Weisberg suggested that the preference for stories labelled as being written by humans was linked to a desire for authenticity, but that people actually preferred AI-generated stories because they were easier to read and digest.

Yes, people in general prefer bland and easy to follow stories. I would bet the majority of participants in the study don't normally read short stories since moat people don't read for enjoyment. Blockbusters and the vast majority of popular movies follow predictable story beats in a clear and accessible way. Same is true for books.

AI is the McDonald's of writing and that isn't a point in its favor unless all we care about is mass consumption of regurgitated and reworded stories humans wrote originally.

“Because we’re human, we tend to personify AI and imagine it as some kind of glowing robot with a benign and neutral face, when it’s really just predictive code based on a massive stolen database of actual writing, physically based in vast, expensive and destructive datacentres with catastrophic repercussions for the surrounding communities,” he said.

Kennard also stressed that AI was not a “tool” similar to spellcheck or a thesaurus...

A very valuable comment compared to the author of OP's article who simply seems entitled to this cloud service?

And now Anthropic is saying they’re going to make it worse, on purpose, for purposes that do not benefit me in any way? Even if only slightly worse?

Get fucked.

It's very noticeable the majority of people who are anti ai have at this point years out of date views on what llms can do and what your avg joe thinks about them.

There's plenty of reasons to legitly hate ai. But its amazing how frequently I see someone hate on so for something that got solved a year ago. Be cause their only interaction with it is the cheapest form of ai, and typically a very out of date model on top of it.

It's like people judging a modern car as if it's a 1920 rust bucket.

That isn't really a rebuttal of my statement. It's not even particularly salient. Sure your average person might like AI writing and not be able to tell it from human works — just like they can't tell the authenticity of a photograph of Aunt Margaret from a photograph of Trump meeting an alien from Rigel IV. But there are plenty of people who can, and so anyone trying to pass slop off as their original work will be discovered. It's just a matter of time.

That being said, I use AI quite a bit in writing stories — though it's more like solo roleplaying. I don't think it's particularly good at all, but it does while away the hours sometimes, as long as your expectations are low. I can't see anyone who enjoys reading being enamored with AI. My wife reads over 300 books per year, and she spots it pretty easily.