Member request: please report any suspected AI Posts.

[boojum]

Please, please, please let's not veer into politics. Analog vs digital is disruptive enough. This board is a welcome refuge from the contentious times were are now in. Let this board remain a neutral zone, the Switzerland of the camera world.

 

[Dralowid]

I must admit that I use AI when it comes to car manuals. Rather than leaf through a 400 page manual all I seem to need to do is type in 'Where does the purple wire go on my 1957 Morris?' and it tells me.

OK so it is regurgitating info that others have spent time and money collecting but it can make for an 'automated index'.

It needs to be encouraged to stay in its box.

 

[splitimageview]

Forum members just prefer human responses. Using software to correct typos and spellings and such is quite acceptable. The key with AI is to use prompts that keep the human tone and just correct the errors. Something like this:

Act as a copy editor. Correct only spelling, punctuation, and grammar mistakes.
Do not improve wording, do not restructure sentences, and do not add new descriptions or details.
Return the corrected text with minimal changes. After the corrected version, briefly list what was changed.

 

[raydm6]

Well written prompt @splitimageview.

It contains a role or persona, a task, a reference (for the material being edited), some constraints, and an output format.

💯

 

[Bolo Kukus]

In some ways AI has been beneficial to me. As a research tool for the writing I occasionally do on architecture and Asian history, it easily finds obscure sources and data I would have to put in many hours looking for.

I double check all this information before I use it, which takes up time, but nothing like I would have to put in to locate the material. So in that respect it can do my basic research for me.

I always ask AI to list references. Sometimes it does, at other times it ignores my request. It's annoying, but I remind myself I'm dealing with something not human, without common sense or critical thinking ability. AI easily puts together good sentences in good readable English, but too often this is its only strong point. A problem occurs when students without much life experience copy everything from AI verbatim into their work, without checking the references or verifying the accuracy of what they have found.

I also do thesis editing as a sort of spare time hobby. AI has its place in this work, almost entirely for research, but I always, always, always double and triple check all the information it gives me - often as not I find it has made mistakes, even some quite glaring errors, in what it has dredged up from the depths of the World Wide Web.

Worse are some of the academics I edit for, MA andPhD theses, who promiscuously surf the web and copy everything they get but then drop the entire lot unchecked to into their work, expecting me to verify as well as edit all the sludge.

I remind myself there is really no cure for laziness. Fortunately, I'm long retired and my time is entirely my own. For editing and any rewriting I charge accordingly, an initial fee for reading and comments, then in blocks of time (25, 50, 100 hours) for the actual editing and corrections and often suggestions that the authors should rewrite entire segments - I also bill in advance and I expect payment in full before Ido anything beyond a first meeting with the writer.

So for me AI has its good points. The 'trick' (for want of a better term) is to use it as I do my mobile phone and the internet - it's my servant and not my master.

 

[trix4ever]

I was glad to see the l-camera-forum has banned Ai within threads.
I come here to learn from others experience. If I want to find an answer using Ai I can do that myself. And it's too often wrong.
I like to keep this forum the way I have always liked it to be by the simple method of adding anyone who posts Ai to my ignore list.
My ignore list is growing...

 

[Archiver]

There is now an AI application which identifies people online via their posting habits and writing style. It occurred to me that a way to combat this is to write a post, then run it through a LLM to change your wording to another style. On each forum, change the style to something else. This would be a good use of AI to protect privacy and poison any potential training data.

 

[CameraQuest]

There is now an AI application which identifies people online via their posting habits and writing style. It occurred to me that a way to combat this is to write a post, then run it through a LLM to change your wording to another style. On each forum, change the style to something else. This would be a good use of AI to protect privacy and poison any potential training data.

Yes, that might work,
but how would we know the above quote was not written by a rogue AI aiming to take over Archiver's account ??

Seriously, its a whole new world of uncertainty.

 

[Freakscene]

There is now an AI application which identifies people online via their posting habits and writing style. It occurred to me that a way to combat this is to write a post, then run it through a LLM to change your wording to another style. On each forum, change the style to something else. This would be a good use of AI to protect privacy and poison any potential training data.

