UPDATED
Thank you, @fatherofcurses for making me stop and actually think through solutions. So I've updated my post on Medium and sugges...
Some comments have been hidden by the post's author - find out more
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Aside from the post itself, can we take a moment to appreciate how great your cover images have become? I'm preparing a new article. I know the content will work, but I'm just worried about picking a suitable cover image. I know itās not a big deal, but the eyes eat first. š
@georgekobaidze ā thank you, kind sir. š
This little sub has already paid for itself. Ten or twelve bucks, whatever ā worth every penny! My only hang-up is that the style I want lives in Phoenix, and since you canāt train that one yet... yeah, weāll see if the XLs can fake it. If they get even halfway close, Iāll call it a win š
Also, Iāve got a ridiculous pile of notes ā mostly so I didnāt have to keep re-not-really-watching the same videos on repeat like some kind of AI-powered Groundhog Day. If you decide to jump in, ping me and Iāll ship a few your way.
And seriously, diffusion prompting ā NLP prompting. They are two totally different beasts. I was not at all ready for that when I hit āsubscribe.ā But hey, this not-at-all-artistic person finally has an outlet for some of the randomness rattling around in my head.
The bad news? All of this is written for art people. Art people know things like lighting and cinematography. The difference between modernism and post-modernism. Me? At best, Iām Googling... but mostly I just copy the big words from the real art people. š¤·āāļøš¤£
Kelly services jobs Hiring.
Here all details you Complete the applications now. Copy this link and paste any browser. ššš
is.gd/Xy1vhF
This would have sounded incredibly obvious in 2010, but: If you don't write your own content, you aren't a writer.
If a platform wants to make sure to only serve users content that was actually written by other humans, then maybe that just isn't the right platform for you to publish on.
There's some gray area around the brainstorming process; but drafting? editing? You know what the combination of those two things is? Writing. What medium is banning is using AI to 1. draw two circles 2. draw the rest of the owl.
And that's ignoring the fact that all modern AI is fundamentally based on content theft, and inherently immoral.
š Appreciate the feedback! But hey, if you havenāt read my supporting post How I Blog with Bots (But You Can Still Blame Me), youāre basically arguing about my process with half the instructions missing. šš¤
Letās clear the air (at least enough so we can both breathe):
1. Draft = 100% Me
Every word in that first draft? Mine. Usually dictated over enough lunch breaks to count as a part-time job. The AI doesnāt even get a say until Iām done thinking out loud. If it dares interrupt, it gets a timeout (and my instructions updated accordingly š). My thoughts, my voice, my embarrassing tangents from start to finish. Period.
2. Editing: Not What You Think
Hereās where everyone gets it wrong: editing with AI isnāt a magical rewrite. Itās me giving ChatGPT a heap of voice notes including:
Thatās the part everyone conveniently forgets about with AI: my personalized instructions, spelling out exactly what itās allowed to touch andāmore importantlyāwhatās strictly off-limits.
The AI is basically my ultra-picky copy editor: it only makes the changes Iāve explicitly told it are allowed. All the personality, all the oddball references, and all the bits that actually sound like me are protected by a growing wall of ādo-not-touchā instructions.
Is it perfect? Not even close š Especially since GPT-5 started acting like an intern on their first day and stopped responding to my prompts the same way GPT-4 did. So, yep, I started over. But those instructions get better (and weirder) every round.
So what if the AI screws up (which it doesāfrequently, and sometimes spectacularly)? Simple: I update the rules and run it again until it sounds like me (well... mostly me on caffeine).
Why bother?
Because itās fun. I enjoy wrangling the chaos and pushing AI to see how far it can goāwithout losing what makes my writing mine. I get my stories, my voice, and donāt have to care about grammar unless Iām in the mood. Typing? 100% optional. And this reply? Same process, start to finish.
