A few days ago, we discovered these words:
“So, to state it plainly: we will revoke Partner Program enrollment from writers that publish spam, fraud, AI-generated stories, and other low-quality content that demonstrates clear misalignment with our mission. And we’re proud to protect the community from this kind of behavior.” From this post
An important decision for writers.
And a necessary one for the health of the ecosystem.
In a previous post, I had already pointed out the deleterious effects of AI on human writers.
AI drowns the platform in generic content and at the same time drowns your content in an ocean of generated texts. Since there are statistically many more stories, yours is buried.
You’re competing with many more texts, but also texts that are generated faster than yours. AI has a much higher production volume.
If the AI text flops, it’s no big deal, just an extra prompt and it’s sorted.
If you flop, hours of creative work go up in smoke.
The stakes aren’t the same. It’s a competition, and it’s up to you to judge whether it seems unfair.
AI was not only bad for the writer, but also for the platform. When I log on, I want to read humans. If I wanted to read robots, I could log into an app myself and ask my question.
For a few months now, browsing tags was a circus. Most texts were generated. Discovering human writers was more difficult. The overall quality of content has plummeted.
It’s only been a few days since this decision was taken. And I’m enjoying wandering around the platform a lot more. Real authors have come back to the front of my feed and I find it easier to find great stories written by real people.
This decision by the platform is crucial, as it indicates its philosophical position. These words say it all: on the writers’ side. We might even hope that it inspires other platforms to do the same.
This is only the first battle. Because AI will continue to improve, and it’s also very difficult to detect. There are tricks for reworking texts to give them a more human touch. But at least the decision is there, and those who do it know what they’re risking: demonetization.
We need to put reality into words.
Entire professions are under threat.
And many people have already been fired.
Writers were already struggling to make a living from their work and this new competition has added a layer of complexity to their situation.
Awareness is growing of the dangers lurking out there.
On an individual level, we need to work on our resilience.
Develop your singularity so as not to risk being replaced.
And on a collective level, we need to organize and support each other.
Let’s not be the dinosaurs who ignore the comet.
I'd like to know what you think of this decision?
Is it a step in the right direction?
Or should the market be unregulated?
I'm not on Medium so I don't have a dog in that fight, as they say. However, AI generated content affects us all (writers) no matter where or how we publish.
I do agree that there's a lot of terrible AI content flooding the market and making it harder to get noticed. However, readers are still able to spot terrible AI content when they see it, for the most part. So, the bad content is out there causing noise but not necessarily hurting writers because it offers little to no value.
On the other hand, AI content is getting better because of the increased abilities of the AI themselves as well as increased skill in people using AI. It's only a matter of time before AI generated content begins to become indistinguishable from human generated content. What then?
Personally, I think trying to fight AI content by banning it is ultimately a losing endeavor. At some point, we will no longer be able to tell what is AI and what is human. Relying on people to self report will never work. After all, if you can't tell that it is AI generated how will you prove it?
But then that brings up another question. If you can't tell it's AI generated content is it a net gain or a net loss?
I think we can probably agree it's not good for writers, but will anyone other than writers care? Are writers horse carriage builders in the emerging world of the automobile?
Very right decision by the people at medium