Prompt: “please re-write this post in the style of W.G. Sebald avoiding sentences longer than 250 words/Kafka as translated by the Muirs/Hemingway” 😂

Poison the well. It will be too late when we realise where this is going.

 

[peterm1]

Prompt: “please re-write this post in the style of W.G. Sebald avoiding sentences longer than 250 words/Kafka as translated by the Muirs/Hemingway” 😂

Poison the well. It will be too late when we realise where this is going.

Prompt "Rewrite my post in the style of William Shakespeare using "A Mid Summers Night Dream" as a template with special reference to the donkey character, "Bottom"."
😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆

 

[WoodallP]

Prompt "Rewrite my post in the style of William Shakespeare using "A Mid Summers Night Dream" as a template with special reference to the donkey character, "Bottom"."
😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆

Whilst few people below 60 and outside the UK will get the reference, I have used it to write in the style of Vivian Stanshall’s Sir Henry at Rawlinson End. This is the real thing and not AI:

“A pale sun poked impudent marmalade fingers through the grizzled lattice glass, and sent the shadows scurrying, like convent girls menaced by a tramp.”

 

[peterm1]

Whilst few people below 60 and outside the UK will get the reference, I have used it to write in the style of Vivian Stanshall’s Sir Henry at Rawlinson End. This is the real thing and not AI:

“A pale sun poked impudent marmalade fingers through the grizzled lattice glass, and sent the shadows scurrying, like convent girls menaced by a tramp.”

I am afraid that while I am over 60, being an Aussie the reference is quite lost on me just as you predicted. Nevertheless you have triggered my curiosity. I am sure Google will assist. 🙂

But I can at least say this. His prose seems to be flowery stuff. And not a little like the novels of the "It was a dark and stormy night" genre of writing. 😀

 

[Archiver]

I am afraid that while I am over 60, being an Aussie the reference is quite lost on me just as you predicted. Nevertheless you have triggered my curiosity. I am sure Google will assist. 🙂

But I can at least say this. His prose seems to be flowery stuff. And not a little like the novels of the "It was a dark and stormy night" genre of writing. 😀

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night

Part I

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed. Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up.

Part II

A light snow was falling, and the little girl with the tattered shawl had not sold a violet all day. At that very moment, a young intern at City Hospital was making an important discovery. The mysterious patient in Room 213 had finally awakened. She moaned softly.

Could it be that she was the sister of the boy in Kansas who loved the girl with the tattered shawl who was the daughter of the maid who had escaped from the pirates? The intern frowned.

“Stampede!” the foreman shouted, and forty thousand head of cattle thundered down on the tiny camp. The two men rolled on the ground grappling beneath the murderous hooves. A left and a right. A left. Another left and right. An uppercut to the jaw. The fight was over. And so the ranch was saved.

The young intern sat by himself in one corner of the coffee shop. He had learned about medicine, but more importantly, he had learned something about life.

THE END

- Snoopy, 1965 😊

 

[Freakscene]

Whilst few people below 60 and outside the UK will get the reference, I have used it to write in the style of Vivian Stanshall’s Sir Henry at Rawlinson End. This is the real thing and not AI:

“A pale sun poked impudent marmalade fingers through the grizzled lattice glass, and sent the shadows scurrying, like convent girls menaced by a tramp.”

Love the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.

 

[joe bosak]

Probably more a case of cut-up technique than modern AI, anybody use this: Instant artist statements

 

[pvdhaar]

I learned a while ago that prompt engineer is an actual job. Imagine that... There's a complete educational field that teaches how to massage an AI into giving useful answers. The most worrying part of it is that it's not about learning actual skills anymore, but instead how to operate a machine that skims data to see patterns, no matter how superficial or separated from fact. How can you ever decide the values of an AI generated response if you don't have domain knowledge and understanding?

