AI, Inspiration, and Content Stealing
Forewarning: The following article has some spoilers for the series, Over the Garden Wall, and works from Junji Ito, specifically Tomie.
The “Stealing” Problem
Upon AI’s arrival into the public, there have been numerous cases of art pieces and art styles being stolen through the use of AI-powered art generators. In terms of literature, people have been using AI to replicate the style and content of authors like Stephen King. It’s to the point where artists of all kinds have their own stories or know of stories from people close to them of how AI has messed with their art. Messed with their livelihood.
Communities have jumped onto the conclusion that AI is stealing their content. Rightfully so. I personally am a creative writer and I have had this assumption. If you ask Chat GPT to write a specific story for you, where is its influences? What styles is it taking inspiration from? You can ask it to tell you these things, but who knows when it is lying or telling the truth. I am aware that most of the problem derives from authors namedropping other authors and their stories into their prompt to copy it. But I think it’s also important to wonder what content the AI is taking when you don’t specify anyone prominent to copy, but rather the most basic elements of a story. That’s what I decided to do first.
Using the AI To Test Its Basic Inspirations
I tried this out by asking Chat GPT to write a rather silly story about a disco pirate in the style of Southern Gothic. Here is the full transcript to read the story.
I asked what inspired the story and had it narrow in on its Southern Gothic influences. It created and it listed the likes of William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Tennessee Williams. The problem with this I don’t actually know how much of these authors the AI used. Was he actually inspired by them? Like when I am writing a story, I am subconsciously drawing from numerous sources of inspiration but create something entirely new through them because I am only really picking up the essence of what I liked. I am not stealing style or direct word choice and if I do, I acknowledge that within the writing or in a reference section.
But because I am not familiar with the works of all three of these authors, I don’t really know if the AI ripped sentences and style. But even then, it listed the authors in question. However, based off the fact that the AI alluded this as a part of the whole of the inspiration, it makes me wonder what was left unnamed. What would also be left unnamed if I couldn’t think of the right question to ask as well?
But let’s assume the AI was just inspired by these influences and didn’t copy their work word for word, and their ideas piece by piece: what makes AI different from us?
The only problem that artists have with the AI is when it is used to verbatim to steal a work and their style. But would asking the AI to create something new with named influences be the same? Where do we draw the line between stolen content and acceptable content?
What’s stopping us from putting the same rules of ethics on AI that we use as human beings?
The real reason this is an issue, AI stealing content, is because other artists are using AI as a tool to do so. It is the human’s job to cite for the most part. If they used H.G. Wells as a heavy influence and directly used his language, for example, they should acknowledge that. But if they don’t, they are plagiarizing H.G. Wells work.
But it’s a matter of if AI knows how to be inspired?
Does AI Know How to Be Inspired?
For this experiment, I did actually namedrop an author I know quite well: Junji Ito. That way I know the work I’m dealing with. I also know that Chat GPT cannot fully convey the quality of Junji Ito’s work as he is a horror manga writer and, most of all, an illustrator.
What I first did was do a more basic prompt. “Write me a story inspired by the works of Junji Ito.” I kept what works I wanted the piece to be inspired by vague and just name-dropped the author. What it came up with felt like a basic imitation of Ito’s work that lacked the understanding of what he would do as an author. There was a Japanese setting, but I feel the premise of most of Junji Ito’s work is that the characters are in situations beyond their understanding and simply cannot escape from. The divine pull to madness.
I can safely say that the AI was definitely inspired here, however, simply because it didn’t directly rip ideas and familiar plot points directly from Ito’s manga. I think this is also mainly due to AI’s avoidance of abject topics within the stories it does generate, it couldn’t directly be inspired by Ito’s writing because that would mean breaking its own policy. That’s why it feels so hollow and generic. The story it gives us is set in the Whispering Woods, which is similar to Ito’s work Whispering Woman in title alone. The main character, Emiko, is known for her “curiosity and fearlessness, traits that often led her to explore the forbidden depths of the Whispering Woods” (GTP, 2024). Of course, the woods is haunted and people hear laughs in there and see figures moving around. Spooky, am I right?
The story continues to where Emiko goes into the woods and discovers something sinister. She discovers that travelers into the woods who never returned are merged with the tree and are silently screaming. This is the only part that seems like something Ito would create. But Emiko discovers the creature that does this to the people is “a grotesque entity, half-human and half-tree, its twisted limbs reaching out to ensnare her” (GPT, 2024). Unlike most of Ito’s work, the AI ends this semi-happily, she escapes! And is able to warn the whole village about the horrors of the woods as a credible source. No consequences, no overarching metaphor that the tree people represent.
