I once got recommended a post on here about signing a petition to add "AI generated work" to the list of archive warnings, (Unfortunately, I lost the post, so I can't reblog it on my blog, otherwise I would absolutely be doing that with similar text as to what I'm writing right now.) I'm gonna be honest here, I don't support that petition. I do dislike the use of gen AI in creative spaces (mostly moral/ethical issues, and I feel like it defeats the entire point), however I believe making "AI generated" an archive warning would cause more problems than it would solve.
Three problems I thought of were:
It's incredibly hard to prove for certain that a work was generated with AI, so if this were to be enacted, either a lot of works missing the warning which should've had it would not have CNTW added (a lot of false negatives), works not generated with AI would be believed to have been, causing CNTWs being added to works which really were no warnings apply (a lot of false positives), which can be very frustrating for writers and readers alike, or, what I believe to be the most likely result: both.
It would be hard to draw the line for "AI generated". Of course, if you just told ChatGPT to write fanfiction for a specific fandom and put what it vomited out on Ao3, that would obviously constitute an AI generated work. However, it gets more ambiguous with cases that I believe you've mentioned here on this blog, like using it to assist in translation of a work, copyediting, etc.
Because Ao3 adds CNTW to any work missing an archive warning it should have, I think that instead of stopping the AI witch hunts (which is probably one of the goals of adding that feature), it will instead concentrate it on CNTW works, especially those who either had it applied after creation (even if it was because the author realized a case was ambiguous or Ao3 had to add it because the author didn't warn for Underage or whatever), seem to not have any other warnings potentially apply, and even more so both.
I'd like to see your opinion on the petition and why you support/do not support it, but I personally hope it doesn't get implemented.
yeah I agree with you. also AO3 already has "AI-generated" as its canonical tag. it's not the main archive warning tags like non-con, violence or major character death, but it's been recognized as a canonical tag a long white ago.
so I believe the best way is to make sure people who let ai write for them are comfortable enough to be honest about it and use the "AI-generated" tag. and if we want more people to be comfortable and honest about it then we have to not shame or harass people who are honest about asking ai to generate fanfics for them, otherwise people will just stop tagging their ai-generated fic as such.
ao3 has also responded to people asking them to ban ai-generated fics from their platform that they can't realistically do that because 1. it would defeat the site's main purpose of "no censorship" and 2. unless the author themself says so, it's impossible to know for sure if a fic is ai — staff would have to guess based on vibes, and then people would just report any fic they don't like as ai-generated, and there's always a chance of a human-made fic getting wrongly accused. (RE: this post.)
witch hunts, speculations and accusations will always do more harm than good.
