Welcome rhetors, writers, and readers! Over the next couple of months, I will be posting my thoughts and concerns about different writing practices, articles, texts, devices, and rhetoric in general. These posts may take shape in many different forms, so be on the lookout for some fun experimentation! This week is on AI and Intertextuality.
Becoming Co-Authors?
The internet has revolutionized how writers publish work, gain access to other texts, gain inspiration, and even draft their manuscripts. In addition, AI technologies have been substantially on the rise, targeting and threatening people in the creative field: artists, animators, and writers. The internet and AI has transformed the way we interact with the canons of rhetoric, namely delivery and invention.
Lance Cummings takes an optimistic approach to AI, or ‘AI that writes’ aka. ‘machine rhetorics’ in his article, Introduction to Machine Rhetorics. Cummings defines machine rhetoric as “a design practice that allows humans to shape AI tech with contextual knowledge and understanding using methods like prompt design, structured content, knowledge graphs, and auto tools.”1 Cummings suggests we have control of how we interact with AI, how AI is formed, and how we can utilize AI. He is coming from the assumption that AI is a tool in our best interest. However, As AI expands, many writers do not have control of what and how AI takes their digital works and uses that information for ‘the greater machine,’ as I’ll coin it. In theory, AI is a tool that helps writers, but as it is playing out now, it is undermining and stealing works. Cummings seems to think that by us learning how to successfully prompt or speak to AI, it will help us as both authors and internet users. However, he states that “…we’re no longer just authors; we’re becoming co-authors with machines, and this means understanding how to communicate with AI.” Here arises the problem. AI does not write on its own, nor is it an author in its own right. It is only because of real life authors that it is able to recreate text.
As both a writer, artist, and musician, I have no interest in AI and how it is being used. I am a senior in college, and I decided to ask some of my fellow student writers their opinion on the matter: Do they want AI to do the things that Cummings suggests? Do they want to be “co-authors with machines?” With the exception of AI helping their invention processes, their responses were largely, ‘No.’
So, what’s keeping AI alive? Recently animators have been leading protests and rallies against the use of AI, and some animators have been on strike. With so much opposition from creatives (not to mention the opposition from those concerned with AI’s effects on the environment), how is AI still so prominent? Of course, I, and many others, are operating from a creative platform. These concerns and sentiments may not be held by tech and content writers where every text they produce is almost an exact copy of the last. But the question remains, are we co-authors with AI, and do we want to be? Even as tech writers? To what degree do and are we controlling AI as individual users? How is our delivery impacted because of it? Is intertextuality loosing its roots?
Threats to Intertextuality
A fun article by Ridolfo and Devoss explores how texts change and transform, and the ways in which they do so. They point out how “writing often requires composers to draw upon multiple modes of meaning-making. Computers and robust networks allow writers to choreograph audio, video, other visual elements, text, and more. Writers engage in taking the old and making new.”2
This is, essentially, intertextuality. Intertextuality is the connection and way all texts are related to each other. The use of the internet makes inspiration and text-to-text relation much easier to produce. Often, as an audience, we can trace that inspiration back to an original. If not, normally the artist or author is aware of their inspiration and how their work fits in the stream of connections. Of course, some things are subconscious, but they can be rooted out.
AI poses a threat to this. If it is, as Cummings suggests, a co-author, it is not concerned with intertextuality and individuality. Whereas before mixing and arranging was manual, it is now done for us. If we use AI as a jumping start, it is like losing a puzzle piece. Prompts are given without knowledge of where they came from, and texts are being taken without consent. There is a new vulnerability to digital delivery now. Surely, there is a way to harness AI. It is not some grand evil, but let it have borders, let it remain forever a tool and not an author.
Interested in reading the cited texts? Look here.
- Cummings, L. (2024, July 8). Introduction to machine rhetorics. Cyborgs Writing. https://www.isophist.com/p/introduction-to-machine-rhetorics
- Ridolfo, J., & Devoss, D. N. (2009, January 15). Composing for recomposition: Rhetorical velocity and delivery. Kairos 13.2: Ridolfo and DeVoss, Composing for Recomposition — Introduction. https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/13.2/topoi/ridolfo_devoss/intro.html
Comments
3 responses to “An Introduction: AI and Intertextuality”
E.G.,
Wonderfully said. I love the questions and concerns you pose against Cummings’ article, especially concerning how much control individuals really have over AI models. It reminds me of the recent change in Instagram’s (possibly Meta’s?) policies that allows them to train their AI based off of anything users have ever posted–photos, comments, or descriptions. For most users located in the US, there was no option to opt out, save for scrubbing your account clean before the change was implemented. This seemed to affect artists and other creative users the most (at least, from my experience). They seemed to really feel what you called the “new vulnerability” that comes alongside digital delivery. While Cummings would see AI as a cool new tool, I agree with you that it seems much more like a threat. Great article!
You bring up important points about AI and its impact on writing and intertextuality. I like how you dive into Cummings’ optimistic take on machine rhetorics but also highlight the concerns many writers share about losing control over how AI interacts with their work. Your discussion about whether we truly want to be “co-authors” with AI is especially thought-provoking, and it’s clear that creative writers and tech writers may have very different views on this. The intertextuality angle is also intriguing—AI’s approach to generating content lacks the deeper connections to originality and individuality that human writers bring. I agree that while AI can be useful, it should remain a tool with clear boundaries.
I hadn’t necessarily thought about how the recomposition that Ridolfo and Devoss talked about could be redefined as intertextuality, but that does make a whole lot of sense! Looking at the internet in an intertextual way connects this to the wider array of human created works. If we view all of mankind’s collective output as ‘content’ for lack of a better word, we can see that all of it is connected to something else. Humanity is intertextual; it’s just how we operate. Perhaps that is what makes people have a negative reaction to AI. If intertextuality is human, and AI lacks that, maybe it feels a type of uncanny valley.