Clarkesworld editor Neil Clarke has temporarily stopped accepting submitting stories from unknown writers after finding out that most of them are just AI-written.
The online magazine which focuses on publishing sci-fi stories saw a surge of plagiarized content in recent submissions amid the popularity of AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT and Google Bard.
AI-Written Stories Flooded Clarkesworld's Submissions
The usual day of an editor involves editing a story and sorting out the submissions that will be published for the next issue just like in the case of New Jersey resident Neil Clarke.
While he's busy weeding out unnecessary elements in a story, he noticed that there was a lot of AI-generated content on them.
According to Buzzfeed News, over 50 stories that he checked before noon were flagged as AI-generated. Because of the unexpected surge of these submissions, he temporarily stopped accepting the other stories.
For writers who want to earn some money for side hustle, they can submit their science fiction pieces to Clarkesworld. The online publisher pays 12 cents per word. Some short story writers earn up to $2,640 in just a single story.
However, as more ChatGPT-like tools continue to be available, some people abuse using them. Clarke said that in the first 20 days of February, there were over 500 submissions that failed the plagiarism test.
In his previous blog, Clarke detailed that the online magazine used to flag below 30 submissions for plagiarism. It seems that the recent case is very different from the usual count.
"Towards the end of 2022, there was another spike in plagiarism, and then 'AI' chatbots started gaining some attention, putting a new tool in their arsenal and encouraging more to give this 'side hustle' a try," Clarke wrote.
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AI-Made Stories Have 'Obvious Patterns'
In a report by Business Insider, Clarke said that there are "obvious patterns" that a story is most likely run in an AI platform. However, he did not specify further his findings about these signs.
The news outlet reached out to Clarke's team to confirm that some stories are undoubtedly teeming with AI content. Again, they did not share their opinions about it.
Clark remains hopeful that there are still writers who can shine without using AI tools. He just hopes that one day, the team will open the submissions once again.
If you are hoping for an update on when submissions will reopen, probably sometime next month. We have a new issue to get out and an overflowing inbox to tame. There will be software updates and we'll try again. Probably close again too. Trial and error.
— clarkesworld (@clarkesworld) February 23, 2023
Upon knowing ChatGPT's capability, some businesses grow overwhelmed by the news. With the inevitable usage of AI software, it appears that their business "won't be sustainable" in the long run.
In other news, Reuters noticed that many e-books in the Amazon Kindle Store were authored by ChatGPT. The source reported that some of them include poetry collections and how-to guides and walkthroughs about AI tools.
