Live Blogging: Fiverr AI webinar

[vickiespencer]

2 minutes ago, catwriter said:

To save time. It takes time to learn to use those tools, then to adjust the results, then to edit them so they don't look like AI content... If their time is valuable, they will want to save it.

But first, the buyer must understand the limitations of AI. Many will not but merely see it as a cheap alternative to writers. 

[vibronx]

I didn't watch the webinar. Didn't have time. So, I'm gonna comment more "in general."

To me, the whole AI thing that Fiverr has got going really feels like they're shitting all over the sellers doing things manually. I have said it before, and I'll say it again: I thought Fiverr valued human creatives, but I guess this AI thing is just too shiny... 

Also, I really wanna meet the people who hire sellers to use ChatGPT for them. Must be some very special individuals.

Edited February 22, 2023 by vibronx

[droberts1990]

1 hour ago, theratypist said:

This has got to be one of the most interesting webinars I've joined in a while. 😁 It was fun watching all the things AI can do, but also interesting that there's so much discussion right after it for many reasons (which is happening right now) hahaha

From what I understand, you will be able to sell stuff generated by AI only if you clearly state that in your gig and that the buyer fully understands that it is AI generated.

Other than that, I wonder how they will navigate sellers who do not openly state that in their gig. I can see this being a very big issue in the content writing vertical.

I didn't watch the webinar, but I would like to share some things that I have learned about ChatGPT in case they are useful to anyone.

I am a member of a different forum, related to other forms of business (not freelancing) and on there they have been "playing" with ChatGPT since it came out.

At first the view was that it was amazing, but over the past couple of months, that view has deteriorated. Most users on that forum now believe that ChatGPT is verbose and rarely expresses a preference. It also uses some not very common phrases and often writes in a "passive" manner that is not very interesting to read.

It is also not always accurate. People have asked ChatGPT for help with basic maths and it makes mistakes. When you "correct" it, it will agree with you, even if you give it a wrong answer as a correction.

Sometimes if you ask it to tell you about a topic, it will generate factually incorrect information. I have also seen it write some "code", but again sometimes the code doesn't have correct syntax, so would have to be fixed before it would run.

There is a belief on this other forum, that asking the right question to the ChatGPT is very important. If you ask a better question you can get a much better answer, albeit with the caveats mentioned above.

It has been suggested that potentially three types of content could exist with AI. AI generated, human generated and hybrid.

An example of hybrid content might be if someone was asked to write some website content on a particular topic. The writer could give the task to an AI, eg. ChatGPT and generate a result. The writer could analyse that text and extract the key ideas that the AI had found and then use those as a starting point for their own research. Once their research was concluded the human writer would create the article. It seems to me that this approach could reduce the time taken for research and so boost the productivity of the writer. Obviously since the final deliverable is entirely human generated there is no way of telling from that deliverable that an AI was involved in the process at all.

I agree with other posters in this thread that the major issue will be knowing whether content is AI generated or human created in any other way than what the seller claims.

Clearly if "fraud" (misrepresentation) becomes a problem, then the reputation of this platform (EDIT: I mean this forum and the main site) and the sellers could deteriorate.

I hope that this post is interesting to people.

I understand that there are other AIs than ChatGPT, but I don't know anything about them.

 

Edited February 22, 2023 by droberts1990
Another user prompted me for clarification

[newsmike]

13 minutes ago, droberts1990 said:

Clearly if "fraud" (misrepresentation) becomes a problem,

It already is rampant here in the forum. So I would be confident to say that it is also being used to misrepresent qualifications and fluency on the main site as well. 

Edited February 22, 2023 by newsmike

[mandyzines]

1 hour ago, newsmike said:

I wrote you a response. That'll be $40 please.

 

The only thing that I've found relieving so far is that it knows when and when not to use commas. 

[coerdelion]

Surely no one would try to cover using an app to get pid here on Fiverr. 

Oh, wait ... all those "translators" offering google translate gigs. 

If there is a way of abusing AI, there will be people willing to do it ... Fiverr, the home of "make money with no skills"

 

 

[newsmike]

5 minutes ago, coerdelion said:

Fiverr, the home of "make money with no skills"

[theratypist]

Also I think the influx of people using ChatGPT to respond to discussions in the forum was probably a tip from the "Fiverr gurus" again. From another thread a forum user was clarifying if responding to queries would be helpful to rank gigs, which I know was happening pre ChatGPT but now its evolved to "thanks for valuable info" to "ChatGPT generated response"... Oh I miss the Congress days 😆

"Now I was searching for some strategies to improve my account. one of them I found to be active here in the community. not just asking my queries but also responding to others if know about that."

