Note the wording: "a human". Singular. In essence web scraping is the same process as human learning: absorbing knowledge from multiple sources, collating it and then coming up with the right words to express a thought (or respond to a prompt). It's a futile quest for creators to sue ChatGPT for copyright infringement based on the collection process--after all, their books are in the library or online and accessible to all. As soon as you publish anything, anywhere, on any medium, it's out there and you can't pull it back. That is the structure of the Internet--it's based on copying content, not linking to a source connected to the originator the way a print book has an ISBN tracing it back, identifying its author, etc. Even if content creators won in court, how would new laws be written, and by what mechanism would they be enforced? That horse left the barn with the adoption of the Internet, which is ultimately agnostic about the source of anything once it has been scraped, regardless of methodology.

Then there is the issue of the enclosure of the commons, which is foundational for copyright law and capitalism in general. Empowering rent seekers to keep people out unless they have paid is simply the way everything works. But that is a topic for another day.

If "real writers" drift away from Medium because they feel like they can't compete with all of the shitty AI-produced content out there, then perhaps they should step back and re-evaluate their career choices. Writing and thinking are intimately and intricately intertwined, and not everyone has the aptitude for becoming a "real writer" anymore than all tall guys having the ability to be in the NBA. You can use ChatGPT to cheat at writing in ways you can't cheat at basketball, and if there's money to be made in cheating, then people are going to do that rather than hunkering down and doing the hard work necessary to perfect their craft. You can cheat at golf, but that isn't going to turn you into Tiger Woods. You can cheat at writing, but that isn't going to turn you into Stephen King.

A long time ago I remember someone saying to me: "There's plenty of room at the top; it's the bottom that's crowded." That platforms are awash in AI-generated drek is inevitable given the human propensity to steal or fake what they are incapable of generating on their own, and money is the prime motivator. We all need to eat.

Making platforms step up and sanction AI-generated content ignores the fact that the technology to do this simply does not exist. And my guess is that it never will. The algorithms are being continually improved so that it is becoming harder and harder to tell the difference. For example: If you had just posted the italicized ChatGPT prompt, without disclosing that ChatGPT wrote it, would anyone be able to tell? I think not.

Writing is the process of turning thoughts, ideas, and feelings into words on a page. It is both a craft and an art, requiring creativity, clarity, and revision. It involves planning, drafting, editing, and rewriting. Ultimately, writing is the act of finding the right words to capture what matters and making it matter to someone else.