I was horrified when a client suggested using generative AI to “fill in” an article. I was appropriately aghast when another client switched their copywriting to cheaper ChatGPT. Generative AI has led to job losses and writing industry impact—it’s not just my story, but could be yours. Can writers stop or slow AI? Here’s how to brace for impact.

Add a Disclaimer

Add a disclaimer to your website that says you’re a human writer without generative AI. Some people want cheap, AI copywriting. Those aren’t the type of clients you’re hoping to get, and adding a disclaimer stops them (or you) from wasting time.

Don’t use generative AI for your writing, cover art, or website. Non-generative AI tools can still be used for data analysis or research, like you’d use a calculator rather than grabbing an abacus.

Don’t feed the machine. Avoid copying, pasting, or uploading your files to sites that may be connected to machine learning. “Free” file converters are a potential culprit. Use open source downloadable software rather than quick, free, online software that may just be teaching AI in the background. Check terms and conditions carefully before using anything “free”, because they’re usually covering their costs by selling data.

Learn About It

Learn more about artificial intelligence: it’s here to stay.

Generative AI can be used as a fun tool though should also have its limits, according to filmmaker Scott Sava (Netflix/Animal Crackers) during our interview.

Use it to visualize things for your writing, almost like building a character from your book in The Sims video game but never allow it to actually help you write.

Distinguish between generative AI, which creates, and nongenerative AI tools used more to analyze data, which are more practically used in writing and journalism. For example, journalists are being taught to use AI tools to spot deepfakes or analyze large data sets such as the Panama Papers. AI has solved crimes or can be an intelligent spellchecker like Grammarly, too.

Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs), meaning trained on vast amounts of data to understand and generate natural language and other content, describe DALL-E, ChatGPT, and Copilot.

Opt-Out of Teaching AI With Your Work

Uploaded or shared content is sometimes “scrubbed” or collected by programs (that is, bots), and subsequently used to teach artificial intelligence. AI learns from user input, and many websites have an AI-clause in their Terms of Service allowing your input to become part of its teaching program.

Users can, for example, disable Copilot entirely in Microsoft with this guide. Web browsers like Edge are likely to have similar settings. The best way to find it is to search “opt-out of AI” and your relevant site or service.

Wired has a longer list of where (and how) to opt-out of AI training.

Employ AI Corruption Tools

Artificial intelligence corruption tools like Nightshade will automatically “corrupt” the resulting input when an AI tool tries to generate anything using an image it has been embedded in. However, Nightshade is only for image-based or visual AI corruption.

Critics raise ethical questions about using corruption tools, however without it, AI “theft” is tougher to combat and recognize.

For now, the best corruption tool applies to images alone, but more are being developed that could stop writers’ work from being quoted or used for machine learning or generative AI without permission.

Block AI Bots from Your Site

The best thing writers have to protect their own posts and content from generative AI learning and LLMs, is blocking artificial intelligence learning bots from scrubbing (or reading) your work.

According to Webnots and Dev4Press, administrators can add a specific exclusion request to their website, which means uploading a special text file to your website’s file directory. This tells responsible AI bots to turn a blind eye and go somewhere else.

This type of “blocking” means bots will exclude your site, and therefore the writing on it, when they recognize the file.

However, while this type of exclusion works for responsible companies, unscrupulous bots might still bypass this effort. Though if an author can prove their work has been lifted or used, there’s legal recourse through a cease-and-desist or copyright claim, much like proclaiming plagiarism.

About the Author: Alex J. Coyne is a journalist, author, and proofreader. He has written for a variety of publications and websites, with a radar calibrated for gothic, gonzo, and the weird. Sometimes, he co-writes with others.