aight im really sick of my mutuals being accused of ai over and over again and them having to defend themselves—which in and of itself is such a tedious task for writers who come on here to share their craft for free and genuinely for the love of the game—but since everyone wants to continuously be fucking stupid as hell, here’s some general notes on picking up whether something is ai or not:
shockingly, you have to fucking read thing you’re accusing of ai to figure out whether it’s ai or not. no, the use of em dashes (—) are not a giveaway for ai use; no, the phrasing “it’s not x, it’s y” is not a giveaway for ai use. oftentimes the biggest giveaway in fiction/creative-focused ai writing is the emptiness behind each word, metaphor, figurative speech, etc.
one of the hallmarks of great fiction or any form of creative writing is generally the voice an author brings to the text. think about your best friend telling you a story about their day over facetime or while you're hanging out or even on a discord call idfk. the story could be the driest, boring story you've ever fucking heard about someone's worklife, but it's the way your friend tells it to you that keeps you hooked and engaged: what was about some bitchass customer ordering the stupidest coffee order becomes this odyssey-like adventure because ur friend, endearingly, can't stfu! they're using such animated language, they're playing with pauses and pacing, they're bringing out this voice that is so uniquely theirs that the world from their eyes simply is a different color than you'll ever get to experience—and that's what makes it so interesting. a 5-minute interaction becomes a 2-hour conversation simply because your friend can tell a story.
so when you're reading some fic about idk bruce wayne dicking you down or whatever, what's keeping you there, besides the smut content, is the way the smut is written. does the writing leave room for you to get immersed? are you engaged with the story being told? does it fucking make sense? obv in a smutty bruce wayne fic, you're not going to see phrasing like "it's not x, but y" (could you imagine.."it wasn't his hand, but his dick" how erotic!), but the potential use of ai would come in through flattened language that doesn't make much sense given the narrative being told. although, given most llms today (maybe other than c.ai? idk how that one works tbh), you probably won't be able to get explicit smut generated off of fucking chatgpt or claude but to give another example—this time, fluff—you'll have to discern whether the fluffy 'jason-todd-taking-u-on-a-bike-ride' fic makes any fucking sense when you read it. yes, it has em dashes, but does it also have emotion? are you walking away from that fic feeling moved in any particular way? are you smiling like an idiot because the writer described holding onto jason todd's waist at a stoplight as if it was a fucking washboard or an omnichord where your fingers got lost in the melodic touch? yes, thinking of someone's waist and abdominal muscles as a fucking musical instrument is odd, but does it make sense within the realm of the paragraph? if it comes out of nowhere, sure! but if the writer turns that around and goes on a brief ramble about how loving jason todd is a musical feeling of some sort, it's not all that odd at the end of the day, is it? essentially, you have to (a) read and (b) use your brain.
ergo, instead of seeing an em dash and yelling "witch!" maybe ask yourself, as you read:
does this fic have the same vibe or linguistic voice as the others, or is that changing every fic?
does the figurative language used make any sense given the context of the story?
do the metaphors make sense or is it just straight bullshit?
does this read like a corporation tried to think about what i'd like as a consumer, rather than a reader?
does the language here feel very much like the writer is trying to sell me an idea, rather than tell me a story?
an important thing to note: the unfortunate reality is that within a year or two, ai will be almost indistinguishable from human-created writing. it’s the shittiest reality-check you’re gonna have to reckon with today, tomorrow, next month, next year, etc. but it’s here, it’s fucking up our creative spaces, it’s fucking up the land we live on, it’s fucking up our clean water supplies—it’s fucking up the very fabric of reality as we know it, accelerating us into zones of contention, hostility, and violence. in short, it’s the neocolonial frontier, the playground imperialism is stretching its grimy hands across and fucking us left, right, up, down, sideways, and on entirely new dimensional fields of existence we haven’t even fully realized yet. and while i can spend the rest of this already long ass ramble talking about just how exactly ai/llms are functioning as such, that’s an essay for another day; im mostly just here trying to tell yall to get a fucking grip and actually be intentional with how you interact and engage etc.
piggybacking off that: another thing to acknowledge is that not everyone is a good writer; it's a harsh truth, but as a critic i have every right to say this given the slop of our contemporary publishing landscape (and genuinely, there are better writers on tumblr than there are on bookstore shelves today). but with that being said, many current young and emerging writers are unfortunately trained in a world where ai is beginning to be accepted and used as a publishing standard. not going to unpack this idea to its fullest here, but there's a generation of emerging writers that learned how to write like shit from a lexicon of tiktok regurgitation and empty and meaningless youtube video essays. we can't blame them either, this is just the reality of our linguistic landscape developed on social media (hence why the generation after you will have a meme-language you won't be able to understand). so, yes, we're going to see writers who do write weirdly similar to ai, or carry this corporate-like language full of funky ass metaphors that make no sense and shit like "fostering a vibrant community" whatever tf that means
ultimately though, the more you read, the more you'll develop taste, and that's what'll help you determine if something is ai or not. that's the only thing that'll save you in a world so devastatingly polarizing in antagonizing the layman and pacifying us into stillness (which is the exact word i would use to describe ai writing actually!). in knowing yourself and, by extension, knowing what you like, you can build out a language that carries meaning, life, intention, and therefore cultivate a unique worldview just with this ever-moving language you collected. but u have to use ur fucking brain and know when to turn away from something: the world is going to feed you slop and the only weapon you have to defend yourself is being able to look at it and say "well, that was shit!" and move on.
also uh oh am I using ai because i dared to write this with an em dash that’s been a staple to grammar and punctuation across multiple languages for centuries, with literal fucking evidence tracing its uses back to 15th century printing presses, and possibly earlier but im no early modernist/medievalist??? guess I should just kms!!!!!
i also feel the need to add this disclaimer because ik there are people who cant fucking read and comprehend shit: i don't support ai, i don't fuck with ai, i hate ai, and i don't support writers who use ai. but, i also don't go around accusing people of using ai without substantial evidence to back up my fucking argument. if you're going to accuse anyone of ai, do so with your sources fucking cited. there's a reason they teach you that shit in school! again, the world is already so vile as hell, don't go around adding more bullshit to the mixing bowl
