Guidelines Updated to Add official AI Policy for the site.

[Myr]

AI Use at Gay Authors: A Summary of Our Policy

Gay Authors is a community built around human creativity, storytelling, reading, and discussion. We also recognize that AI tools are now part of many modern creative and productivity workflows. Our goal is not to ban useful tools or shame responsible use. Our goal is to protect reader trust, author accountability, member privacy, and the integrity of the site.

Our AI policy is based on a simple distinction:

AI assistance is allowed. AI-generated creative content must be disclosed.

Authors and members may use AI tools for support tasks such as spelling, grammar, punctuation, editing suggestions, brainstorming, formatting, accessibility support, metadata suggestions, blurbs, summaries, coding assistance, and similar productivity uses. These ordinary assistive uses do not require public disclosure when the member remains the primary creative source of the work.

Disclosure is required when AI materially generates creative content that appears in a posted story, chapter, poem, image, translation, or other creative work. This includes AI-written scenes, dialogue, story passages, poems, major rewrites, cover art, illustrations, maps, banners, translations, or similar creative additions.

Until the Story App includes a dedicated AI disclosure field, authors who post AI-generated creative content should disclose that use in the Story Notes and, when appropriate, the relevant Chapter Notes. A disclosure can be simple and factual, such as:

• “This story contains AI-generated cover art.”
• “This chapter includes AI-generated translation assistance.”
• “This work contains AI-generated story passages that were reviewed and edited by the author.”

The person posting the work remains fully responsible for everything they post. AI use does not excuse plagiarism, copyright violations, inaccurate ratings, missing warnings, improper tagging, harassment, impersonation, spam, or violation of any Gay Authors rule.

The policy also prohibits deceptive or harmful AI use. Members may not use AI tools to impersonate another member, imitate another Gay Authors author’s distinctive style or story world without permission, generate fake comments or reviews, create spam, evade moderation, or scrape Gay Authors content for AI training, dataset creation, model fine-tuning, automated republication, or similar purposes.

We also want to avoid public accusations or AI-related arguments in story comments, reviews, forums, clubs, blogs, or private campaigns. If a member believes content violates the AI policy, they should use the Report feature and allow staff to review the concern.

Gay Authors will not investigate ordinary grammar tools, spellcheckers, brainstorming tools, or private writing workflows. Enforcement will focus on undisclosed AI-generated creative content, deception, impersonation, plagiarism, scraping, spam, fake engagement, and other violations of site rules.

In short: responsible AI assistance is allowed, human creativity remains central, AI-generated creative content must be disclosed, and members are expected to respect reader trust, author rights, and community integrity.

You can read the full site policy here (liked under Help as Guidelines)

https://gayauthors.org/guidelines/

 

[Mike Carss]

Thanks. More recently I've been using Stable Diffusion for my cover art. I've updated my story pages accordingly.

[Zombie]

20 hours ago, Myr said:

Authors and members may use AI tools for support tasks such as spelling, grammar, punctuation, editing suggestions, brainstorming, formatting, accessibility support, metadata suggestions, blurbs, summaries, coding assistance, and similar productivity uses

I’m not an author but I have thought about how I would use AI tools if I were, and that’s in the structure / planning of the story eg opening scene introducing the MC (or not), main story arc, engaging sub-plots, cast and so on

We know that even “the greats” (composers too) have sometimes hit the proverbial brick wall and abandoned works because the structure was wrong and they couldn’t figure out how to fix it, or perhaps set it aside hoping future inspiration might find that elusive fix

It’s how writers chose to use these AI tools that opens up the potential for them to inspire genuine creativity, not just to churn out derivative content based on soulless algorithms

[Myr]

2 minutes ago, Zombie said:

It’s how writers chose to use these AI tools that opens up the potential for them to inspire genuine creativity

AI is a wonderful tool for this. You can spend hours having it create portraits of your characters for you so you have reference material, even if they don't get shared with the audience.   As well as an excellent tool for outlining.  lots of stuff.

[Gary L]

21 hours ago, Myr said:

AI Use at Gay Authors: A Summary of Our Policy

Gay Authors is a community built around human creativity, storytelling, reading, and discussion. We also recognize that AI tools are now part of many modern creative and productivity workflows. Our goal is not to ban useful tools or shame responsible use. Our goal is to protect reader trust, author accountability, member privacy, and the integrity of the site.

Our AI policy is based on a simple distinction:

AI assistance is allowed. AI-generated creative content must be disclosed.

Authors and members may use AI tools for support tasks such as spelling, grammar, punctuation, editing suggestions, brainstorming, formatting, accessibility support, metadata suggestions, blurbs, summaries, coding assistance, and similar productivity uses. These ordinary assistive uses do not require public disclosure when the member remains the primary creative source of the work.