 

[Archiver]

I learned a while ago that prompt engineer is an actual job. Imagine that... There's a complete educational field that teaches how to massage an AI into giving useful answers. The most worrying part of it is that it's not about learning actual skills anymore, but instead how to operate a machine that skims data to see patterns, no matter how superficial or separated from fact. How can you ever decide the values of an AI generated response if you don't have domain knowledge and understanding?

I'm only just looking into prompting now as I am beginning to see this as an 'adapt or be left behind' situation, but prompt engineers figure out how to get optimal/useful results from various LLM's. Each has its own set of quirks and parameters, and many of their restrictions can be gamed with the right kind of preframing setups. I don't think it's the job of the prompt engineer to determine the validity of the output, that's for another person/team to handle.

It appears that certain international conflicts at this time are being deeply informed by specialized AI models, and there are humans who supposedly check the output before approval for action is given. There's a fascinating video on YouTube which describes the current conflict as a battle between AI's rather than countries, which is a disturbing perspective.

 

[raydm6]

Same as @Archiver above. I am learning prompting + data analysis myself as as well - not as a new career track - but as an adjunct to my current career skill-set as they will be required in the near future; plus, my manager - during my review - wanted me to expand my role outside my current one. Our company is embracing and promoting generative AI usage (we have an approved internal AI tool).

We have a lot of digital devices deployed in public spaces that produces lots of telemetry data that is cloud-dumped that needs to be analyzed. He doesn't have time to so I offered my data-analysis services to my manager once I finish my training and use the corporate approved AI tool to run analysis/reports for him.

Some of you may know this: you can ask the chatbot/agent what model they are currently using (some allow you to choose various other more recent LLMs via subscription) and also ask what their knowledge cutoff date is.

Although free, GPT-5.1 accessed via Perplexity.ai is rather old (OpenAI just released GPT-5.4 in early March 2026) but some do scour the internet past their cut-off date and you can provide external references for analysis as well.

Things are developing almost daily and it's very hard to keep up. We're still at the early stages of this.

 

[peterm1]

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night

Part I

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed. Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up.

Part II

A light snow was falling, and the little girl with the tattered shawl had not sold a violet all day. At that very moment, a young intern at City Hospital was making an important discovery. The mysterious patient in Room 213 had finally awakened. She moaned softly.

Could it be that she was the sister of the boy in Kansas who loved the girl with the tattered shawl who was the daughter of the maid who had escaped from the pirates? The intern frowned.

“Stampede!” the foreman shouted, and forty thousand head of cattle thundered down on the tiny camp. The two men rolled on the ground grappling beneath the murderous hooves. A left and a right. A left. Another left and right. An uppercut to the jaw. The fight was over. And so the ranch was saved.

The young intern sat by himself in one corner of the coffee shop. He had learned about medicine, but more importantly, he had learned something about life.

THE END

- Snoopy, 1965 😊

View attachment 4889847

I knew I remembered it from Snoopy and Charlie Brown! 😀

 

[peterm1]

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night

Part I

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed. Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up.

Part II

A light snow was falling, and the little girl with the tattered shawl had not sold a violet all day. At that very moment, a young intern at City Hospital was making an important discovery. The mysterious patient in Room 213 had finally awakened. She moaned softly.

Could it be that she was the sister of the boy in Kansas who loved the girl with the tattered shawl who was the daughter of the maid who had escaped from the pirates? The intern frowned.

“Stampede!” the foreman shouted, and forty thousand head of cattle thundered down on the tiny camp. The two men rolled on the ground grappling beneath the murderous hooves. A left and a right. A left. Another left and right. An uppercut to the jaw. The fight was over. And so the ranch was saved.

The young intern sat by himself in one corner of the coffee shop. He had learned about medicine, but more importantly, he had learned something about life.

THE END

- Snoopy, 1965 😊

View attachment 4889847

It was a dark and stormy night.......................................then suddenly.............................nothing happened.
The End.

Snoopy's version was a novella. Mine was but a paragraph! Not even that really! A sentence ripped untimely from its author's womb! Just like Macduff in Macbeth really! 😀 😀 😀