Today Clarkesworld closed to submissions for the first time in ages. They're apparently overwhelmed by ChatGPT-written trash, churned out at an industrial scale, and thrown at them (and other paying markets) for the chance at making a few bucks off of publication.
It's the same mentality as crypto mining: Wasting resources that don't belong to you, and making life inestimably worse for everyone, in hopes of scoring an unearned payday.
Hard not to feel like the unsolicited submission market is about to drown in an AI-powered tidal wave of shit that's written by nobody, for nobody. It doesn't take much imagination to see how this already tenuous ecosystem is going to be unsustainable under such pressures. And from there, how it's going to be even more impossible to develop a writing career.
Grim, grim day for literature.