> and the new normal is that potential readers, the polite ones[^1], use the slightest hint of AI usage to discard their title and move on...
Is that the new normal?
My impression is that when it comes to reading text, nobody cares as long as the final product is good.
People don't want AI-written books, but people have been comfortably listening to AI voices reading text for a long time now. Text-to-speech isn't really a controversial thing for listening to articles or books.
(Which is very different from voice acting, for example, which requires acting not just reading.)
Sadly, it is common enough these days. There are reports of authors that set up a stand to physically sell their books, and members of the public ask "is this AI-written? Who made the cover? Is this cover AI?"
> My impression is that when it comes to reading text, nobody cares as long as the final product is good.
Maybe so, but it only takes a vocal minority to ruin things for an author. And that minority tends to use anything, even a non-overtly-critical mention of AI in social media.
The consensus right now is that using LLMs for fixing grammar and typos is acceptable. I personally use them for word completion (specially the devil incarnate which are the prepositions on/in), but tend to discard suggestions that improve flow, sentence structure and readability, because those increase the odds of triggering "AI detectors". In fact, I've found a renewed taste for unconventional sentence structure and unconventional punctuation; things that three years ago, before the LLM boom, I really didn't care for.