A short story titled “The Last Hope” first landed on Sheila Williams’ desk in early January. Williams, the publisher of Asimov’s science fiction magazine, reviewed the story and aired it.
At first, he didn’t give it much thought; she reads and responds to writers daily as part of her job, receiving between 700 and 750 stories per month. But when another story, also titled “The Last Hope,” appeared a couple of weeks later by a writer with a different name, Williams became suspicious. When another “Last Hope” arrived a few days later, Williams knew immediately that she had a problem on her hands.
“That’s like the tip of the iceberg,” says Williams.
Since that first submission, Williams has received more than 20 short stories, all titled “The Last Hope,” each coming from different authors and email addresses. Williams believes they were all generated using artificial intelligence tools, along with hundreds of other similar submissions that have overwhelmed small publishers in recent months.
Asimov’s it received about 900 stories for consideration in January and is on track to get 1,000 this month. Williams says that almost all of the increase can be attributed to pieces that appear to have been generated by AI, and he has read so many that he can now often tell, from the first words, whether something might not have been written by a human.
Sometimes they haven’t even bothered to replace”[name]” with yours
In addition to repeating titles, there are certain character names that tend to come up frequently, Williams says. Sometimes the manuscript will contain a different title than the one indicated in the online form. Author names often appear to be amalgamations of first and last names. In optional cover letters, some authors include instructions on how to wire them money for your story that hasn’t yet been accepted. Sometimes the sender hasn’t even bothered to replace “[name]” with yours.
Using ChatGPT, the edge he was able to replicate some elements of presentations that Williams has seen. A prompt for writing a short science fiction story, plus information to copy and paste from Asimov’s submission guidelines: Stories produced with dozens of similar titles in succession, such as “The Last Echo,” “The Last Message,” “The Last Day of Autumn,” and “The Last Traveler.”
Willams and his team have learned to spot AI-generated jobs, but the influx of submissions has been just as frustrating. Points of sale like Asimov’s they are overwhelmed by artificial intelligence, taking away editors’ and readers’ time and potentially crowding out genuine submissions from newer writers. And the problem could only get worse, as the increased availability of writing bots creates a new breed of get-rich-quick schemes, where open-submission literary magazines have found themselves on the receiving end of a new surface for spam submissions that they try to play the system.
“Basically, I go through them as fast as I can,” Williams says of the pieces he suspects are AI-generated. “It takes the same amount of time to download a presentation, open it, and watch it. And I would rather spend that time on legitimate introductions.”
For some publishers, the influx of AI-generated submissions has forced them to stop accepting new work.
Clarke believes the submissions are coming from influencers and “sideline” websites.
Last week, the popular science fiction magazine clarkesworld Announced would temporarily shut down submissions due to a flood of AI-generated work. in a previous blog post, editor Neil Clarke had noticed that the magazine was forced to ban a dizzying number of authors because they had submitted stories that were generated using automated tools. Only in February clarkesworld it had received 700 human-written submissions and 500 machine-generated stories, Clarke says.
Clarke believes the spam submissions are coming from people looking to make a quick buck who found clarkesworld and other posts via influencers and “side hustle” websites. One website, for example, is packed with SEO bait articles and keywords about marketing, writing, and business, and promises to help readers make a quick buck. An article on the site lists nearly two dozen literary magazines and websites, including clarkesworld and Asimov’s, as well as larger outlets such as the BBC — with payment fee and filing details. The article encourages readers to use artificial intelligence tools to help them and includes affiliate marketing links to Jasper, an artificial intelligence writing software.
Most publications pay small fees per word, around 8 to 10 cents, while others pay flat fees of up to a few hundred dollars for accepted pieces. On his blog, Clarke wrote that a “high percentage of fraudulent submissions” came from some regions, but he declined to name them, concerned that he might paint writers from those countries as scammers.
But the chance of getting paid is a factor: In some cases, Clarke has corresponded with people who have been barred from submitting AI-generated work, saying they need the money. Another editor said the edge that even before AI-generated stories, they were getting pitches and emails from writers in countries where the cost of living is lower and an $80 publishing fee is much more than in the US.
