the arts,” “If anyone deserves to benefit from tools that improve marketing, communication, efficiency, or sales, it is the creators whose work was scraped to train these systems.”
But if there is one thing I take from this latest chapter more than anything else, it's that, thanks to a really engaged writing community, the kind of debate needed may be starting to happen.
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