[moikchap]

I've been spending a lot of time with Midjourney and ChatGPT to see what tasks I can shift off fiverr and handle myself. My experience largely matches what @droberts1990is saying.

If you just ask it "write me a romance novel" you will get a romance novel, sure, but it will be the most bland and generic "just the facts, ma'am" written-by-a-vulcan, emotionless, textureless, one-star-review-earning blob of garbage one would previously expect from artificial intelligence. The pattern recognition of the human brain of the average person is soon going to be able to start picking them out.

To make it do something that the book consuming public will consider to be worth buying requires actual domain knowledge. Like, I need to have it limit itself to doing a chapter at a time using specific literary frameworks, tell it how dialog looks, what kind of dialog it should have, what descriptive elements should be included in setting a scene, and so on, and then I'll need to read through and have it regenerate or expand certain paragraphs because they were too hand-wavey.

Getting good content out of it requires editor hours. Making sellable content with it isn't actually free. It will still take billable effort to make a project of that scope something worth selling. All I really see AI doing is increasing the pace and reducing the total budget needs. Like, if someone is capable of writing one good book a year, it will help them bump that to four without a meaningful loss in quality. It will still take 2000 hours to achieve either result.

I believe we're going to see a similar stratification among AI sellers that you see in other verticals where there are many who over-estimate their skills and abilities with the tools and under-deliver, and another separate set who actually studied and understood the tool and can hit triple-A targets at triple-A prices.

Edited February 22, 2023 by moikchap

[vickiespencer]

17 minutes ago, moikchap said:

I believe we're going to see a similar stratification among AI sellers that you see in other verticals where there are many who over-estimate their skills and abilities with the tools and under-deliver

19 minutes ago, moikchap said:

and another separate set who actually studied and understood the tool and can hit triple-A targets at triple-A prices.

Are Triple-A prices high or low? 

 

[theratypist]

1 hour ago, droberts1990 said:

An example of hybrid content might be if someone was asked to write some website content on a particular topic. The writer could give the task to an AI, eg. ChatGPT and generate a result. The writer could analyse that text and extract the key ideas that the AI had found and then use those as a starting point for their own research. Once their research was concluded the human writer would create the article. It seems to me that this approach could reduce the time taken for research and so boost the productivity of the writer. Obviously since the final deliverable is entirely human generated there is no way of telling from that deliverable that an AI was involved in the process at all.

I am fine with this, it will still take true talent and skills to present something fresh and non-generic. 

1 hour ago, droberts1990 said:

Clearly if "fraud" (misrepresentation) becomes a problem, then the reputation of this platform (EDIT: I mean this forum and the main site) and the sellers could deteriorate.

This is more of a concern. The buyer purchases because the price and the content seller's samples were enticing. Buyer sends in requirements for several topics then seller delivers. For example, an article supposedly ready to be published and the seller doesn't mention it is AI-generated and hasn't tweaked it. Other than it being boring to read it with no fresh take, it would likely have a bad effect on the buyer's website as I've learned in so far ChatGPT's current writing capabilities is concerned.

Top of mind, there are 3 things one can think on that situation:

1) the buyer for not doing due diligence on the seller's ability 

2) the seller selling stuff like that for a quick buck not minding quality

3) the measures supposedly in place so that point 1 and 2 would not be an issue

Then some people would think "oh why bother - its a free marketplace after all", one needs to be reminded there is a need to at least maintain the quality here. Not perfection, just a baseline on quality. Unless we want to point the scale to the other unfavorable end. 😅

Edited February 22, 2023 by theratypist

[vickiespencer]

I foresee more reviews and responses like this in the future. ⬇️

 

[catwriter]

1 hour ago, vibronx said:

To me, the whole AI thing that Fiverr has got going really feels like they're shitting all over the sellers doing things manually.

That's not what it looks like to me. To me, it's more like "well this thing is here to stay, let's see how we can make money with it".

There are already buyers who decided to use ChatGPT instead of human writers, to save up on costs. Some sellers already said that. They were even informed by their buyers that that's the case. And that means that Fiverr is losing money, too, so perhaps they're trying to get it where they can.

[moikchap]

45 minutes ago, vickiespencer said:

Are Triple-A prices high or low? 

I'm basically using the video game definition. Big budget, best-in-class type stuff. I expect someone who truly masters AI can deliver stuff that's inhumanly good at an inhumanly fast pace, and therefore be inhumanly expensive because they can exceed spec even in razor thin "emergency" type delivery windows. But, most people won't master it. They will misinterpret the buyer's needs, deliver something that barely fits, and still get negative private reviews because they didn't add value despite only charging five dollars.