But upon re-reading this, I actually don’t think the main inspiration here was Junji Ito. I asked it later what inspired this story, and it told me all the elements it took from Ito, but it doesn’t feel like it was heavily inspired by his work.
It felt like Over the Garden Wall.
This is not a work from Junji Ito but rather Cartoon Network. It was a short animated series in a fall setting and had an overarching theme of death and the afterlife. Who was the villain of said series?
For those that don’t know, it’s The Beast who literally looks like a half-tree, half-human at first glance. And broadly speaking, he does change people into trees for his own benefit. Over the Garden Wall does it in a more beautiful and complicated way, the trees have a purpose for The Beast whereas the AI generation character does not have a purpose.
However, the fact that I was able to make this direct connection and the AI didn’t source that as an inspiration makes me question what sources it actually drew from. I mean it could be evidence that it was indirectly inspired by that story upon writing it.
I did ask Chat GPT, as you can see if you viewed the full transcript, if Over The Garden Wall was a source of inspiration. It said it indirectly could have been as the vignette shares similarities — but it didn’t list the villain as a place of similarity.
Now the next prompt I decided to be more specific, I asked the AI to create a story directly inspired by Tomie by Junji Ito. Tomie is a horror manga, one of Ito’s more well-known ones, about a girl named Tomie who is murdered and becomes her own hive-mind, tormenting men by her beauty. That’s a really broad summary of it and kind of doesn’t do the whole thing justice since it is a very complex story.
Now, the AI generated a story with the main character being an artist who wants to capture the beauty of a girl named Tomie and finds a dark secret within his painting.
If you never read the manga, I will come out and say right now that what the AI came up with was a rip-off of a storyline within the series, specifically of Tomie Part 2, chapter 3. There is an artist character that goes mad because his paintings of Tomie is always warped and at the end, he murders Tomie — because that is always the conclusion — and watches Tomie regenerate — as she always does — and goes mad and perishes.
The AI pretty much touches on all the plot points but the abject ending, because its algorithm can’t. Instead, the story ends with the artist escaping and being able to leave everything behind, not falling for her spell.
For the next prompt, I asked for the AI to rewrite but not include direct plot points and characters from Tomie but instead be inspired, like I initially asked it to be.
The result made it clear that AI cannot be inspired. At least in a productive and ethical way.
The Result
It changed no plot points and changed the name of Tomie into Elena and the artist into — drum roll please — a writer.
This, I think, is more dangerous than the prior results from other prompts. The first story with the trees does have a vague inspiration in Junji Ito and for readers who have no idea about Over the Garden Wall, they might never know about that direct connection. And even then, the character the AI makes up is just different enough from The Beast that even I didn’t catch it at first.
The second story was such a direct rip-off of Tomie that it was easy to guess that it was a direct rip-off.
But the third story is dangerous because it works very well at being original if you have no prior knowledge of the direct source material. It changes just enough. Of course people like me who know the story would be able to pick up the direct inspiration, but what can really be done if the writing is not copying word-for-word but rather is taking the ideas? Putting it into a different format? And changing up aspects of the characters?
Even in the very beginning when I wasn’t namedropping authors as inspiration, it still used authors and only told me some it took from. And I’m using the word “took” because AI does have a problem, as demonstrated through the Tomie prompts of not knowing how to implicitly use inspiration (like themes and snippets of what you like and not the whole story), but rather it writes explicitly. It couldn’t think of a story to write inspired by Tomie, after all, without including Tomie herself. Even the indirect inspiration from The Beast in Over the Garden Wall was done explicitly and not cited as such.
So, it goes without saying AI exacerbates this issue of stealing content and ideas. The problem exists in the first place because people just want to steal successful ideas and make them their own. AI makes that easier than ever before. This makes the need to answer these questions and find solutions even more dire.
I could even go as far as to say that Chat GPT citing its references after every response and having those sources be legit to be the first step in mitigating this issue. And also enforcing putting that you used Chat GPT or other AI in your work. AI like Sudowrite actually says in their policy that you don’t have to cite them, but you really should — that way people know the content they are dealing with.
That way you know you’re dealing with content that may or may not know its inspiration.
Resources I Used for This Article:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/is-ai-art-stealing-from-artists
