​A US science fiction magazine has announced it has banned hundreds of authors after receiving a wave of pieces written by artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, AFP and The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, Agerpres reported.

Neil Clark, editor of science fiction and fantasy magazine Clarksworld, told his Twitter followers on Tuesday that he had banned more than 500 authors in February for “typing”.

Before the advent of artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, which can generate texts in free language and different styles, Clarksworld banned only a few authors each month, most often for plagiarism, Clark said.

“Our rules already state that we don’t want papers to be written or AI-assisted,” the editor-in-chief noted.

“They (authors who turned to AI, for example) don’t care. The box on the uniform does not stop them. I’m just lying,” Clark added, while admitting that he still doesn’t have a solution to the problem.

The variety of these AI tools raises various concerns, especially regarding plagiarism and exam cheating.

California startup OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, is backed by several billion dollars from Microsoft and hopes to revolutionize Internet search.

It’s had a rocky start so far, however, with early users testing Bing Chat, a test chatbot introduced by Microsoft, reporting strange or even disturbing conversations they’ve had with it.