journal and pen, coffee, glasses, plant

Hey friends! For years on this blog, we did “WIP Wednesday.”


I would share a snippet of what I was working on. In the comments section, others would do the same. We didn’t critique each other’s work—a lot of times, it was too new and raw for critiquing! But often, we’d cheer one another on. 

I got to know a lot of my readers and their writing in this way. On especially busy months, it sometimes motivated me to get more done. It was a beautiful thing!

laptop computer and some dried flowers in a vase

skull on computer screen representing chat gpt and sudowrite

 

And then, generative AI happened.


I became alarmed at the rise of Chat GPT, Sudowrite, and other generative AI tools—which should really be called “appropriation machines,” because they just steal and remix others’ work. Some of these programs have been built with hundreds of thousands of copyrighted and pirated books, as well as with stolen online writing, also protected by copyright, from thousands or millions of writers. In addition my concern over these tools, I didn’t know whether WordPress was feeding creative work into an AI tool. 

Sadly, I discontinued WIP Wednesday. 

 

 

But I really, really missed WIP Wednesday!


I think about it every month!

I loved seeing everyone’s work. For me, it made this writing journey a little less lonely. I felt like we were all in this together.

I talked to WordPress about my concerns, and they told me: “WordPress.org isn’t submitting your content to be scraped.” They shared some kind of code that I can add to my website to tell AI bots not to scrape it. I am dubious of this, to say the least, but I could try it.

While it’s true that anything we share could get scraped by these appropriation machines, I’m well aware that this is the case with all my blog posts. I’ve started thinking that if we keep our excerpts short—say, 200 words or less—it’ll still be fun, but there won’t be enough material for machines to learn much or to meaningfully infringe upon our original work.

sad Bryn at computer

tulips and journal

 

For those of you who participated in WIP Wednesday, how do you feel about it?


Do you miss it? Do you think I should bring it back, but with shorter excerpts for everyone? Or would you rather not put anything at all out there, even if it’s short? 

I’d love to hear your opinions in the comments! I’m not an expert on anything having to do with technology, and as a writer, I am trying to negotiate changes the best that I can.

You can be honest. You won’t hurt my feelings. I’ll just be happy to hear what you think! I hope everything is going well with you! 

 

 

 

47 thoughts on “WIP Wednesday, Revisited? Please Weigh In!

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