Using AI to do reviews (Page 1 of 2)

Dirk--
I was the reviewer who used Chat GPT for Steven's 11th chapter of his book. The reason I used AI is because I ran into an offensive joke in his text. I knew the moment I read that joke I would not like the rest of the chapter no matter how good it was. I owed him a review and did the only fair thing I could think of: impartial third-party review.
dags

One thing we can definitely do is put together a template based on AI-style reviews and pin it to the Premium group's forum for people to reference if they're stuck for things to consider/include in a critique. I could have used one of those when I first started doing reviews. Even now, I sometimes struggle to find anything comprehensive to say for some of the more experienced authors here.

I'd volunteer to put a draft template together, but I've been struggling with exhaustion since my bout with COVID. Blood tests suggest my pancreas took a hit, although I'm not diabetic (yet).

Yup. All great questions. Care to take a crack at the answers too? :-)
It would be interesting to feed Gemini one of my scenes and ask it how the scene made Gemini "feel".

If you do a review and claim it as your own whether implied or directly, then use AI to do that review, you are lying through your teeth plain and simple. It is no different than giving credit to any source material used in a school paper, etc. If caught, you would probably get an F as well as a scolding, no excuses. Look up plagiarism. Take care. Vern

It will certainly change things.

There have been "writers", some apparently well-known formula writers, who have had uncredited employees or subcontrators write chapters, aping their style, to write their novels.  You could substitute AI here.

And legitimate publishers will no doubt use AI analysis to help them decide whether to publish legitimate works or not. Makes me wonder how many classics would have received a thumbs down. Assuming a publisher does decide to publish someone's book, they can use the same analysis to help specify what changes the publisher wants from the author.

All this talk about AI makes me wonder if it's worth it to keep writing.

I keep seeing articles in my newsfeed about ways scientists and researchers are using AI, and that it can do in minutes what would take humans months or years to do, assuming we can even do it.

>>Will AI read one chapter of a book and advise me helpfully about arc, plot or character development?
Based on my experience using Gemini for a variety of detailed conversations, I think it might surprise you. :-)

So, I think we have two separate questions.

1. Can AI reviews be helpful? I think the answer is yes. As I've seen on Booksie, AI is good at spotting grammatical problems and can also provide feedback on plot, character development, setting, etc. It has "read" all of the best-selling work out there so knows the formula of what works and what doesn't.

2. Should reviewers use AI to leave reviews on TNBW? I believe the answer is no. When you leave a review, you are representing that you have read the work and are providing "your" opinion, not the opinion and feedback of someone else or a machine.

I've also thought about whether AI will replace human writers. I believe the answer is yes for technical work and potentially some non-fiction. For fiction, I think it might become its own genre - AI Written. I like to use clothing as an analogy. Much of the clothing we wear is made by machines in modern times. But the really valuable clothing is still hand made. Why? Because there is something human in the creation, the stitching, the fabrication and people who wear it find appealing. It's original and unique in a way machine created clothing is not.

This all leads me to two thoughts.

1. Perhaps we need to add some AI feedback to TNBW like what we have with Booksie. I think authors might find it helpful.
2. Reviewers should [not] be substituting AI for their own feedback. I believe a site where everyone simply pasts AI feedback is a diminished one that one that has no more reason to exist.

Happy to hear all of your thoughts.

Sol

EDIT by Dirk: Added the missing word not to Sol's second numbered sentence.

Hi Sol.

Having access to an AI directly from the site would be great as long as people can find it easily. In addition to wherever you place the button or menu item to make it generally available, I'd suggest also making it accessible from within the Post/Edit wizard with a label or tooltip suggesting people run their writing through the AI to eliminate the trivial stuff so they don't waste their reviewers' time. As reviewers, I think we should make it a default expectation. If the AI is good and clearly hasn't been used, I'd tell them to run it, fix their mistakes, then post again.

I experimented with ChatGPT and found it did a very good job summarizing a 340,000 word trilogy into 500 words—which I used for a query letter.