I Wrote My Way Out

Is using AI to create your fanfic/novel/art/whathaveyou bad? Yes, obviously. But particularly in the writing department, dear God you HAVE to remember that people don't write like AI, AI writes like US. AI stole our writing and spits it back to us.

Every AI "tell" that people are using to accuse writers of using AI DOES occur naturally in 100% human writing. I have been teaching reading/writing at elementary, middle, and high school grade levels for almost 25 years. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. Happens.

The "AI Detectors" are not anywhere near 100% accurate. If you run some of my old fanfics through "ZeroGPT" they will come back anywhere from 10-20% AI.

Fanfics I wrote almost fifteen years ago, mind you.

Sure, some of these "tells" are more likely to be AI than not. Story that's written like a grocery list?

He walked into the store.

He picked up a mango.

It wasn't ripe.

He looked for another mango.

It was ripe.

And for now, that was enough.

PROBABLY ChatGPT. Or at least ChatGPT-assisted.

Random figurative language that reads like something Douglas Adams would write, but played serious?

He looked around the room, at the furniture arranged in the specific way of furniture that has always been exactly where it is.

Better than average odds that Claude is involved.

Dialogue that is just two characters confirming that something has happened in increasingly quippy tones, regardless of the emotional beat of the scene?

"You're staring again."

"I'm observing."

"That's the same thing."

Earmarks of Gemini (this one also seems to REALLY like side characters named Marcus and Elena, and has a hard time making a story GO anywhere without really, REALLY specific prompts)

But the insidious thing is, these are also things that 100% ARE things that human writers do.

I myself am super fond of the one-sentence paragraph for emphasis. I cut my fanfic teeth at a time when Buffy and Gilmore Girls were the gold standard of clever dialogue. Sarcasm rules! Sometimes coming up with a description that isn't riddled with cliches is hard, and it ends up sounding stupid. These things all happen.

Again, according to the genius AI detectors, fanfics I wrote almost 15 years ago were about 20% AI.