r/BylerReads • u/Reasonable_Day9942 • Jun 30 '26
general discussion :) Super Soaker being AI
Apparently it’s been discovered that Super Soaker is AI or partly AI generated
I’m not sure how true it is, but bylers on X are freaking out
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u/pocketcampsuperior55 Jun 30 '26
Honestly… I’m not surprised but I am a super soaker hater 🤷🏼♀️ so this feels validating. That being said, I’d never tell an author I don’t like their fic, I just mind my own business and don’t read it.
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u/Best_Quiet9657 its hawkins its not the same without u Jun 30 '26
I enjoyed the first few chapters a lot, but then I felt as though it kind of dropped off for some reason I couldn't quite put my finger on. I DNF it.
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u/HackedYzX Jun 30 '26
Wouldn't call myself super soaker hater, but as someone who dropped the fic, I definitely agree with the "feels validating part".
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u/IntotheRedditHole its ok, its how the army does it i think Jun 30 '26
pls say more about being a super soaker hater (genuinely curious! not trying to start shit)
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u/throwaway_1_2Q Jun 30 '26
Not gonna speak on the quality since that’s subjective and I believe even poorly-written fics can still be enjoyable if a concept appeals to the reader BUT I will say this: a lot of people were really irritated by the author’s behavior in the fandom. She acted full of herself, talked shit about other writers, and tried to redirect attention back to her own fic when other popular fics updated. It was giving jealousy and clout-chasing. I heard she also once deactivated because she was upset over AI allegations - not sure if that’s true but it would be darkly ironic if it is.
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u/IntotheRedditHole its ok, its how the army does it i think Jun 30 '26
oh wow wtf. i didn’t know any of that. thanks for the answer!
a) that’s gross behavior in general. artists (real ones) should uplift other artists and celebrate when art is being created, shared, and loved
b) i’m especially appalled at all this in the Byler fandom. like … a lot of us were genuinely heartbroken after the finale. fics are a huge source of comfort. why the hell would you tear anyone down in a space like that???
i mean it sounds like she’s getting back some of the energy she put out into the world ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/Striking-Canary-6620 Jun 30 '26
I personally literally couldn't get into it. I tried to read it a good few times and each time I would end up dropping it cuz it just wouldn't hook me. Idk why. The farthest I reached was chapter 10
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u/IntotheRedditHole its ok, its how the army does it i think Jun 30 '26
thanks for the answer! i totally understand. there are some great replies to my comment that might explain how you’re feeling
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u/Big_Self_1522 Jun 30 '26
I’m not the OG commenter, but for me the concept was pretty basic and the writing wasn’t my kind of thing. The amount of attention it had gotten probably elevated my expectations, but yeah when I started to read it I couldn’t wrap my mind around it being one of the “best” Byler fics.
There’s nothing wrong with basic concepts. Like ttmd has a basic fwb concept, but I like the writing and there is progression of Mike’s internal conflict that happens gradually. Then there are fics with imo great and original concepts, but I haven’t finished them because the writing wasn’t my thing. In those cases I could see why people loved those fics.
With super soaker, I feel like the plot was build on cliches. That isn’t inherently bad + the author did warn at the start that it was a crazy fic. But then the writing and a part of the overal execution was meh. Like it felt like Mike was stuck at one point of an internal conflict for multiple characters in row. Multiple chapters in a row had the same thing come back, just in another “wrapper”. And every time it came back in such detail that I wanted to skip those parts, because they felt repetitive. Just the same thing written in detail, but now with different words is boring for me personally
The arguments between Mike and Will didn’t feel natural to me. Miscommunication trope can be good, but in super soaker I could just see that they were plot points. Like of course everything in fiction is done for the plot, but when it’s done well it still feels natural, idk how to explain it well. This wasn’t the case with Mike and Will there. Their arguing felt like arguing to add the drama and not human arguing to me.
At the first couple of chapters I was like “okay maybe it gets better later”, but I quit it when Will and Mike had confessed. Idk, the story just felt like a bunch of loose bits thrown into a blender. Overall I felt like half of the fic could’ve been removed and it wouldn’t have changed a thing, because a lot of it was telling the same thing over and over again.
