Before I continue, I will explicitly mention that I don't support AI in creative spaces and have not finished reading Super Soaker. I did end up reading the author's apologies and clarifications on the discourse, and had read around five of the beginning chapters before the controversy even started. I stopped reading because I didn't like how much Mike and Will used substances, but my personal preferences can not decide whether an author deserves to write or not.
Read further if you want details on the Super Soaker controversy:
Let's clear up the doubts first. Many people claim that Super Soaker was either mostly or completely written by AI, which is utter bullshit. Anyone who says that is either misinformed, or stirring stuff up for more clout. According to WheezingWheeler, the AI used in the fanfiction was used for grammar checks and correct phrasing. Kind of like Grammarly. I will note that this could be false, but it seems highly unlikely as when I was reading it, even though I wasn't the biggest fan of the writing style, it showed none of the AI tells and felt very authentic. However, I did not run the work through an AI checker, and recommend you don't either, because:
They are inaccurate most of the time.
They feed your writing to AIs to train them, and doing so to anyone's work is just plain disrespectful.
Next, let's look at motives. Why would an author want to use AI for a byler fanfic on ao3, for FREE, targeted to a notoriously anti AI community? Well, my friend, if you haven't figured out the answer yet, you must be a native speaker. As someone with English as their third language, I struggled to speak and write it for years. Even though I read English books like a psychopath, it's not enough for me to express all the ideas in my head in a grammatically correct manner. I often relied on grammar AIs to write English well, and they ended up significantly improving my writing. People may not agree with AI grammar checkers, but not everyone grew up privileged to have English as their first and only language, or teachers that could help them enough.
I will say, though the hate is far to extreme for someone literally just trying to improve their grammar, the author did make a mistake by not disclosing this before. I do not use AI to check my grammar anymore, but during the times that I did, I honestly had no idea that people were against it. I think WheezingWheeler found themself in a similar situation, where they were completely oblivious to what people think about any percentage of AI in the work. This is where their problem is, since every creator has a duty to disclose any topics that people may not be comfortable with. Just as fics have trigger warnings before you even open them, AI use of any kind should be disclosed of in the very first chapter. Though I wish the author had done this in the first place, I am glad they apologised for it.
That said, please do not bully or threaten the author or their loved ones for an honest mistake. As much as people are twisting it to mean otherwise, there is a real human typing words behind that screen. Humans make mistakes. I admit that I used AI in my writing, but literally never with malicious intent, only to correct grammar mistakes and improve my English. I do not use it anymore, but if this bothers you, you can ignore, unfollow, or block me. Please don't threaten and send hate to people you don't know, especially when they apologise. Just because you got taught good English grammar, or just don't care about it, doesn't mean some of us don't want to write seriously and not have access to the right learning environment. I have learnt my lesson, and I'm sure the author has, too. We will find better means to learn the language, but attacking people is completely unhelpful.
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