I am highly convinced this story is AI generated.

[CharlesEBrown]

Lol, I know My Vampire System. It was so badly written.
How do you even pull things from a site like that?

By "pull things" do you mean "how do you find them" or "how do you remove them"? Just saw the instructions for the latter yesterday. For the former, they have a decent search engine but it's better for searching for broad types of stories (and it can be a bit ornery and suggest the newest ones, even if you have zero interest in them).

I get it. It feels like trash, degrading the hard work and effort authors put into their craft. And I agree that it is. But I think everyone knows it's not going away. Your right, what a human author does takes a lot more effort, but it shows in quality. My thought is, if the disdain for AI is so all encompassing, that it could blind authors to where it could be used as a beneficial tool.

You are correct. I know people who despise it so thoroughly they deny that it has any positive capabilities at all (and cite "environmental costs" and "putting people out of work" instead of actually discussing it).
Heck, I was leaning that way myself until a former employer had us attend lectures on how it is used in detecting and fighting cancer (and aiding with other medical treatments) and talked to a guy who gave up his dreams of becoming a movie director to accept a job with Microsoft coding their AI project. When ChatGPT beat them to market (by about five months), his entire group was let go, but allowed to keep the code they developed - and now, he's using it, to ... make movies, with a studio of about five people plus occasional voice actors hired for specific projects.

 

[TheKillingAlice]

By "pull things" do you mean "how do you find them" or "how do you remove them"? Just saw the instructions for the latter yesterday. For the former, they have a decent search engine but it's better for searching for broad types of stories (and it can be a bit ornery and suggest the newest ones, even if you have zero interest in them).

Bascially both, because I imagine it to be quite a hassle. I've found two of my stories on weird sites that offer them as AI audiobooks, but that was by coincidence.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Bascially both, because I imagine it to be quite a hassle. I've found two of my stories on weird sites that offer them as AI audiobooks, but that was by coincidence.

Ah, one of mine wound up on a site like that. Never got to listen to it, as 1) doing so would have given them "permission" to keep it up due to their convoluted statement of rights, and 2) accessing the site set off every antivirus program I have before I could even get to the page. Never asked them to take it down because they DID properly credit me and even linked to the site I was publishing it in (the story is now here too, True Blue, but back then it was only on Royal Road).
Toyed with offering that one to Pocket FM just to see what their lawyers would do to that site to pull back the rights don't dislike either site enough to find out...
It is almost too easy to remove a story from PFM - they have an app with that as an option as long as you drill down three screens to find it.
As for finding stuff, their screens are pretty cluttered with the stuff they're pushing (and it all either has the original anime cover or an AI generated one - if the author is contracted, they work with them to create a cover that the author is comfortable with; if not, they slap something together that is kind of sort of relevant and only worry about it if the author complains).

 

[TheKillingAlice]

Ah, one of mine wound up on a site like that. Never got to listen to it, as 1) doing so would have given them "permission" to keep it up due to their convoluted statement of rights, and 2) accessing the site set off every antivirus program I have before I could even get to the page. Never asked them to take it down because they DID properly credit me and even linked to the site I was publishing it in (the story is now here too, True Blue, but back then it was only on Royal Road).
Toyed with offering that one to Pocket FM just to see what their lawyers would do to that site to pull back the rights don't dislike either site enough to find out...
It is almost too easy to remove a story from PFM - they have an app with that as an option as long as you drill down three screens to find it.
As for finding stuff, their screens are pretty cluttered with the stuff they're pushing (and it all either has the original anime cover or an AI generated one - if the author is contracted, they work with them to create a cover that the author is comfortable with; if not, they slap something together that is kind of sort of relevant and only worry about it if the author complains).

That sounds so crappy, not gonna lie. Did your computer survive that first attack?
But yeah, sounds fun to think of having them battle it out - at the same time, I understand why you wouldn't do it as well.

Overall, it sounds like a giant hassle. I never really looked for my books on sites like this - again, it was just a mere coincidence last time and I never tried finding one again. I guess I should check Pocket FM and just hope not to draw a virus from the lot.
Thanks for clarifying though. Have another cookie.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

That sounds so crappy, not gonna lie. Did your computer survive that first attack?
But yeah, sounds fun to think of having them battle it out - at the same time, I understand why you wouldn't do it as well.

Overall, it sounds like a giant hassle. I never really looked for my books on sites like this - again, it was just a mere coincidence last time and I never tried finding one again. I guess I should check Pocket FM and just hope not to draw a virus from the lot.
Thanks for clarifying though. Have another cookie.

Pocket FM wasn't the one with the virus. There's a "scraper" that goes through several sites (primarily Royal Road) and pulls anything that does not list being posted somewhere else and does not have a strong DCMA statement somewhere and has AI do audio of it. I would have to go back into that account to find out what site it was. I think they're Russian-owned.

Pocket FM is a legitimate (if sometimes a little shady) company out of India that, at least, asks for permission from the author if they're using AI, or from the IP owner if, like with Solo Leveling, they have a full-voice audio available in English.

I also had a guy volunteer to do a free voice recording of one chapter (he actually did two) for Diamond in The Rough - he read it closer to Tim Curry's Gabriel Knight than the Bogart-inspired Sam Spade I kind of had in mind when I wrote it, but his take really fit the story well. Had a link to his YouTube recording on the Royal Road version of the story.

 

[TheKillingAlice]

Pocket FM wasn't the one with the virus. There's a "scraper" that goes through several sites (primarily Royal Road) and pulls anything that does not list being posted somewhere else and does not have a strong DCMA statement somewhere and has AI do audio of it.

Pocket FM is a legitimate (if sometimes a little shady) company out of India that, at least, asks for permission from the author if they're using AI, or from the IP owner if, like with Solo Leveling, they have a full-voice audio available in English.

I mean, yes, but you never know with these sites. >-<"
Wait, you can just input some DMCA Statement and that works as a deterrent?

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I mean, yes, but you never know with these sites. >-<"
Wait, you can just input some DMCA Statement and that works as a deterrent?

It did last time I checked. I forgot to when I posted True Blue on Royal Road but had already posted the first eight chapters of Diamond in the Rough here before copying it there, and this site has a strong DMCA option (also a weak one or a no-rights-reserved one IIRC) that you can pick when you first post.

 

[TheKillingAlice]

It did last time I checked. I forgot to when I posted True Blue on Royal Road but had already posted the first eight chapters of Diamond in the Rough here before copying it there, and this site has a strong DMCA option (also a weak one or a no-rights-reserved one IIRC) that you can pick when you first post.

I mean, I do choose these, I just never know they actually did something. Thanks for confirming that for me.