AI is an Act of Theft

Monday, October 12, 2026

Good morning, Twfw. O/

A symbol, a sign; a call to remember what words are and are for, a circle-slash hello to wave good morning.

What lives in this: O/ is what language is all about.

Who waves to you? What says hello?

Whenever the circle-slash appears on Wonder Fell it's a greeting from Your Friendly Nation-Hood Poet, Wynn. Depending on how many other symbols of mine you've read decides how much that wave means to you.

Chances are if you've read any of my more personal poems, or some of my biography, it means quite a lot to you.

What if Claude or Grok sends you a O/? What lives in the circle-slash of AI?

A band of self-satisfied tech scientists who made a video game of language to search The Internet waves in every AI bot.

The same human spirit that lives in games like The Legend of Zelda is in every AI communication.

Artificial Intelligence isn't artificial. It's a video game created by people to search The Internet and return the results in a humanistic fashion.

The way Link raises The Master Sword and looks at you to signal victory in a Zelda game, so AI brings you a self-satisfied response.

...

Because of how I choose to structure words this O/ now means something more to you the more you read me.

This is how all writing works. Like composers choose which notes go where and when, so writers write words.

If someone were to ask Bach if AI wrote his Well-Tempered Clavier, I'd suspect Bach would slap the person in the face.

If someone asks me if AI writes any of my words, please keep six feet away from me for reasons other than Covid.

Writers build language the way composers develop music. I write well. That's not vanity; that's decades of devoted hard work.

Living hard working people, and those that have passed, make what AI does possible.

Until a better means to recognize the creators of Original Intelligence is instituted, AI is an act of theft.

The same way students reference their sources when writing a paper, so must AI do when it steals from the living.

This goes for visual and musical arts as well.

A company that uses AI to design a logo in the style of 'living artist' better be reimbursing that living artist.

The development of an artistic, musical, or literary style is a lot of hard work. Tech Science made a video game to steal from it.

Intentionally? Of course not. How many scientists recognize the value of what artists do?

All of them soon, as AI starts to do their jobs better than them.

I don't want an antagonistic tone here, but Science you're systematically stealing from hard working people and rejoicing and making billions from it like a band of pirates.

O/ The words you take and rearrange don't create themselves.

Congratulations for reading.