We Can’t Agree On What Counts as “AI-Written”

AI allegations have taken over the publishing world: there’s a new scandal every week. In all the discourse, though, we seem to have skipped a step—what actually counts as “AI-written”? AI and LLMs (Large Language Models, like ChatGPT) are being used in every part of the writing process, from brainstorming to research to editing to sentence construction. So, where do we draw the line? And which AI-assisted works are we willing to read? I put together a survey with nine questions to get a gut check, asking respondents to select for each question whether the author’s use of AI/LLMs would make the finished work “AI-written” and whether they’d be open to reading it. This is not a scientific survey; most respondents are Book Riot Newsletter subscribers, who are not a representative sample of the general public. Instead, it’s a look into how dedicated book lovers are perceiving AI-assisted work at this moment in time. Used an AI-powered spellcheck/grammar tool like Grammarly. I structured the survey to go through a spectrum of AI-assistance, ending with the most straightforwardly AI-written work. As expected, most of us don’t think using an AI-powered spellcheck/grammar tool equates to a...