On July 7, Reckoning magazine posted an article about removing a poem from It Was Paradise for suspected AI use. The name of the author listed in the article, along with their penname, matched an author we've published at Heartlines (twice). Irene W. Collins' The Last Two Gardeners of Mars was published in Issue 9 and Orbital Decay by Bella Chacha was published in Issue 8. Stories and poetry with these pen names have also been removed from Bona Books and Cast of Wonders (Correction: we stated that Apex pulled a work from one of the pennames, they pulled work of another author)
In late March, I learned that Bella Chacha and Irene W. Collins were pen names of the same person. During this time, I also became aware that another magazine was examining the metadata from the two pen names and running their work through an AI detector. They were positive that the author's work was AI-generated. By this time, both the short story and the poem were already published. I reread the pieces and was displeased by the double publication but didn't feel it was a strong enough complaint to bring forward publicly. Heartlines maintains a two issue cooling-off period for contributors to resubmit.
However, once Reckoning made their post, it was clear that we needed to speak up. Magazine staff tend to be insular and quiet, mostly due to the volunteer and hobbyist nature of the enterprise. Most of us do not make a living, or any profit at all, from our magazines. We rely on donations, grants, and our own funding to stay alive. Whisper networks don't work; there's always someone left outside the circle.
Without direct confirmation from the author, we can't prove with absolute certainty that the aforementioned work was written with AI. Heartlines' submission guidelines are clear: no AI. Our contracts require that submitted pieces are original work and don't use AI. These contracts were signed by the author. At the moment, we have decided to leave the works online with an Editor's Note. Both pieces will be removed from future reprints of the Issue 8 and Issue 9 and have been removed from the epub version. We will continue investigating best we can and will re-evaluate if/as more information comes to light.
Over the past few days, we've learned that AI is especially good at generating based on themes. It's likely that our Wishlist we create during the submission period, which sets out story themes we're interested in reading, is harvested as prompts to tailor a generated story to our preferences.
There's been a lot of discussion online about how magazines should move forward and especially about what we should have done. All I can say is that any flags we saw only became red with hindsight. Going forward, we're not going to ask for drafts or video calls or use AI-based AI detection. We don't ask about publication history and nor do we ask for timelines of that publication history. When the writer's bio is sent, we assume it's truthful. We also will not require authors to have a social media account. Not only is social media a growing toxic hellscape but with data-scraping and the potential loss of net neutrality, many people are not in the position to live their truth online.
At the hold stage, we research to confirm if a writer's background matches stated identity, especially if the story relies on characters or tropes of that background. We've always been careful to ensure our Table of Contents contains equity-deserving voices. Heartlines has compressed deadlines in order to publish three times a year. Acceptance to publication happens within two months. With simultaneous submissions, we're motivated to get contracts signed within days of acceptance. This pace has allowed us to become many authors' first publications and we aim to make it a good experience that sets someone up for success.
We will continue to be on the lookout for indicators of AI in the writing and discussing it among ourselves during editor meetings, however we have to rely on the goodwill and honesty of our submitters. We're going to learn from this but it's not going to change our philosophy. We're still going to lead with kindness and trust in our community.
We hope you continue to support Heartlines. We're hard at work on Issue 11 which releases July 31st.
Thank you,
Rebecca Bennett, Managing Editor (she/her) and the Heartlines team