So, tell me which part of that isn't writing? Is it the part where Iām doing all this straight off the top of my head, no notes in sight? Or is it that Iāve standardized my editing, then let AI handle my typos and tangent detours? Or maybe itās the magic of starting a sentence, abandoning it for a 3-minute rant, and then picking it up right where I left off. My posts would never be this good without that particular style woven in.
It's not a secret
The fact that Iām the SME for GitHub Copilot at work? Yeah, thatās a bonus. I do most of this in my spare time. At least half (probably more) of my posts are 100% dedicated to AI because I genuinely enjoy it. Sure, my first few blogs didnāt have the āRAIā footers, but the second I made that connection, I went back and updated every single oneāfull disclosure, always.
Lately, Iāve been learning about SEO on top of the usual ādonāt let me use any word worse than damnā and āhighlight every mention of Home Depot so I can personally review it before I hit share.ā And just like I said earlier:
One Last Call to Action š«µ
If youāre still skeptical, DM meāIāll pull the chat conversation for one of my posts and post it raw. I have zero doubts about who's really in charge of everything I write. And I refuse to accept that I should be punished because you're not capable of doing the same.
First of all, thanks for the long response; but the impression I get, at least if I understand your explanation correctly, is that you're barely going beyond using AI for proof reading at that point, no?
In your post, you brought up that medium doesn't allow "Anything more (drafting, editing, all other AI assistance)?", which is what I find reasonable.
There is definitely a bit of a blurry line between simply having AI correct spelling and point out segments that need to be removed and straight up re-writing a post; if that's where you want to see more nuance, then I can partly agree to that. Partly, because there is still the problem that all current AI is trained on stolen content, so any usage of AI while working on an article is still making use of another writer's work without their consent.
First up: the whole āall AI is trained on stolen contentā claim is just... not it. Thatās basically the internet equivalent of shouting āfire!ā in a movie theater because you smelled popcorn. If anyone actually has a forensic report, a real dataset audit, or something besides the usual doom scroll, Iād genuinely love to see it.
Until then, itās just rhetorical smokeābig on drama, light on receipts.
Now, to your actual question:
Yep, youāre making my point for me. Whereās the line, anyway? Is editing, restructuring, or even just brainstorming with AI suddenly off-limits, or does it only count when you let the bot write the punchline? The definitions are fuzzy at best, so I go out of my way to make sure Iām playing by the rulesāand still being transparent about how I use these tools.
My issue with Medium's post isnāt just about the āgray areaā stuffāitās how the line gets drawn. For me? Every draft starts as a mess of my own words, scattered notes, maybe an emoji or three, and not a header in sight. When the AI helps shape that chaos into something readable, Medium says itās āAI-generated.ā (And honestly? Theyāre not wrong.) š¤·āāļø
But hereās the thing (and yeah, Iām biased): not all AI content is created equal. Thereās a big difference between dumping two lines into a bot and calling it done versus using it to wrangle your own spaghetti draft into something real.
Intent and process matter, not just outcome. Are you using AI as a shortcut to pass off something you barely touched, or are you collaborating, rewriting, putting your own spin on it? Totally different ballgame.
My Problem With This From the Start
Lumping every AI-assisted writer in with the spammy mass-producers just means the good-faith folks get steamrolled right along with the bots.
The platformās energy should be spent on stopping plagiarism and the endless flood of AI sludge ā not on gatekeeping honest writers out of existence.
š”ļø This reply brought to you by a very real human, with a little help from the robots.
AI crawlers get caught all the time. I've had to block plenty of them from my own domains. Sorry to burst your bubble, but if you're using almost any of the big AIs, you are stealing my and lots of other people's content. This is a fact.
Youāre saying youāve got proof that crawlers are āstealingā public data you put out on the open web? "Sorry to burst your bubble", but reading public info you freely share online is not stealing. Donāt take my word for itāsee hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn where multiple courts upheld the decision.