Edited February 22, 2023 by moikchap

[zeus777]

Google translation sucks, but there is this other free translation site you can use that apparently uses AI.
I checked it myself and while it is MUCH better than Google, it is far from perfect. Again though, it is better than Google.
The past 2 months I am getting way less translation orders, maybe this was the reason??

I haven't updated my gig description in a very long time, but maybe I'll add "I DO NOT USE AI!!!!" at the top. 😅

[Yoav.M]

Hello everyone,

And especially to - @zeus777, @moikchap, @vickiespencer, @theratypist, @vibronx, @coerdelion, @mandyzines, @droberts1990, @breals, @vickieito, @terrygrantvo, @catwriter, @donnovan86, @melanielm, @cre8iveartwork@newsmike

I would like to thank you all for the interest, your time, and typed insights here or during the webinar.

Since we are all about the truth and accuracy , I'll ask you all, and especially - @newsmiketo pay attention, or to make clear on your posts that you're stating the exact content.

Otherwise , you will keep misleading the audience here, and this is a wrong and bad behavior.

@newsmikementioned in one of his posts - "We're AI content writing. Goal is to reduce costs. Now you can add AI to replace humans."

This is simply not true. We emphasized several times that AI cannot replace humans. AI tools might help reduce the time and investment, but those tools are absolutely not a replacement for humans.

Some of you here claimed that we didn’t answer your questions. Well, obviously, as we announced clearly on the beginning of the webinar, and as we do always, there’s not enough time to respond to all questions. We received about 30 questions, and some were answered during the webinar by me, as I was able to type back (without the need to answer live). Long questions usually can't be addressed unfortunately , since we have between 5 to 10 minutes to answer your questions. 

As I mentioned to several sellers' questions during the webinar, and now again, this is the updated 'Community Guidelines' page with clear statements about AI - https://www.fiverr.com/community/standards/intellectual-property 

And in general, as we also stated during the webinar, all sellers who want to use AI Generative Tools for the sake of their gigs:

You must make it clear on your gigs' descriptions that this will be done + make sure that your buyers are aware of it during every order + confirmed this.

To summarize, and simply in order to allow you all, please watch the attached webinar’s recording.

Best,

Yoav

[catwriter]

7 minutes ago, editors_picks said:

And in general, as we also stated during the webinar, all sellers who want to use AI Generative Tools for the sake of their gigs:

You must make it clear on your gigs' descriptions that this will be done + make sure that your buyers are aware of it during every order + confirmed this.

Two quick questions, if you don't mind (because there seems to be a huge concern about them, and nobody seems sure of the answer):

1. Is it allowed to use ChatGPT or other AI Generative Tool to write gig descriptions? To clarify: this question is not about the service being offered, just about gig descriptions.

2. Are sellers allowed to use ChatGPT when communicating with buyers, instead of writing their responses in their own words?

Thank you! 🙂

[Yoav.M]

Hi @catwriter, thanks for your kind message.

Sure, so, for your first question - you can use ChatGPT or other AI Generative Tool to write gig descriptions - but you must add a clear note that this description was written by the help of an AI Generative Tool.

As for your second question - currently no - this will be cleared and updated in our 'Community Guidelines' page soon.

[droberts1990]

15 hours ago, moikchap said:

To make it do something that the book consuming public will consider to be worth buying requires actual domain knowledge. Like, I need to have it limit itself to doing a chapter at a time using specific literary frameworks, tell it how dialog looks, what kind of dialog it should have, what descriptive elements should be included in setting a scene, and so on, and then I'll need to read through and have it regenerate or expand certain paragraphs because they were too hand-wavey.

Getting good content out of it requires editor hours. Making sellable content with it isn't actually free. It will still take billable effort to make a project of that scope something worth selling. All I really see AI doing is increasing the pace and reducing the total budget needs. Like, if someone is capable of writing one good book a year, it will help them bump that to four without a meaningful loss in quality. It will still take 2000 hours to achieve either result.

I'm sure that this "skill" that you are describing here will become a new kind of job or task. Maybe it could be called AI manager or AI coach or AI jockey or something.

It would be based around an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of different AIs and also as you say, domain specific knowledge to be able to nudge the AI in the "right" direction. 

I would assume therefore that if this skill becomes valuable then opportunities will emerge to produce courses to train people in this skill but also it may be possible to sell this skill directly. Sometimes it will be combined with other skills to be used to produce a hybrid product or service. Similar to how SEO is sold nowadays, but like thirty years ago SEO wasn't really a thing. 

I do wonder if AI will produce more opportunities for sellers, not just be a threat to them.

