So this woman named Mia Ballard wrote this feminist body-horror novel called Shy Girl, which she self-published but later got picked up by a big-5 publisher (this is not easy, and when it happens, it is typically based on factors unrelated to the quality of the work, unlike when the publisher is making a more conventional front-end publication decision) after getting a large volume of solid GoodReads reviews (this site has ridiculously huge influence in the non-prestige/genre-fiction literary world), getting positively reviewed and ‘blurbed’ by an impressive number of legit authors and literary critics, and, consequently, eventually putting up solid Amazon sales.

As the book becomes more widely read, it starts to rack up scandals in a predictable order. First it gets revealed that she just stole someone else’s art for the cover of her self-published volume (she just pulled it off Pinterest and used it, the way you or I might do for a closing-argument PPT or an email to a friend or something, without considering that there might be additional legal requirements attendant to a book you’re hoping to achieve mass sales with). Then, almost out of nowhere but heating up immediately to 10/10 level, people start to criticize the book as having been written by AI. A lot of this is based on ‘feel,’ although there are some purportedly technical analyses that back up the claim. The author goes fully defensive and says that she’s never used AI, but she learned post-publication that the friend she used as her editor would occasionally use AI to improve word choice. It’s still not clear if the editor is real, but the publisher looks into it and eventually cancels publication (this is a big deal, and as a product of Due Process I'd trust a big-5 pull more than an oklahoma death sentence). Literary libs – actually all libs, but *especially* literary libs, who are still mad that AI stole their IP without compensation in order to take their jobs and trivialize their life’s work – hate AI with a passion, and view its use in a novel, in and of itself, as a grave and unforgiveable sin. Gleeful references to “AI slop”, etc., abound.

At this point in the story, I am ready to rush in guns blazing on the ‘side’ of AI like a 109-IQ xo poaster after a week of login lockout. Why should it matter if the author used AI, if the work is good? If the prestigious reviewers, publishers, etc., liked the novel, and it doesn’t transgress established norms (vs. norms expanded deliberately to hamper AI) of plagiarism or copyright infringement (I’m ignoring the cover thing here), then it shouldn’t make any difference whether the author used the tool of AI to write the book. This is the future, and we must embrace it!

Except, lol, that is not the story at all, and this is not a philosophical battle over the inherent propriety of AI use or the irreplaceability of bespoke human-created art. The quality of literature is subjective on the (substantial) margins, but this book is not remotely on the margins; it is hilarious garbage written at the level of a public high schooler forced to write for class: in a 214-page book, it uses the word “heavy” 74 times, “weight” 94 times, “edge” 84 times, and the word “sharp” is used an astounding 159 times; virtually all of these uses are metaphorical (i.e., this is not a book about high-mass objects getting sliced into). And although it isn’t as easy to quantify into an instantly recognizable-as-absurd figure, the book is also obsessed with adjectival doublets, and it appears to believe that fiction writing is synonymous with ending every other sentence with a simile, regardless of whether that simile is fucking retarded (“he touched the bath water to feel its temperature, like a sculptor testing clay”, “time stretched as the seconds passed between then, like the tick of a clock”… these are by no means the most egregious examples). Despite the utterly horrendous writing, there are no typos or grammatical errors. The plot is shitty and stupid and the characters undeveloped and uninspiring, but whatever, it’s the bizarre and DEFINITELY AI writing that’s noteworthy here.

So then… why the fuck did so many prestigious reviewers (and affluent white women on GoodReads) go out of their way to lend their names to backing it? Well, it turns out Mia Ballard is a Black woman, a member of an Indian tribe, and, I believe, some subtype of LGBTQIA. The blurb retractions have been pricelessly comical, as critics and authors panicking over the imminent massive loss of credibility do everything but whip out an Aldis lamp to signal to the world MY REVIEWS ARE REAL AND CRITICAL AND MATTER AND I ONLY LIFTED MY STANDARDS HERE BECAUSE IT WAS A BLACK WOMAN, FOR WHOM MY TEST OF QUALITY IS WHETHER THEY CAN DO MORE WITH A PIECE OF PAPER THAN THE UNCONTACTED TRIBES OF NORTH SENTINEL ISLAND, WHICH HAVE NOT DISCOVERED FIRE BUT WILL USE IT TO WIPE FECES FROM EACH OTHERS’ ANUSES. In their anger, embarrassment, and frankly hurry, some of them have literally been like “I trusted a Black Indigenous woman in a way that I would have never trusted a White person, and readers should take comfort that my reviews of White authors have always employed the unyieldingly high standards for which [book-review rag] has always been known.”

Tl; dr: Black woman has chatgpt write novel at 104-IQ, ESL 11th-grade level; prestigious critics fawn over novel based on author’s identity without reading it; hilarity ensues.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5848746&forum_id=2\u0026show=my#49762272)

Lol this is exactly what consuela says when you point out that his blog is blatantly written by AI

Like somehow it doesn't count as "having AI write it" if you scribble a bunch of shitty retarded nonsense and then AI re-writes it to be halfway readable and coherent

Or like when people who cheat at video games say they aren't "actually cheating" because the cheats are just "doing what they could have done anyway"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5848746&forum_id=2\u0026show=my#49762295)