Yeah, sometimes companies cross the line. I'm not saying it never happens so if you have actual evidenceālike a legal decision, a forensic audit, or anything beyond rumorsāsend it my way. Otherwise, youāre just repeating Mediumās āAI is evilā panic message without receipts.
What I'm gathering from your statement is you've got a
robots.txtsaying āno crawlersā? Yes ā they should respect it. Many donāt. But:Soāwhatās your actual proof? Iāll happily read real sources, like:
Until then, itās just another myth that keeps spreading because no one stops to check the facts.
As for me? My
robots.txtis a giant "come on in" sign. I want crawlers to use my stuff. More reach, more impact. Why? AI isnāt the villaināpeople are the ones who choose to do harm.š”ļø Written by me & the robots
Cool, it's your right to consent to things.
It is also my right to not consent, and this consent is routinely violated by AI companies. Refusing to admit this means you're refusing to consider the moral implications of your own decisions, and that is simply wrong.
The fact that you bring up the US legal system to support your views... I don't need to post a list of extremely upsetting facts here. We all know how fucked up that is as an argument.
Side note: I didn't bother bringing this up because it doesn't affect me directly, but AI companies have also been caught DDoSing a large number of free services like Wikipedia, etc.
For anyone reading along: You can use Anubis to protect your content from these attacks, both to prevent outages and to protect your intellectual property.
PS:
diff.wikimedia.org/2025/04/01/how-...
Letās reset for a second š
Iām starting to feel preached at, not debated with. I donāt think weāre miles apart, but some of the way youāre phrasing things is working against you ā and I want to show you why.
The problem isnāt the concern ā Iāve already said āsometimes companies cross the lineā. Thatās fair. The issue is the word theft. When you jump straight to that, it collapses all nuance. If you instead framed it as:
š ācompanies routinely overstep posted consent signals like robots.txtā
āyouād keep the moral weight without overstating the legal claim. Thatās stronger.
On law and standards āļø
I only referenced U.S. law because itās the framework I live under ā itās the well I can draw facts from. That doesnāt mean I think itās flawless. If you want to broaden it, cite examples from EU copyright directives or Canadian fair dealing law. That would actually make your point land harder because it shows the pattern across borders.
On asides and evidence š
This is where you undercut yourself. If it doesnāt affect you, it reads like an aside, not evidence. But if you have credible examples ā DDoS logs, published cases, reports ā lead with those. Donāt bury them as a side note. That way it feels like proof, not padding.
On your āPSā š
This is a great example. It actually shows cause. It does absolutely nothing to back up your theft claim. But it does show harm that is quantitative.
However, what Wikimedia is saying is not that theyāre stealing content ā itās that theyāre not being reimbursed for the costs they incur by supporting scraping traffic on their site. Not the scraping itself, but the load they attribute to scraping.
And they back that up clearly with one line from your source:
So the real problem is: how do you differentiate? You either charge everyone or no one. Whereās the middle ground? How do we fix it? I donāt know ā but those are the right questions to be asking.
On blanket claims š«
Both of these are blanket statements. Blanket statements sound punchy, but theyāre easy to dismantle because they sweep too wide. Try tightening them into something like:
š āAI makes it easier than ever to pass off generated work as original.ā
Now the focus is on behavior, not on tarring an entire group with one brush.
Where I stand vs. where you could strengthen š”
Because in the end, if the goal is protecting both readers and creators, the way forward is pretty simple: target behavior, not the tool.
ā Punish plagiarism and deceit.
ā Punish lazy mass-generation.
āØ Reward transparency and craft.
Weāll get further if we build solutions instead of lazy gatekeeping.
š”ļø RAI: Responsible AI in practice means disclosure, craft, and intent ā not shortcuts. Thatās the standard I hold myself to here.
Sounds like a very nice rule - I wish Dev.to had it. Since ChatGPT this place has become nigh useless since it's over 90 % AI slop - and even things that are not made by ChatGPT now somehow imitates how ChatCPT would make it.
