this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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[–] fasterandworse@awful.systems 35 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I joined a writing meetup here in Amsterdam which gathers every week in a bar to write, to talk about their writing, to bounce ideas, etc. I kinda got tired of going because there were a worrying number of people using chatgpt to generate ideas. I was the only one trying to write non-fiction, and most of what I was writing would be crit of tech (sometimes genAI) so talking about my writing was always fun. But nonetheless, their use of chatgpt seemed extra weird because we were there, together, to write and support each other, for free.

It's strange to use solidarity, support, and just general helpfulness from others as an explanation for how AI opens writing up to classes or abilities when that's probably one of the top things that social media (and pre-social media social media) gave us on the internet.

anyway..

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] fasterandworse@awful.systems 16 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Also I'd hate to see Scrivener touch AI - esp because they sponsor nanowrimo and still seem connected https://web.archive.org/web/20240902130810/https://www.literatureandlatte.com/nanowrimo

Scrivener is a hero product in my research/writing as an example of a software product that is designed for concrete purpose

[–] mii@awful.systems 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

A while back one of their reps did say somewhere on Reddit that they have no intention of adding any LLM features to Scrivener. Granted, they said that in the context of moving towards a subscription model and talking about features that don't work with their current business model, but still. Unless something has changed recently, they seem to want to stick to being a one-time purchase without any cloud-based services whatsoever, including AI, for their next major version too.

[–] fasterandworse@awful.systems 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I hope so. I know the founder designed it and then learned how to code to build it himself. Hopefully he's still running the show and he's a good one

[–] fasterandworse@awful.systems 8 points 2 months ago

Official word from Scrivener here https://xcancel.com/ScrivenerApp/status/1830556231431254328

our position on this is that we do not include any AI tools in our apps and allow users their own choice of where to back up work, allowing them to choose services that don't allow AI access. Thanks :)

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