A student led Anti-AI initiative has sparked debate over the use of AI across the school of Literature, Drama, and Creative Writing (LDC) at the University of East Anglia.

The petition, known as the Anti-AI Initiative, went live in late April.

It was founded by Creative Writing and English Literature students Sophia Needham, Molly Postle, Rowan Fenwick-Scarr, and Samuel Haines.

“Our petition is to remove the AI element on our course, because, we, as creative writing students,  have been asked to put our own work into Microsoft Co-Pilot and ‘collaborate’ with it to generate new work, which most of us are really, really, not happy with,” said Sophia Needham, one of the founders of the Anti-AI Initiative.

She cited having her own work scaped by AI as a reason for starting the petition.

“I personally have had 245,000 words of mine stolen, alongside millions of other writers, and that dataset was downloaded 71 times.

“So, I know my work is already very likely to be flagged as AI, because it’s being used out there to train models.”

Founder and campaigner Rowan Fenwick-Scarr added: “We look at a load of these AI-generated pieces; they’re awful. They’re not good writing.

“It just proves to you that a human writer is important, because at the end of the day, AI can’t grasp the subjects that we can. It can’t put it into words, because it doesn’t understand.”

The petition has provoked wider debate of AI’s place at the University of East Anglia.

In the school of LDC, particularly, feelings towards AI at UEA remain largely negative.

According to Concrete’s research, when surveyed, 61% of students in the school of LDC have said they never use AI for anything.

Furthermore, 39% believe AI should have absolutely no place at the University of East Anglia.

However, not all LDC students believe AI should be kept out of UEA.

“With the amount I have to do sometimes, it feels like it’s the only way I can manage my workload,” confessed one anonymous student in Concrete’s survey.

“I work and pay for absolutely everything, and that’s not easy.”

Another student added they believe AI can be used “as a tool to inspire the creative juices flowing (sic).”

“It depends on how people use AI,” they said.

“If it’s just as a supportive tool it’s fine, if people use it to supplement their own work, then it is a problem.”

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons