I havenāt read any of the fics on the āClaudeā list, nor heard of majority. I think I read the descriptions of a few and they didnāt interest me, so thatās interesting.
However, I want to say, a lot of people are currently doing this holier than thou thing where they pat themselves on the back for not being āfooledā by ai fic, and saying, āIf you read actual good books youāll never be tricked.ā
Thatā not true.
There is no way in hell the thousands of reads and recs these fics are getting, is because the 3k, 6k, or 10k+ readers are all people who canāt catch on to ai. A lot of them are undoubtedly very well read folks who got fooled, or people who also like myself, enjoy very well written works and trash work.
Fan fiction has been part of my life for nearly 20 years. Using ai to write fic is an extremely recent thing. Do you know what not recent? Poorly written fic. Fic with grammar so bad it feels like a joke, fic that uses a big word every five seconds to the point where you canāt enjoy it because you gotta break out a thesaurus, fic that is overly flowery to the point of it making no sense, fic that is so blandly written it feels āsoullessā. Fic with so much space between paragraph breaks it takes a week to reach the next sentence, fic built of brick walls, fic where there is nothing but dialogue, fic with no dialogue at all, fic with a character description of damn thesis length, fic where we could be talking to Casper with how thin their descriptions are. Fic in which nothing even mildly relates to canon so it could easily be an original work, fic that over explains canon every ten words, fic that never uses character names, fic that only uses character names, and so on and so on and so on.
Now, keep in mind, I do completely understand why itās important to bring attention to fic authors who are using ai. Itās a stupid thing to do, itās killing the earth, and it robs people who are putting in the work; both as writers and of readers. Using ai to create anything harms actual artists, because now everyone thinks they can do a thing and make the money and gain popularity, and sure, in fandom spaces you can. Even as it continues to try and infiltrate Hollywood, but real art canāt be fabricated.
Yea, it may harm the animation industry the most, which is also terrible, but it wonāt work with live action in the long run, which will hopefully phase it out of animation too, then eventually out of writing and painting and such. When it comes to fan fiction, however, where the stakes are lower yet can be done undetected for a long time, there is no reason for people to pretend like they are superior to anyone for catching on to an ai written work before others.
All the things I listed above are things Iāve seen used over the months, as proof of ai assisted or completely written works, yet they are not always a tell. All the things I listed above are things I have encounter over two decades of reading fic. Heavy use of the āem dash, heavy use of ellipses, heavy use of, āItās notā¦ butā¦ā, filler words being left behind and more.
For example: āItās not that Shane wanted to leave Ilya that nightā theyād always said they wouldnāt walk away angryā itās that Shane had to. He was hurt and confused, and he had a right to beā¦ right? So as Shane walked along the roadā for what felt like a long timeā he refused to think about his hurtā¦ his heart, until a loud collision of some sort broke him out of his spell.ā
Does that paragraph evoke much emotion or intrigue? No. Does that paragraph flow? No, it reads like an idea of a scene more than one Shane is experiencing. However, did I use ai to write it? No.
That paragraph is a basic first draft meant to hold the place of something more descriptive and urgent, and eventually less wordy. Those types of mistakes are often left in fics, although not to this extreme, because some writers canāt write beyond that level and donāt take writing seriously enough to develop, because fic is merely a hobby (which is fine), and others mainly just skip it by accident during rewrites.
Point Iām making is, yes, call out ai fics if you know for certain they are ai, but stop belittling people for not caching on or for promoting ai fics when they didnāt know. Itās not insane that some folks just donāt catch it, because they think itās simply bad or mediocre writing. Which is okay! Itās okay to be a bad writer, because that is how you get better. What these ai witch hunts will only truly serve to do, though, is scare people away from being bad writers, thus people stop wanting to write for fun. Which we donāt want!
All in all, Iām 100% positive Iāve read ai fic at some point. I think two or three a couple of months ago were called out that Iād read and enjoyed or thought was alright for how mid it was written, but I finished them and moved on. Did I know they were ai? No. Did I suspect other fics could be? Yes, and if that suspicion persisted, I exited out. I didnāt go searching for ai detectors, though, because that would simply take forever, and I refuse.
In the end, all weāve got are our personal reading and lived experiences, individual literacy levels, and personal language barriers to inform us. As such, all we can do is help each other when we know something for a fact, but we canāt and shouldnāt take up a position of superiority nor authority over something intentionally built to fool. Claude is one ai tool out of hundreds meant to āhelpā writers, and is currently the only one being scanned for on ao3. Give readers grace.