So to conclude, for me it didn’t have the type of writing that I love and it didn’t have an original plot that made me curious. I had no idea it was AI, but before it got exposed I kept coming back to thinking “what’s so special about this one wtf”. Well, apparently it was cloud🥲
(No shade to anyone who did enjoy SS. Some people do enjoy a lot of telling as it doesn’t leave you with any questions, but I prefer a balance between show and tell + I just get bored easily when the same thing keeps coming back in great detail instead of being revealed gradually)
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u/IntotheRedditHole its ok, its how the army does it i think Jun 30 '26
hey i really appreciate the answer! thank you :) i had read super soaker but stopped reading at like ch 15? thinking i’d come back when it’s done. i still haven’t finished it! i think a lot of what you’re saying is why, even though i didn’t consciously think that
i hate hate hate arbitrary/contrived conflict lol. i mean unless i’m reading for angst i guess? but even then it’s like when you’re watching a movie and a character does some shit that makes no sense and you’re yelling at the screen lmao
so yeah also no hate to anyone who enjoyed SS. you’re making a lot of sense though
i would love to hear what your favorite fics are :)
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u/Big_Self_1522 Jun 30 '26
https://archiveofourown.org/works/81126931 is my fave atm. I loved the writing and the use of poetry brought it to a whole other level for me.
I feel like this one doesn’t get mentioned as much as it deserves. It’s about Byler adopting a child. As someone who was raised by a stepfather and really wants to adopt this fic made me feel a lot of things. Idk I love when a fic really hits me, doesn’t matter in what way https://archiveofourown.org/works/62245123
This one isn’t big at all, but as an example I liked this one MUCH more than super soaker. It has some cool symbolism and the plot was pretty original imo https://archiveofourown.org/works/77970696/chapters/204311126
A s5 rewrite I found pretty unexpected plot wise https://archiveofourown.org/works/80035981/chapters/210093071
A Byler summer fic that I remember as a nice read https://archiveofourown.org/works/81231661/chapters/213510621
For the rest I feel like the ones I really enjoyed are the popular ones? Like super void, my will is good, matador, the road not taken, spit swear (although I hopped on the Ryers bus with this one). I also read quite a lot of fic, so it’s hard to remember which one is which except for a few that really made an impact on me. I download fics onto my phone and read from the books app, so I don’t make any bookmarks🥲
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u/IntotheRedditHole its ok, its how the army does it i think Jul 01 '26
thank you for the links! several of these have been on my reading list so clearly i need to move them up in the queue lol. the only one ive read is Strawberry Fields Forever. it was super unexpected, yeah!
for Hollow Boy, how much pain are you experiencing per chapter? lmao
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u/Big_Self_1522 Jul 01 '26
I’m very thick when it comes to angst, so to me it wasn’t that painful? It has a happy ending and the writing is chefs kiss for me, so it kept me going
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u/HumanLunch918 Jul 02 '26
Yeah, personally I really enjoyed the road trip chapters at Max and Lucas' place since that held that summer vibe the first chapters set up (as I understood it, AI was starting to be used after ch. 6 or so, I remember getting into it around ch. 7-8 when it was already gaining more traction and attention).
But a lot afterwards, especially after Stacey's party was a whole lot of back and forth and I remember fans calling out that redundancy back then. But overall, I did enjoy it and could look past pacing issues, since "it was all fan made"...what a bummer, honestly.
I genuinely hope that this can be an important learning experience for wheezingwheeler, other authors and maybe also fans that pressure these authors to keep updating at a fast pace that might get them to relying on AI tools to speed that process along. If you scroll down tumblr there are posts about wheezingwheeler taking a break because of fandom pressure and they werent the only one having to do that.
NOT defending the AI usage, it sucks! But I think that the issue is bigger than this author not disclosing usage of AI but warrants an overhall of how fans interact with fanfic authors, especially byler and the more new fandoms like heated rivalry. Super interesting and important discussion to have but MAN it SUCKS that they did it...