Clarke, who created the submission system his magazine uses, described the efforts of AI story spammers as “inelegant”: By comparing notes with other editors, Clarke could see that the same work was being submitted from the same address. IP to various publications. within just a few minutes of each other, often in the order the magazines appear in the lists.
“If it were people from inside the [science fiction and fantasy] community, they would know it wouldn’t work. It would be immediately obvious to them that they couldn’t do this and expect it to work,” says Clarke.
The theme extends beyond science fiction and fantasy publications. flash fiction online accepts a variety of genres, including horror and literary fiction. On February 14, the outlet added a notice to its submission form: “We are committed to publishing stories written and edited by humans. We reserve the right to reject any submission that we suspect is primarily generated or created by language modeling software, ChatGPT, chat bots, or any other AI application, bot, or software.”
The updated terms were added at the time that FFO received more than 30 submissions from one source in a few days, says Anna Yeatts, editor and co-editor in chief. Each story hit the clichés Yeatts had seen in AI-generated work, and each had a unique cover letter, structured and written unlike what the publication normally sees. But Yeatts and her colleagues had been suspicious since January that some of the work submitted to them had been created with AI tools.
Yeatts had played around with ChatGPT starting in December, feeding prompts into the tool to produce stories in specific genres or in styles like gothic romance. The system was able to replicate the technical elements, including the establishment of the main characters and setting and the introduction of the conflict, but failed to produce any “deep point of view”: the endings were too clear and perfect, and the emotions too they often spilled over into melodrama. Everyone has “piercing green eyes” and the stories often begin with characters sitting down. Of the more than 1,000 works FFO has received this year, Yeatts estimates that around 5 percent were likely AI-generated.
“We put that scary little warning [on the submissions page]Yeatts says. However, enforcing it could prove challenging.
In the past, FFO He has published mainstream works that have a more conventional writing style and a voice that is accessible to a variety of reading levels. For that, Yeatts says that stories generated with artificial intelligence tools could exceed the basic requirements.
“It has all the parts of the story that you try to look for. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. It has a resolution, characters. The grammar is good,” says Yeatts. The FFO team is working to train staff readers to look for certain story elements while getting started in introductions.
“We really don’t have good solutions.”
Yeatts worries that a rising wave of AI-generated jobs could literally crowd out written work. The outlet uses Submittable, a popular submission service, and FFOThe plan that includes a monthly limit on stories, after which the portal closes. If hundreds of people submit ineligible AI-generated work, that could prevent human authors from submitting their stories.
Yeatts isn’t sure what the magazine can do to stop the stories from getting through. Updating the Submittable plan would be expensive for FFOthat works “on a shoestring budget,” Yeatts says.
“We’ve talked about soliciting stories from other authors, but that also doesn’t feel true to who we are as a publication because that will deter new writers,” Yeatts says. “We really don’t have good solutions.”
Others in the community are keeping an eye on the issue that is inundating other publishers and are thinking of ways to respond before it spreads further. Matthew Kressel, a science fiction writer and creator of Moksha, an online submission system used by dozens of publications, says he began hearing from clients who have received spam submissions that appear to be written with AI tools.
Kressel says he wants to keep Moksha “agnostic” when it comes to the value of chatbot-generated submissions. Publishers have the ability to add a checkbox where writers can confirm their work doesn’t use AI systems, Kressel says, and he’s considering adding an option for posts that would allow them to partially block or limit submissions using AI tools.
“Allowing authors to self-affirm if the work is generated by AI is a good first step,” Kressel said. the edge via email. “It provides more transparency to the whole thing, because right now there are a lot of uncertainties.”
For Williams, the publisher of Asimov’s, being forced to use your time to sift through the pile of AI-generated junk is frustrating. But even more worrisome is that legitimate new authors may see what is happening and think that publishers will never get to their manuscript.
“I don’t want writers to worry that I’m going to miss their work because I’m inundated with crap,” Williams says. Good stories are obvious from the start. “The mind that makes the interesting story is not in danger.”