Disclosure is required when AI materially generates creative content that appears in a posted story, chapter, poem, image, translation, or other creative work. This includes AI-written scenes, dialogue, story passages, poems, major rewrites, cover art, illustrations, maps, banners, translations, or similar creative additions.

Until the Story App includes a dedicated AI disclosure field, authors who post AI-generated creative content should disclose that use in the Story Notes and, when appropriate, the relevant Chapter Notes. A disclosure can be simple and factual, such as:

• “This story contains AI-generated cover art.”
• “This chapter includes AI-generated translation assistance.”
• “This work contains AI-generated story passages that were reviewed and edited by the author.”

The person posting the work remains fully responsible for everything they post. AI use does not excuse plagiarism, copyright violations, inaccurate ratings, missing warnings, improper tagging, harassment, impersonation, spam, or violation of any Gay Authors rule.

The policy also prohibits deceptive or harmful AI use. Members may not use AI tools to impersonate another member, imitate another Gay Authors author’s distinctive style or story world without permission, generate fake comments or reviews, create spam, evade moderation, or scrape Gay Authors content for AI training, dataset creation, model fine-tuning, automated republication, or similar purposes.

We also want to avoid public accusations or AI-related arguments in story comments, reviews, forums, clubs, blogs, or private campaigns. If a member believes content violates the AI policy, they should use the Report feature and allow staff to review the concern.

Gay Authors will not investigate ordinary grammar tools, spellcheckers, brainstorming tools, or private writing workflows. Enforcement will focus on undisclosed AI-generated creative content, deception, impersonation, plagiarism, scraping, spam, fake engagement, and other violations of site rules.

In short: responsible AI assistance is allowed, human creativity remains central, AI-generated creative content must be disclosed, and members are expected to respect reader trust, author rights, and community integrity.

You can read the full site policy here (liked under Help as Guidelines)

https://gayauthors.org/guidelines/

 

Super clear, thanks, Myr

[W_L]

On 5/29/2026 at 6:28 PM, Myr said:

AI Use at Gay Authors: A Summary of Our Policy

Gay Authors is a community built around human creativity, storytelling, reading, and discussion. We also recognize that AI tools are now part of many modern creative and productivity workflows. Our goal is not to ban useful tools or shame responsible use. Our goal is to protect reader trust, author accountability, member privacy, and the integrity of the site.

Our AI policy is based on a simple distinction:

AI assistance is allowed. AI-generated creative content must be disclosed.

Authors and members may use AI tools for support tasks such as spelling, grammar, punctuation, editing suggestions, brainstorming, formatting, accessibility support, metadata suggestions, blurbs, summaries, coding assistance, and similar productivity uses. These ordinary assistive uses do not require public disclosure when the member remains the primary creative source of the work.

Disclosure is required when AI materially generates creative content that appears in a posted story, chapter, poem, image, translation, or other creative work. This includes AI-written scenes, dialogue, story passages, poems, major rewrites, cover art, illustrations, maps, banners, translations, or similar creative additions.

Until the Story App includes a dedicated AI disclosure field, authors who post AI-generated creative content should disclose that use in the Story Notes and, when appropriate, the relevant Chapter Notes. A disclosure can be simple and factual, such as:

• “This story contains AI-generated cover art.”
• “This chapter includes AI-generated translation assistance.”
• “This work contains AI-generated story passages that were reviewed and edited by the author.”

The person posting the work remains fully responsible for everything they post. AI use does not excuse plagiarism, copyright violations, inaccurate ratings, missing warnings, improper tagging, harassment, impersonation, spam, or violation of any Gay Authors rule.

The policy also prohibits deceptive or harmful AI use. Members may not use AI tools to impersonate another member, imitate another Gay Authors author’s distinctive style or story world without permission, generate fake comments or reviews, create spam, evade moderation, or scrape Gay Authors content for AI training, dataset creation, model fine-tuning, automated republication, or similar purposes.

We also want to avoid public accusations or AI-related arguments in story comments, reviews, forums, clubs, blogs, or private campaigns. If a member believes content violates the AI policy, they should use the Report feature and allow staff to review the concern.

Gay Authors will not investigate ordinary grammar tools, spellcheckers, brainstorming tools, or private writing workflows. Enforcement will focus on undisclosed AI-generated creative content, deception, impersonation, plagiarism, scraping, spam, fake engagement, and other violations of site rules.

In short: responsible AI assistance is allowed, human creativity remains central, AI-generated creative content must be disclosed, and members are expected to respect reader trust, author rights, and community integrity.

You can read the full site policy here (liked under Help as Guidelines)

https://gayauthors.org/guidelines/

 

Thanks, I use alot AI spellchecking and editing assistance, so this helps to clear up whether I am abusing my poor AI editor without giving them credit.  

Edited May 31 by W_L

[Cane23]

In short: use AI as a tool, not as the creator.

That said, this comment was spell-checked and grammar-checked by AI. 😁