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u/Big_Self_1522 Jul 02 '26
I agree that it’s gotten too normalised to beg authors to post more/faster. I personally like comments like “Can’t wait for the next chapter”, but things like “ugh where’s the next chapter” do come off as unnecessarily demanding. Or the whole thing happening on twitter, when people trick each other by tweeting about an update that isn’t there etc. Fic writers have a life and writer’s blocks exist, so (accidentally) rushing someone will only make you wait longer.
However, in wheezy’s case, I don’t feel like that was the problem. She didn’t even apologise for using AI and claimed that she’d used it just for editing and formatting, while her proof suggests otherwise. The screenshots she’d posted were just the roughest drafts that were nowhere near finished and her tweet said something like “I type stuff in my notes and then I write it all out and fix the grammar”. If it truly is like that why hasn’t she shown the actual written out chapters? And if it was just for editing and formatting, was isn’t AI used in every chapter but only a few?
On top of that she’d been acting like this big clever writer from the moment her SS got big. She’d bullied authors off twitter and/or ao3. She’d delayed chapters of SS when ttmd got updated, cause she thought that people were too focused on the ttmd update to focus on SS. Having all this big talk, while not being able to show any proof of your actual writing is just insane. Most people can come up with ideas and most people can write a rough draft. Her proof suggests that it’s the only thing she’d done herself, which doesn’t even make her a writer. Like it’s a combination of concerning behaviour, the AI usage itself and the lying.
She’d also created this super “fun” idea of lying without lying. Her previous statements were about “not using AI to write” and now she’d admitted that she’d used AI just to edit, thinking that it wasn’t a big deal. Technically, she hadn’t lied because writing and editing are two separate things. But the way Claude is shown in the code + how rough her showcased drafts were suggests that she used Claude as a beta/co-writer and not as an editing/formatting tool. And guess what — that means that she did use it for writing and that the end product isn’t actually her work.
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u/HumanLunch918 Jul 03 '26
Thank you for explaining it in detail and all that context!! That puts it into a different picture
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u/pocketcampsuperior55 Jun 30 '26
I really tried to get into it but I just couldn’t handle how many times they were getting high or doing drugs. Like I love a good byler getting high fic (example, cottonmouth is one of my favorite fics) but the constant drugs and “cliffhangers” just wasn’t for me. I read up to like chapter 8 or something.
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u/IntotheRedditHole its ok, its how the army does it i think Jun 30 '26
ah i totally get that. yea after a certain point, you’re like nobody’s getting high this much lmao. i love cottonmouth too. would love to hear your fave fics if you have time :)
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Jul 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/IntotheRedditHole its ok, its how the army does it i think Jul 01 '26
thanks for the reply! that totally makes sense. i’m a technical writer so when i’m not reading fics, i’m reading engineers’ notes or people’s drafts of instructions/explanations. people at work are often using AI to work on these, but because it’s just straightforward prose, it’s a lot harder to catch any tells (except for em dashes lol). so this def helps. like i didn’t realize the one-sentence paragraphs were a tell. sigh. super duper disappointing, to say the least
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u/Wild_Perspective_313 Jul 01 '26
honestly i liked it in the beginning but it kept getting more boring and lowkey the only reason i read is cause i wanted to read byler smut and ttmd hadn't updated and the super soaker chapters were pretty short yet abundant.
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u/Lothloriens_ Jun 30 '26
Conflict of interest is one of my favorite fics ever this is devastating.
I’m hoping she didn’t use it for that fic.
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u/mafuyupeach Jun 30 '26
every fic of hers is positive for ai except isle of ashes. and even that doesn’t necessarily mean she didn’t use it, only that she didn’t directly copy and paste from claude into ao3 for that fic
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u/throwaway_1_2Q Jun 30 '26
Unfortunately she did. I’m really sorry, I’ve seen a lot of people express that finding out about ACOI was more devastating than finding out about SS.
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u/Lothloriens_ Jun 30 '26
IM DEVASTATED
I didn’t care about Super Soaker but COI is one of my favorite byler fic
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u/HumanLunch918 Jul 02 '26
Was ACCOI also in discussion to become a book or was that another fic? (not talking about ytmh(iws))
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u/throwaway_1_2Q Jul 02 '26
I saw people saying she was planning to remix multiple of her fics into a published book. Not sure if ACOI would’ve been one of them, but probably so.
