My "No AI" Promise

With the inexorable rise and advanced capabilities of AI text generators such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Poe, the issue of using such tools to compose literature is no longer avoidable.

I'm writing this today because one of my friends on WdC, zbkhan, has been sharply chastised for submitting allegedly 100% AI generated stories to a review forum. The forum owner's public announcement of his discovery ignited a conversation among us about the ethical use of AI in writing. "Note: I just spent two hours this morning writing a revi..." The lady has since apologized "Note: I apologize to everyone, especially to Max, for un..."

I feel it's time I made my own preferences and usage habits known, before someone accuses me of using AI to craft my stories So here it goes:

I solemnly promise to all members of WdC that for as long as my portfolio remains on this site, I will not and never have asked AI to write me a story to post here. Once I teased a British friend with an unusual name by asking Google Gemini to "tell us about him" and posting it in the Newsfeed, but it was clearly labeled as a fanciful "conversation" to laugh about. "Note: Good grief. [Link To User adherennium] check ou..." That remains the only time I've ever created text content for use here with AI.

Every single item I post on WdC, from blog entries to forum posts to poetry and short stories, is my own creation, sprung from my own vast imagination which generally leaps from concept to concept with the agility of a possessed gazelle. (The only exceptions to this are Newsfeed posts where I highlight lyrics from some of my favorite songs. I always identify them as such.) Honestly, sometimes I wish I could turn off my brain with a light switch. Other times I feel like I need to change a few light bulbs in there

My story writing process is probably a bit peculiar by most standards. I am by nature a pantser, and I write a story by sitting down, starting at the beginning, and wringing it out word by word by agonizing word until I reach a satisfying conclusion. Then I post it. Seriously. I have a strong natural instinct for grammar, and almost never proofread because each sentence is painstakingly written "perfectly" the first time.

As for plots... Those can be more difficult. If I don't like the way a story is going, I'll chop it short and start over with some slight adjustments. If I've already completed a story and one of my mentors comes along and says "girl, this is awful!" and shows me how it could be made better, I'll start it over from scratch. That hasn't happened in several months; I flatter myself that perhaps I no longer require such close mentorship. I know my weak spots, however, and I know when a story is a "sloppy flop" and needs work in one way or another.

Having made my promise, I will now offer a few thoroughly unprofessional suggestions about how I sense an item I'm reading might be AI generated. My experience with AI produced literature is that, despite everyone assuming it must be "perfect," it's actually quite amateurish and impersonal. I realized this because of someone I encountered early in my journey on WdC who posted a few AI stories clearly marked as such. (I was knocked over flat when one of them was nominated for a Quill Award and reached the higher levels of elimination!)

Anyway, what I mean is that AI fails to create meaningful dialogue between characters. It doesn't create scenes which are "alive," involving us in detailed ground-level interactions which push the story forward as though we were experiencing it alongside the characters. Instead we get broad, sweeping generalizations and a bland, even moralistic narrative style, as if the AI was tasked with telling us a bedtime fairytale. I can attempt to craft a pair of Drabble sized (100 word) examples for us out of my own head...

Example One: What we should expect from a human author...

"Louise!" Joe's hoarse cry burst from his throat as he tripped over a hidden rock.

He sailed across tall waving grasses as though swept by an unseen hand, ending up with his chin in the mud, mere inches away from the pond. A sleepy frog analyzed the potential threat and disappeared with a splash and a loud Chug-a-rum!

"Honestly, Joe, you're enough to scare the fishes in the deep blue sea," Louise clucked, helping him arise and brush off the mud.

"Remind me why we're out here?" he grunted, clutching his cane.

"One word: gold." She waved a tattered map.

Example Two: What would make us suspect an AI author…

Joe and Louise were a sweet elderly couple who lived alone on the outskirts of town. One day, Louise found an ancient map in the attic. The map pointed to a buried treasure deep in the wilderness. She persuaded Joe to participate in a journey of discovery which tested their strength and determination in ways they had never experienced before.

With each challenge they overcame together, they gained a greater understanding and appreciation for each other and the natural world. When they finally unearthed the gold, it brought them much joy as they used it for the good of humanity.

End of Examples.

One finds it hard to resist the urge to add the words "once upon a time" and "they lived happily ever after" to the beginning and end of the second story. Both are Drabbles, both deal with the same basic premise, but one is a vivid, up-close, amusing character sketch and the other is a vaguely poetic and milquetoast summarization.

Personally, I adore it when I can write in the first style, and struggle to avoid slipping into the second style. Sometimes I wrestle with trying to fit a longer timeline into a shorter word limit without summarizing and narrating chunks of story.

As AI text generation improves even further in the future, this simple lesson in amateur detection may no longer be relevant. But it demonstrates what I look for instinctively as I read, based on lessons learned of the art and craft of writing stories from the other authors on this site.

If you happen to really write like the latter example, take heart; no one is accusing you of using AI. And if you do use AI to create stories which you feel inadequate to produce on your own… please, by all means let us know you are writing with assistance, and avoid using such material to enter contests. It is unfair to those of us who labor long over our work, calling words forth from our own minds and personal experiences with blood, sweat and tears. And do you really want your success—if you remain undiscovered—to be based on your use of a soulless algorithm to do the heavy lifting for you? Shouldn't the words you present to us be a fraction of your own soul, a window into the heart and mind of you, the author?

Update: I wrote this essay and the two examples on my phone late last night, and when I tried to access one of the AI writing detection sites to test some of my own work, it didn’t really function on mobile. So today I stopped by the QuillBot AI detector on my iPad and was delighted with the accuracy of my preliminary results. My Raggedy Ann and Andy story (chosen because it’s only 1000 words and fanfiction…) checked off as “zero percent AI,” as it should. When I input my two example Drabbles, where I’d done my best to exaggerate the different writing styles, the detector checked off the “human” style, and declared that my AI style example was “100% AI generated.” I have now learned how to write like a chat bot

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