I do understand that there are concerns that people have about fraud. 

[uk1000]

The community standards page says if you use AI it has to be in the description. Couldn't be put in the FAQ instead? Why doesn't the community standards page say you could mention it in the FAQ instead?

Also if you might want use an AI just for upscaling/stabilization/frame rate conversion would that need to be said in gig description/FAQ (it's not really generative AI - since it's mostly based on the source content - and would look mostly like the source content)?

[uk1000]

Attached is a transcript of the webinar in case that's useful.

Fiverr-AI-webinar-22-02-2023-transcript.txt

[uk1000]

1 hour ago, editors_picks said:

To summarize, and simply in order to allow you all, please watch the attached webinar’s recording

The webinar doesn't seem to mention the lawsuits against the main generative art companies (Mid-Journey etc.). Won't that affect Fiverr's categories that use generative AI (art)?

I asked CS quite a while ago and they said:

Quote

We would recommend not using those apps for your gigs, because of the lawsuits, just to be sure that doesn't affect anything that you are selling and that buyers would like to buy and use in the future.
 

Sellers are responsible for ensuring they have all necessary rights to the content they create, including copyrights.... [and listed more of the community standards page about AI here]

So how will they affect all the gigs on Fiver in the AI art categories and any copyrights in deliveries of those?

Edited February 23, 2023 by uk1000

[melanielm]

2 hours ago, editors_picks said:

AI tools might help reduce the time and investment, but those tools are absolutely not a replacement for humans.

"Because if I if I need to have like 10 writers that will write 10 articles a week, now I can have why I engine that will write thousands of articles in an hour and also generate large volumes of content weekly." (Quote from the transcript that obviously contradicts the above claim.)

At this point, there's no putting AI back in Pandora's box, so to speak. I understand that. However, it is simply not true that they aren't a replacement for humans. We can't expect Fiverr to outlaw its use or somehow fight its advance... unfortunately.

I think it's rather naïve to think that people will put "Made with AI" in their gig descriptions, every AI-generated message, and the projects they deliver. What system does Fiverr have in place to ensure that happens? AI comments are already inundating the forum. Plagiarism (copying of gig descriptions and profiles) is a constant when it comes to sellers' gigs. How is Fiverr planning to avoid becoming "That place where everything is AI generated?"

 

ETA -- I'm a writer here and elsewhere. I've been involved in lot of conversations about AI. I'm confident that my skills will keep making me a living, so I'm not waving a protest sign about AI. It absolutely has its uses and is quite impressive. It does rouse a LOT of anger, hate, and disdain, however, and if Fiverr becomes 'that place where bad sellers use AI for everything," the reputation will only suffer... and it's not that great to begin with, to be honest.

Edited February 23, 2023 by melanielm

[newsmike]

4 hours ago, editors_picks said:

Since we are all about the truth and accuracy , I'll ask you all, and especially - @newsmiketo pay attention, or to make clear on your posts that you're stating the exact content.

@editors_picks  I agree, it is important to be clear and state the exact content. Even though it has already been pointed out, by @melanielm  Here is the precise statement once again. 

"Because if I if I need to have like 10 writers that will write 10 articles a week, now I can have why I engine that will write thousands of articles in an hour and also generate large volumes of content weekly." (Quote from the transcript that obviously contradicts the above claim.)  

Why are you denying something that appears right in the transcript and video. When you asked me to refrain from speculating as to content of the webinar, I gladly complied. How disappointing that once I accurately reported on something that was said, you accuse me of misrepresenting it, despite the fact that your own transcript and video prove me correct.

Is it so hard to simply admit I am right?

[maitasun]

2 hours ago, melanielm said:

"Because if I if I need to have like 10 writers that will write 10 articles a week, now I can have why I engine that will write thousands of articles in an hour and also generate large volumes of content weekly." (Quote from the transcript that obviously contradicts the above claim.)

And not only that...

@editors_picks, I don't want to be disrespectful, so please don't take my words the wrong way.

Right now, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of sellers on Fiverr claiming to be "expert writers" offering English writing services. They cannot even spell Fiverr correctly, let alone put two sentences together. All they do is plagarise and spin content they find throughout the internet.

The same is true for the logo category. Thousands of sellers claiming to be "expert designers"...

In my world, that's called fraud.

How is letting sellers, especially the above-mentioned, use AI any different from what they already do?

We see scammers all day long on the forum, one after the other. Do you really think these people will state anywhere: 'Hey, I no longer spin or plagarise internet content. Now I copy-paste for you AI content!' when they don't mind stealing from the internet, be it content, logos or whatever, and passing it off as their own?