Western Hunter Magazine (WHM) is a publication built on authenticity. Both the writers and producers of this magazine go to great lengths to ensure that the content published within is relevant, timely, and genuine.
In the modern era of large language models (LLMs) and the ability to produce both prose and images instantaneously with a simple prompt, it is now necessary for us at WHM to enact policy that reflects our beliefs regarding AI-generated stories and articles.
We receive thousands of stories. Our team carefully screens and selects those that meet our standards, and the patterns, mannerisms, and styles of programs like ChatGPT and others have become extremely apparent. We believe that the publication of these submissions is both dishonest to our readers and unfair to those writers who write in their own words. We felt it necessary to communicate our position to both current and prospective writers and photographers.
Our simple policy is as follows:
Western Hunter Magazine will not accept, publish, or entertain any work that is generated by AI or LLMs. These types of content do not align with our standards of quality writing and imagery. Western Hunter Magazine and its editors reserve the right to deny any submission that is believed to be generated or partially generated by a large language model or image creation application.
Please do not let this policy discourage you from submission! If you are less than confident in your technical writing skills but confident in the quality of your story or article, I highly encourage you to submit it. We have an excellent staff who can help make your words match your enthusiasm, and we are more than happy to work with you.
Although we reject content that is generated by AI, simpler spelling/grammar plugins such as Grammarly can be massively helpful in crafting a story that reflects your experience. We heavily discourage the use of LLMs such as ChatGPT for proofreading, as the use of these programs often leads to watered-down, over-punctuated, and distastefully overwritten articles. We believe that human stories are by far the most powerful, and AI often removes much of that human element from them.
If you have any questions about this policy, its implementation, or need recommendations for useful writing tools, feel free to send an email to levi@westernhunter.net.
