Author J. A. Cipriano on what AI reveals about the relationship between creators and customers

[Innula Zenovka]

A provocative (and free to read, I think -- please tell me if it's not) piece by sci fi and urban fantasy author J. A. Cipriano on AI and creators

The Mutual Contempt Machine

Why Creators and Audiences Secretly Hate Each Other

jacipriano.substack.com

Creators have been pretending that their technical skill is what makes their work valuable, when really it was just the barrier to entry that kept them special.

Audiences have been pretending to care about creators' artistic visions, when really they just wanted access to technical skill to realize their own visions.

AI is exposing this mutual delusion. It's offering the audience what they really wanted (the ability to manifest their own visions) while threatening to make creators' technical skills obsolete.

Unfortunately, there probably isn't a great path forward, at least not within the current creator-audience dynamic. This relationship was built on mutual delusion and resentment from the start. AI isn't breaking it, it's just exposing how broken it always was.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Here's the thing neither side wants to admit: Creators don't actually want to make things for their audience, and the audience doesn't actually want what creators make. Both sides are trapped in a dysfunctional economic relationship where they're forced to pretend otherwise.

This rings so true... I've supported many artists who struggled to even pretend to care about their audience and felt very free to abandon projects that people loved the moment they lost interest. I have a lot of respect for artists but also don't feel we need to give them money just so they can do whatever the hell they want.

I also think there might be some interesting psychology behind how many great artists I've worked with just seem to be incredibly unreliable. I've commissioned art on many occasions and I swear, the artist always has some weird random delay for an implausible excuse. The fact that machines do what they are told and don't quit is a major reason customers and employers love them so much. It's also a major reason that humans can't work so damn hard that they compete with a machine that never sleeps or needs a day off.

I am sad that many artistic and writing jobs are vanishing, but we can't really put the genie back in the bottle. It's clear that the only artists who will survive are ones who are VERY skilled and put a lot of effort into pleasing customers.

 

[Free]

At 3:42 in, Azaria makes the point that we'll listen or watch what we like, and we won't care if it's created by AI or humans or a combination of that, and compares it to what's recently happened to the music industry (in that one can listen to it for basically free). It's most likely true, and sad.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Head's up, the following is malformed musing of an idiot who believes way more art should be publicly funded. (I also deleted most of the post because the thought-stream was too multidimensional and not linear enough to express on an empty stomach.)

The genie is definitely out of the bottle. Everything's a remix in human learning.

I also stopped using this filter preset because it calls out two artists by name, and I can't get over the gross feeling.

Ambivalent and realistic that the article in the OP is the future.

 

[Beebo Brink]

I also think there might be some interesting psychology behind how many great artists I've worked with just seem to be incredibly unreliable. I've commissioned art on many occasions and I swear, the artist always has some weird random delay for an implausible excuse.

Just a few weeks ago, I watched a multi-part series on the life of Leonardo DaVinci that was showcased on PBS. He was notorious for just walking away from commissioned murals when they were half-finished at best -- despite having been paid for the work -- and not returning to the project for years, if ever.

 

[Essence Lumin]

A provocative (and free to read, I think -- please tell me if it's not) piece by sci fi and urban fantasy author J. A. Cipriano on AI and creators

I am not familiar with the author but he keeps mentioning the word creators without defining it. It will be a long time before AI writes the novel Wuthering Heights. Now if we are talking about second rate romance novels that authors crank 10 a year out of, well maybe.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

and not returning to the project for years, if ever.

Laughing and looking at my folders of half completed stories and projects that often get completed a year later when I finally have a Eureka moment in the shower.

 

[Casey Pelous]

... if we are talking about second rate romance novels that authors crank 10 a year out of, well maybe.

If they were written in the past three years, they were, at the very least, "AI assisted." With fiction, it just doesn't matter.

Also, 10 a year wouldn't pay the bills -- they do multiple series, often under other names. Frankly, it's an ungodly grind. (I did audiobook narration for that market for a while. Yes, I'm an audio porn star. )

 

[Essence Lumin]

If they were written in the past three years, they were, at the very least, "AI assisted." With fiction, it just doesn't matter.

Also, 10 a year wouldn't pay the bills -- they do multiple series, often under other names. Frankly, it's an ungodly grind. (I did audiobook narration for that market for a while. Yes, I'm an audio porn star. )

Ugh. Though your audio porn might be a little intriguing I belong to a facebook group called 20 books to 50k. They seem quite knowledgeable about dealing with Amazon, Ingram etc. 50k for 20 books doesn't seem like much though. I really just aim to publish my Mom's quite feminist letters to her parents from the '50s and will be happy if I sell a hundred copies.

 

[Noodles]

I wrote a 30-40k word story last year and thought about publishing it but with the world the way it is I am not sure I want to anymore. Feels like it would get lost in the AI sea and the political.direction of the US would hate it.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I wrote a 30-40k word story last year and thought about publishing it but with the world the way it is I am not sure I want to anymore. Feels like it would get lost in the AI sea and the political.direction of the US would hate it.

Catherine Omega in the Discord was about to publish a sci fi involving non binary aliens and the interested publishing houses are abruptly not interested in non cishet binary aliens.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Catherine Omega in the Discord was about to publish a sci fi involving non binary aliens and the interested publishing houses are abruptly not interested in non cishet binary aliens.

Who needs publishing houses in the age of internet?

 

[Noodles]

Who needs publishing houses in the age of internet?

I agree. I was just using Draft2Digital. My concern is more the ghestapo government future.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Who needs publishing houses in the age of internet?

Buyer beware. Self-published books vary widely in quality.

 

[Free]

Maybe we only really need to worry when AI is self-publishing their own works for other AI.

 

[Casey Pelous]

I agree. I was just using Draft2Digital. My concern is more the ghestapo government future.

I make most of my living from Amazon's kdp.amazon.com.

If you have your book in publishable form -- i.e., a pdf in book layout-- publishing involves uploading your manuscript, uploading your cover, writing the sales copy, and setting the price. It is, basically, three pages to fill out. I have done it so much now, I can go through it in minutes.

You don't even need to make a new account -- your existing Amazon account will work. (You will need to tell them how to pay you and do a "tax interview," which is very simple for us USAnicans.

That will be the print edition. Paperback and hardcover editions may require different formatting; for instance, there is no 8.5x11 option for hardcover. You'll save yourself some trouble by looking at those choices in advance.

You can publish a Kindle edition there, too. For that, you convert the pdf to epub, which is just HTML5+CSS. Calibre will even do the conversion, though you will end up cleaning it up in Sigil or Calibre's epub editor. Avoid Kindle's converter tool -- it is dumb as a sack of hammers.

None of this costs anything.

Good luck.

By the way, the publishing part is easy. The hard part is actually selling any copies. Maybe, though, you just want a book of your mom's letters. In that case, you go to your kdp dashboard and choose "Order author copies" and can buy them at, basically, the printing cost.

 

[Noodles]

I make most of my living from Amazon's kdp.amazon.com.

If you have your book in publishable form -- i.e., a pdf in book layout-- publishing involves uploading your manuscript, uploading your cover, writing the sales copy, and setting the price. It is, basically, three pages to fill out. I have done it so much now, I can go through it in minutes.



By the way, the publishing part is easy. The hard part is actually selling any copies. Maybe, though, you just want a book of your mom's letters. In that case, you go to your kdp dashboard and choose "Order author copies" and can buy them at, basically, the printing cost.

I started the KDP route but it seems there are content rules that would not allow this particular story. I may in the future.

I am not really trying to make a living, just maybe get some side money writing and selling nichey erotica.

Like, if I average $20/month to spend on L$ or something, I would be happy.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Buyer beware. Self-published books vary widely in quality.

Also, books are likely to do A LOT better if they get a bit of marketing investment.

 

[Free]

Sort of on topic.

ChatGPT and Other Chatbots Are Hurting Publishers Even Worse Than We Thought

OpenAI and Google appear to be sucking up much-needed traffic to websites and massively screwing publishers over in the process.

futurism.com

Chatbots from companies like OpenAI and Google appear to be sucking up much-needed traffic to websites and massively screwing publishers over in the process.

As Forbes reports, new data from the content licensing platform TollBit shows that AI chatbots send a whopping 96 percent less traffic to publishers' websites than traditional search engines — even as companies like OpenAI and Perplexity promise tangible gains to media companies that partner with them.

When looking at metrics for 160 news and blogging publishers, TollBit found that AI companies' bots scraped those sites an average of two million times during the fourth quarter of 2024. Each page was scraped around seven times on average — a click-stealing scheme, if you will, that results in zero ad revenue for the publishers involved, since bot clicks don't generate any money for advertisers.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Revisiting this thread because I was just seeing some people talk about how you should just commission a real artist rather than use AI!! I bet that sentiment is most popular among people who never actually worked with artists very much. As I said before in my earlier comment, I've commissioned art on many occasions, I have a pretty decent sample size when I say they are usually terrible to work with. It's the norm and not the exception. It doesn't matter how much money you throw around, they are still horrible to work with. In a way, it's their right to not want to work with others. ...So why should I pay them rather than have a bot do it?

The most charitable way to put it is the way the article says it, they just want to make their own visions and can't be bothered with anyone else's.