Three ideas for foiling AI spamming of SFF zines

[asakiyume]

According to Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld (as quoted in this Guardian article), there are get-rich-quick schemers out there who are encouraging people to submit AI-generated stories to high-paying, highly regarded venues. Clarkesworld has seen an increase from an average of 10 to over 500. As a consequence, Clarkesworld has closed submissions.

Another venue said it would only accept submissions from known authors.

That’s a terrible blow for up-and-coming writers and ultimately for the whole ecosystem. How to solve it?

First, I want to clarify the difference between the problem as it exists now and the ultimate problem. Judging from the fact that Clarkesworld was able to recognize and reject 500 stories as AI-generated, the problem right now isn’t that AI-written stories are indistinguishable from human-written ones; right now it’s a problem of spam. It’s a problem of a deluge of trash submissions making it untenable for zine teams to sort through to find the genuine ones.

Ultimately, as AI-generated stories get better, we’ll have the problem of distinguishing them from human-produced ones—if we decide that's a problem—and the solutions will be different, but I have some ideas for right now.

Idea 1: a cool-off period. Writers submit their names only. They are contacted a month later and invited at that point to submit their story. This ought to deter most spam.

Idea 2 a change in directionality. What if instead of authors submitting to publishers, publishers went looking for authors? This is already what’s had to happen to increase submissions from marginalized, lesser-heard-from demographics: publishers have actively sought them out. It’s distressing for writers to have to sit around like flowers in a garden waiting to be picked, but it’s a possibility.

Idea 3: writing circles. Essentially groups of writers who choose to come together to write in a certain style or about certain topics or just because they get along. They share writing with one another, talk about and share stories they’ve read as well. They would share some writing publicly (for free), so that there would be a public record of the circle’s existence and the sort of work its members produced. Then once every [time period], circles would make recommendations to zines of works to consider for publication. In other words, writers themselves would be doing first-level slush management, and zines could judge the types of stories they’d likely be getting from the circles by the work posted publicly.

These ideas have drawbacks, I realize, but maybe with refinement one or several of them could work?

Comments

[raven]

Oh lord. I completely see the problem and why the Clarkesworld model attracts it. But ideas 2 or 3, or publishers only going to known authors the way tor.com does, would have stopped me getting anything published in the last ten years. I think I've had one story solicited and only on the basis of my earlier work, and the problem with writing circles is how you get to join, particularly if you're new, unestablished, quirky, in the Global South, etc. (I'm going to go out on a limb and say my stories being published is probably a good thing at least for me!) Idea 1 is clever! I really like that. But the whole thing is such a problem, caused by bad faith actors, that fucks over the rest of us.

I do think however that other magazines, that are open for say 7 days in every month, or every fourth month, are likely doing better than Clarkesworld in this regard.

[asakiyume]

*nodding*

I think of idea 2 as being precisely for *finding* people in the global south etc etc, but it really would depend on zines making an effort, and will they? hmmm

--But more generally, yeah, ideas 2 and 3 put big stumbling blocks up, and even if they didn't, they're kind of what-if solutions that aren't immediately put-in-place-able.

Probably something like what you're saying about having narrow--and shifting! opening windows, and then maybe something like no. 1 could mechanically deter spam.

But it is a huge problem.

Re no. 3, I do think people up and just forming groups and then sharing writing publicly would be ways in which we could get to learn of new writers (or relatively unknown ones--I count myself in that number)--imagine this scenario:

Joyce Chng or Eve Shi (just to take two people I know of who are in the Global South right now) form a writers circle with some of their acquaintances both local to them and far flung across the internet. That group shares stuff publicly and announces it via various social media. Someone like me, who follows them online, shares what they've shared. Now I'm a nobody, but I'm friends with people who aren't nobodies. Maybe CSE Cooney, who follows me and is more widely known, shares what I share--and so people get known.

If I form a writing circle, I would love you to join--in all seriousness (but also: no pressure). Unlike the crowdfunding for buying twitter, this is something I may actually do.

[raven]

That would be exactly my concern! and hey, maybe we can give the magazines more credit, how do you go about it? Maybe there's one magazine in a country in the Global South in English and you could invite its authors, but what about the person in their little house in a small town somewhere who has this year's Hugo winner on their hands and the magazine doesn't know where to come and they don't know where to go? It just gives me a chill, in the bad way.

re: 3, I like the idea now I've understood it a bit better! I would be delighted to join a writing circle with you--I've read just a little of your work but enjoyed it enormously. I'm actually on the lookout for such a thing, the one I participated in previously has sort of stalled and I've had trouble finding something new.

[asakiyume]

I hear you on the concern re: zines finding people--it is bad, all the more so for our complete lack of control over it.

Re the writing circle, I will pose some questions here and there to get a sense of preferred modalities, frequencies, etc., and see what I can put together! ... I am theoretically going away for some time next month, but I am serious about this, even if it takes some time

[genarti]

Yeah.

Not to get too all-about-me, but just to use myself as an example, between various RL reasons for a long semi-accidental hiatus and just the luck of the editorial acceptance gods, all I've had is one reprint in the last 8 or so years. I've been submitting a lot and trying hard not to get discouraged, but the Clarkesworld thing is a blow, and the Grimdark Magazine announcement is a much worse one. Not because Grimdark is a venue that matches what I write terribly well -- I don't know that I'd ever have anything to submit to them personally, although I guess never say never -- but because lots of venues deciding to only go to known authors and solicited submissions means I would probably never have another story published, ever.

And, obviously, I'm one person and it doesn't, broadly speaking, matter that much to the industry if nobody publishes my stories. But I think there are a lot of writers in my shoes, and a lot of them less privileged and less connected than I.

I do at least tell myself that smaller magazines and magazines with shorter and more on-and-off submission windows, as you say, are likely getting hit less hard by this than the Clarkesworlds of the world. I hope so, anyway. But the whole thing feels awful.

I do think Idea 1 is a clever one, though! That, or variations on it, could be interesting approaches.

[asakiyume]

Believe me, I understand! I'm a pretty dang unknown writer too! (I realize you were replying to raven but I had to stick my oar in too...)

The good thing about idea 1 is that it's a mechanical approach that could foil spammers with very little ill effect on writers and not much effort on the part of publishers. Maybe more thoughts along those lines will generate other, similar tactics--things that don't cost much in terms of money or effort.

[genarti]

<3 I was replying to both of you, really (the handy thing about replying to someone on someone else's journal is you know they'll both get the notification!) but I know we're all in variously similar boats bobbing along this turbulent river of an industry! I think of both of you as cool and successful writers (whose work I love!) but there are so many ways to be more or less unknown in the grand scheme of things.

Which is what's so rough about the situation. A few bad faith actors with some time and technology on their hands, making things harder for so very many of good faith actors.

But anyway, yes, very true about idea 1! (And for all my little self-pity party moment up there, I do really appreciate that you're looking for productive ways to address the issue, whereas I've just been hoping that the people who run magazines figure it out. Not optimally helpful!) There could also be green M&Ms clauses of sorts, if you know what I mean -- something to include in your submission file to show that you read the directions, that changes venue to venue or even month to month within a venue. I do really like the idea of little tests like that that shouldn't take writers much effort beyond reading the submissions page, but would weed out the spammers who can't be bothered to do that.

[asakiyume]

Yes! Those could be kind of fun to do and to design ;-)