Have you noticed the hypocrisy in the freelancing industry lately? It’s probably in more than one industry, to be honest, but I’m a freelance writer and a novelist, so I understand those two industries. Because of that, I can tell you that there’s some amazing hypocrisy going on when it comes to AI. All of these platforms are using AI, but if you use it, you are condemned to have your account removed and your IP banned.
Content Mills
Content mills are probably the most notorious for this. They’ve added language to their TOS that says that if you use AI to help you write an article and you’re caught, your account will be terminated. In that same breath, they offer their clients AI/Human written articles, and I’ve even seen jobs where the clients wants the writer to rewrite the AI content until it’s not AI content, and they’ll be checking that content with the unreliable AI checkers. Maybe multiple AI checkers. Hard pass!
I don’t know how you feel about it, but I’m not rewriting AI content on a platform. That, to me, is just asking for trouble. Now, if a private client wants me to enhance some AI content or revise any piece of content, I’m more than happy to do it, but I won’t do it on a platform. The rules for doing that are contradictory at best, and I’d hate to do what I’m asked and then get banned because I used AI, when it’s expressly banned, even though the directions said – Rewrite this AI content. No way. Find a different author. Use a platform that doesn’t care. I can’t risk what little money I’m still making to do your forbidden task for $20.
Writing Books!
Writers are taking it up the tail end coming and going. So, you don’t freelance. Instead, you write novels, and you’re using AI to help you write those novels in order to increase your productivity. I, personally, don’t have a problem with you doing that as long as 100% of that book wasn’t done by a computer, because that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about having a computer write your book, and that computer may have been trained on content that wasn’t paid for. In fact, I don’t believe any AI models paid for the content they used. I certainly didn’t receive any money for any articles I’ve written that they used, and I know they did use them.
The bad news is that it doesn’t matter if I don’t care. Many platforms are now asking if you’ve used AI in any capacity. They’re not forbidding it, per say. However, you better believe they’ll do SOMETHING in the future with that information, and it’s unlikely that it’ll benefit you. Just remember that. When’s the last time a business made a change that actually benefited you?
I’ll wait, but I won’t hold my breath.
What could those book publishing platforms do in the future?
- Well, if you’re not honest, and you’re not checking those boxes, they could ban your account for having undeclared AI content.
- Whether or not you’re honest, they could pull those titles or ban your account for suspected plagiarism. Remember, those AI models used copywritten content, and you have no idea whether or not the content you used from the AI is copyrighted. How would you even look that up? I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
- They could just create AI categories. Just the regular old categories with AI in front of it. AI Fiction, AI non-fiction, AI Romance, AI Thriller, AI Self-Help. This would probably be the least damaging to an author’s account. However, it’d probably greatly affect your sales, so damaging is in the eye of the beholder, but at least, you’d still have your publishing account.
- They could ban you from advertising books that have AI content.
- They could ban you from publishing and remove your titles. This is the harshest punishment for using AI content, and I think it’d be more likely to fall under – suspected plagiarism, but most of these platforms reserve the right to remove you for any reason or no reason, and if you’ve ever fallen on the wrong side of the rules, they don’t even tell you what rule you broke or how to fix it, and forget getting a hold of a person. That’s handled by AI and standard bots now.
What Should You Do?
Don’t use it. This is the AI for me and not for thee. These companies are using AI, and they are making it impossible for you to use it. Is it fair? Absolutely not. Is there anything you can do about it? Yes, you can be a completely independently published author and use your own website to host your books and sell them. I know authors that do that. They don’t publish to any platform, and the only place to get their books is their website. Do they sell a lot of books? I think that answer depends on your definition of – a lot of books. However, they probably don’t tell as much on their websites as they would on a publisher’s website.
