Tamara Winter, Stripe Press publisher, shares her weekly email template for rejecting AI-generated writing submissions

@tamarawinter Good for you

This is becoming a serious issue on Substack too. Out of curiosity, what do you think readers should do when they come across clearly AI-generated essays and posts? I’ve started downvoting them as AI generated on X because that’s anonymous feedback, but public call outs still feel a little aggressive to me. (I also often wonder if it really matters to the average people—many seem not to mind that it’s AI once they find out.)

@ShakeelHashim It's so shameless! You wouldn't believe the people I've gotten entirely AI-generated manuscripts from.

@JakeKeuhlen @tamarawinter copyright one is so interesting. i’m seeing fights break out on those terms between companies and their vibe code on X today. interesting era!

@lukeburgis for example, if I'd even had a hint that you were using AI, I would've never bought my *four* copies of The One and the Ninety-Nine (which is in my local McNally Jackson's new and notable section!)

@tamarawinter @JakeKeuhlen if it’s not obvious why would it matter

@JakeKeuhlen Oooh I should set one up so I can stop wasting time. It’s so obvious even without Pangram (for now) but it won’t be forever

There's lots of reasons! AI written work isn't eligible for copyright protections, so it's a questionable business decision to publish. There are asymmetric time effects now, so if you are inundated with writing from AI it's much harder to manage. Writing is a form of thinking, so when I read someone else's writing I want a view into their thinking; that isn't the case with AI generated text.

Etc

yes! as someone who wrote and sold anti ai generated books with the original opus, i liked my work. it only to 6-8 hours on the beach to write a whole book. the thing that mattered is whether the quality is high. the problem in code isn’t that people are using ai, the problem is that people are producing low quality output with ai. i think the same applies to writing

@kunaljeweller @JakeKeuhlen Why would it matter to a publisher if their authors actually write their books? Is that the question?

I haven't (yet) seen an example of high-quality output of this sort from AI, though I don't doubt that it exists. I just think the people who spend ~$40 on our books would be disappointed if they thought that e.g. Richard Hamming, Charlie Munger, Claire Hughes Johnson weren't actually writing their books

@tamarawinter We built a pangram detector into our submission platform specifically so we can just auto reject AI generated writing.

@tamarawinter SAME PROBLEM IN CODE

@tamarawinter POV: Supermarket tells farmer to stop using tractor.

Get with the times.

@scholarinvests Ok scholarinvests

@tamarawinter I love how my clients who in the past would send bare bones emails with requests in all lower case “update homepage here’s photo of me thanks” now send me long lists of instructions broken into bullet points. 😄

@tamarawinter the problem is not the ai exactly, it’s the delegation of judgement

@kunaljeweller @JakeKeuhlen @tamarawinter We're entering a new era where legal, ownership, and licensing questions are evolving just as fast as the technology. AI can generate code, but responsibility, copyright, and accountability still belong to the people building and shipping the product.

@tamarawinter You should be encouraging people to use AI more often. Not less. You'll be left behind otherwise.

@tamarawinter Even if the wording isn’t obvious, (at least on topics near to me) the clarity of thought is just so much worse than top tier writers. It makes me think so much less of people when they don’t skim through and see that for themselves.