The Problem with AI
Important change to BBP guidelines
Since Chat GPT 3.5 hit the headlines around a year ago, I have watched the development of AI with interest. Many authors are using AI to generate their artwork, and I have found language models such as GPT 4, Bard and Bing Chat to be very useful for ideation, research, and solving linguistic conundrums.
Until now, I have had no issue with AI-generated artwork or AI-assisted poetry. In fact, I have even published poems that were completely AI-generated, BUT I did this with total transparency, highlighting the fact and using it as a platform for discussion.
My policy on AI has always been that authors should be upfront about it. The ethos of BBP is not to be snobbish or elitist. Yesterday, I published someone’s limerick poetry, and they said they were surprised that I would accept it. Why not? We are all here to express our thoughts, feelings, memories, dreams and reflections (I had to give the nod to Jung there!).
However, after spotting cases where the likelihood of whole stanzas being written by AI was very high (according to the state-of-the-art detection software I use), and no mention of AI was included, I reflected on my stance.