I really don't want to bother reading something that someone did not bother writing. We're approaching the dead internet were we're wasting computer power generating text with AI that will then be scraped summarised ny another AI. Yuck.
I definitely encourage you to read the reply above tooāit covers most of what Iād say. But Iāll add this:
Once again, Iām not actually disagreeing with you! But hereās the kicker: this whole post and the comment above? Yep, both AI-generated. So, painting all AI output as ājust slopā feels a bit likeā¦ well, like saying all pizza is cardboard just because you once had a bad slice. š
What really gets under my skin? Itās that knee-jerk urge to toss out anything newājust because itās unfamiliar, misunderstood, or the loudest person in the room misused it first. And letās be real: we donāt even have guardrails in place yet!
Iām all for setting healthy boundaries with this stuff... but you can bet Iāll speak up for myself (and my work) every single time this debate pops up.
As someone with a degree in English Literature, and for whom effective writing has been a key part of my career even though I have not been a professional writer, I land somewhere between Medium's definition and yours.
My chief experience with AI thus far has been employing it to conduct focused information searches, provide outlines for non-work-related projects, customize resumes and cover letters in my job search, and help with refactoring code on a hobby project.
You may think this old school, but I think for a piece to have a unique voice, the writer needs to physically live with it for some time. Truman Capote infamously criticised the books of the beat writers like Jack Kerouac by saying "That's not writing, that's just typing," saying that vomiting words out without any reflection doesn't result in anything valuable. (I happen to like the Beats and disagree with Capote but I get the gist of what he was trying to say.)
Editing is a huge pain in the ass and I would love for AI to do it for me. The only problem is that often during editing I discover that I want to use a different word, express a thought a slightly different way, or restructure an argument. AI isn't going to do that for me.
In your Medium post you talk about how much effort you put into using AI to polish your content once you've done a bunch of thinking. If I could be conceited for a moment, when I write I do all that, except I do that all inside my head, based on a lifetime of doing so. I believe I have a talent for doing so effectively and consistently, similar to how a trained chef can produce a high-quality meal quicker and more consistently than a home cook.
One thing every writer knows is that every platform has an editorial policy and none is obligated to accept your work. If Medium has made this choice, there are plenty of other platforms who are happy to accept material regardless of its origin that will allow you to build an audience.
Thanks for your very well thought out response ā I really appreciate your input š
You said:
I actually agree with that ā and I do let AI take my draft and help organize my thoughts into something easier to read and digest. But thatās very different from not living with it. My editing process usually takes hours ā sometimes even days ā before Iām satisfied ā³.
Thatās exactly why your phrasing resonated with me:
Thatās what the process looks like for me too. Iāll re-read, realize a section has no oomph ā”, and then Iāll prompt AI with something like āthis isnāt working ā hereās the rambling, colorful explanation of what I meanā. Itāll give me four to six options to choose from. Sometimes one works, other times I mash them together š§© or push it further ā but itās still my editing.
The truth is, I actually enjoy editing. I just also enjoy the tech š¤. Writing with AI is simply more fun for me than writing without it, and thatās how I choose to make it work.
As for Medium, I was never chasing notoriety. What bothers me isnāt the lack of visibility, itās the blanket policy š«. It stereotypes an entire group of writers because of a few bad actors. Iām not saying ālet all AI content throughā ā that would have the opposite effect. What Iād love to see is something like a pre-approval badge šļø: your AI-supported writing gets personally reviewed once, approved for their programs, and then treated as normal unless it breaks the rules later. That way Medium still has quality control, but writers arenāt punished up front just for using modern tools.
Thatās the middle ground thatās missing right now ā the part where trust is earned instead of assumed lost š¤.
This hits hard. Mediumās stance feels like it was written by someone whoās never actually used AI creatively. Youāre right, itās not about outsourcing your voice, itās about sharpening it. Blanket bans donāt protect quality, they just silence nuance. Glad you spoke up.