The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) membership has voted a complete ban against using AI-produced work in their publications, and will treat such work as ineligible for its awards.
The organization will not accept or publish poetry, art, or other works created using a generative tool, either wholly or in part, and that published works created using a generative tool will not be eligible for SFPA awards, including the Rhysling, Elgin, and SFPA Poetry Awards.
Earlier this month the SFPA Executive Committee presented members two options for the SFPA to adopt as its policy regarding works derived from generative tools (including AI, large language models, etc). With 168 members voting, the outcome was as follows:
- 69%: I support a complete AI ban.
- 25%: I support a limited AI ban.
- 7%: I support neither statement.
The statement SFPA adopted follows.
SFPA’S STATEMENT ON GENERATIVE AI
SFPA Statement on Generative AI[1]: Introduction
The SFPA recognizes and supports the creative talent of human beings. While the organization encourages creative exploration of new tools, we can not support the use of tools built on the exploitation of other people’s creative work without their consent or compensation.
While the terms “AI,” “LLM,” and “generative media” (which we will call “generative tools” for this statement) are being used for many applications, these technologies are part of a rapidly changing environment and no two are designed the same way. There have been cases of proven and alleged copyright infringement with many such tools, however, as well as arguments that they exploit creative work.
The allegations of copyright infringement in generative tools typically rests on the fact that these tools are “trained” on datasets made of other artists’ and authors’ work without their consent[2]. These training materials are how generative tools create “new” works, which may or may not resemble the original creator’s work. However, not all generative tools are necessarily exploitative or plagiaristic, with some companies looking to create ethical alternatives trained on datasets that are made up solely of creator-submitted and compensated materials.
As an organization that supports creators, the SFPA will not accept or publish poetry, art, or other works created using a generative tool, either wholly or in part.
Published works created using a generative tool will not be eligible for SFPA awards.
The SFPA will also not use generative works in any of its official publications, including Star*Line, Eye to the Telescope, the SpecPo Blog, and the SFPA website.
[1] Generative AI can be thought of as a machine-learning model that is trained to create new data, rather than making a prediction about a specific dataset. A generative AI system is one that learns to generate more objects that look like the data it was trained on.” (Zewe, 2023)
[2] “In a case filed in late 2022, Andersen v. Stability AI et al., three artists formed a class to sue multiple generative AI platforms on the basis of the AI using their original works without license to train their AI in their styles, allowing users to generate works that … would be unauthorized derivative works.” (Appel, Neelbauer, and Schweidel, 2023)
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Good
Good.
I wonder where the line is drawn here.
Fully generated storylines are out, for sure.
Fleshing out a scene (adding some background etc) is probably out too.
Can I use an “AI re-written” paragraph? (“Make this paragraph flow better please”)?
Is it OK to use Grammarly to fix a sentence to make it a bit smoother?
I guess spellcheckers are OK.
excellent
@Reto–
Yes, you need to do your own writing.
No, as noted above, do your own writing, and in the process learn to do it better.
Grammarly isn’t the Large Language Models miscalled AI. It’s been widely used for years, but if you use it the lazy way, accepting all or most of its not always wise suggestions, the result will be worse, not better. Bland and uniform, not creative, personal, and interesting.
Absolutely!
But as with Grammarly, check its suggestions. Autocorrect is often autodestroy. Spellcheckers will declare “wrong” correct words and intended “errors” appropriate to what you’re actually writing, and substitute homonyms and entirely different words that don’t mean the same thing as the word you typed.
LLMs, miscalled “AI,” can’t do creative writing, because there’s no actual intelligence, taste, or judgment there. And it won’t make your writing better; it will at best just leech all the character out of it.
Fine if you’re going for the blandest possible advertising, maybe–but then your employer may decide you’re just an excess expense.
Good
In my experience, it has been editorial policy at Star*Line for contributors to make a statement that AI was not used in the creation of written work submitted to the magazine for over a year now (I don’t know about other SFPA publications), but it’s good to see a clearly spelled out policy with respect to all the organization’s publications and its Web site. It’s also good to see the policy applied to works considered for SFPA awards.
@Reto, Lis Carey
Grammarly refers to itself as AI, and the SFPA specifically bans AI as a “generative tool”. So a literal reading of the policy does forbid it.
@bill–Thank you. Grammarly has been around long enough that it didn’t even occur to me that it might class iitself as that. So it is banned by the policy. But as I said, I wouldn’t recommend using it anyway. It makes writing more bland, not better.