Contest A.I. Policy

Artificial Intelligence:

We acknowledge that the realm of artificial intelligence is changing rapidly, and constructing a loophole-free policy is extremely difficult.

Regarding story text:

The spirit of the restriction is this: if the phrasing, story progression, or bulk of writing was generated with AI, it does not belong in the same category as work that was written and edited entirely by human effort, thought, and creativity. If the creation of the work involved training or prompting, that is a sign it’s probably not eligible.

Tools powered by AI are a subtly different subject. For example, we’ve all been using things like spelling and grammar check for a long time. The AI policy is not intended to exclude books whose authors ran a spelling or grammar check and then corrected flagged errors.

It’s mostly a question of inception: did the author or artist have an idea and then enter prompts to do the heavy lifting of story generation or image creation? Or did the author build the story word by word? 

Visual Art:

In the case of cover artists and comics, images created with any of the various image generators such as Firefly or Midjourney are examples of work that would not be admissible. We expect the images entered will have been hand built by the artist. (This policy does not impact the use of stock art unless that stock was AI generated.)

Audio:

All audio submissions must have been recorded in their entirety by a live narrator. Services that use sampled voices, even if the voice actor who provided the sample is paid in any way, are not eligible.

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At the heart of our AI policy is our identity as Christian creators. The difference in the work we create and the product of AI is that the artist pours his or her soul into the creation of a work, but you cannot train a soul into generative tools. This distinction should be abundantly true for those of us who serve the Lord and seek to live as examples of his grace. 

When you check the box on the entry form for one of our contests, this affirms the project you are entering into the contest was initially created by entirely human effort, and all corrections, changes, and revisions were undertaken and executed by the creator in accordance with their own analysis and intent.

Again, we acknowledge the creation of a policy leaves some gray area that cannot exhaustively be spelled out. Only you know what tools you used and to what extent, and we ask that you consult your conscience in good faith as you determine whether your work is the right fit for the our awards and contests.

A note on mixed use: (Realm Awards only)

If you submit a book for judging in a genre or audience category, an AI generated cover would not disqualify the book, but the cover art is not eligible or the cover design category. The opposite would also be true for non-AI covers on AI manipulated text in the story.