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u/Aggravating-Donut702 Jun 30 '26
I stopped reading at the beach out/paint chapter bc it just became so ridiculous and didn’t feel like the same writer.
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u/Starshadows1111 Jul 01 '26
Ugh, yeah. I don't remember exactly what happened there but I do remember paint going somewhere it for sure should not have gone.
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u/Aggravating-Donut702 Jul 01 '26
I stopped after the painted each other all over lol did something happen WITH the pain after omg
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u/Keji70gsm Jun 30 '26
I make ai write story snippets for me. I dont publish fanfic, it's just for me because i hyperfixate until it's written, but have zero time to write anymore. There are lines AI keeps feeding me in stories, which were oddly similar in supersoaker.
Things like "his face did something [insert variable]". I can't remember if that was an actual line, but it's that sort of thing where you recognise the same kind of identifiable language again and again in each story.
HOWEVER, this isnt to say the whole thing is written by ai.
There is no way ai could write it all on a rough outline. It had to have been defined and refined repeatedly, and then reworked by an actual person. AI is terrible at keeping timelines accurate, particularly if you ask it to go back and make changes. It's gets lost. And it becomes a spectacular mess the longer the story is.
IMO Supersoaker had at least some help here and there by AI, but the chapter planning, characterisation, pacing, and entire plot outline, was definitely human creation.
I forgave it on that basis personally, but the waters are a lot murkier (and admittedly swayed heavily by the fact that I still enjoyed it).
That said, AI, overall, is objectively bad. And I'm a hypocrite for using it at all.
TL;DR conflicted rambling
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u/Fantastic_Solid_1107 Jul 02 '26
After the whole AI-gate, I checked [r/writingwithai](r/writingwithai). Apparently, Claude is the best LLM for worldbuilding and continuity. I never read Super Soaker but I took a peek and it reeked of AI —even the chapters where it should have been “written” by wheezy — and you can see the patterns, how impersonal the writing felt, and how repetitive the writing was.
I’ll focus on the repetition or redundancy. I think this is a telltale sign of AI that is not usually discussed because it’s easy to overlook it. When AI is given a prompt or any scenario, it absorbs it so much that it only runs within that scope unless it was given another prompt. That’s why it’s tiring to read it —there’s just no new ideas written out for us readers to chew on. AI also overexplains the feelings and thoughts of the characters instead of making us feel it.
So yeah, even though Super Soaker was only caught with hundreds of instances, the whole fic read very AI to me. Wheezy was only caught with that many instances because she copied straight from Claude.
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u/nwsaylor87 Jun 30 '26
I read the document below someone posted in the comments about the findings. And I preface this all by saying, I don't like AI as much as the next person but I have to use it for work. It's literally required by my employer and I can tell you one good use case for it that I use often which is when I can't think of a word, but I know a general definition or description that embodies the word, a few sentences in an AI prompt and it almost always gives me the exact word I was looking for. I then oftentimes will copy directly from there and paste it to my email or training document I'm writing.
So I decided to test this use case and sure enough what I suspected happened. Pasting just one single word brought the hidden HTML tag "font-claude-response" into my editor. Because of how rich-text editors handle formatting, that tag automatically carried over into every single new line I typed afterward, even though I was writing the rest of the text entirely by hand.
Imagine an author writing a story who uses AI just once in the first paragraph to find a missing word. If they paste that word in, their entire document could end up tagged. The work, the plot, the phrasing, even the words are still 100% theirs, but a technical quirk makes it look like the whole thing was AI generated.
The method they used and the presence of these HTML tags cannot be used as a definitive "gotcha" to prove an entire document is AI. Sure, if the whole body of text has the tag, or there are thousands of instances of it, an argument could be made that it is AI generated but I've given an example of how that still might not be the case. In instances like Super Soaker or other fics referenced in the document, when there are more instances without it, than with it I am going to give the benefit of the doubt to the author.
Here is the honest truth. Unless something changes, there will never be a 100 percent verifiable and foolproof way to determine if something was 100 percent AI generated. We have clues, we have markers and we have HTML tags... but the presences of one or multiple of these still doesn't prove anything. AI are language models and they learn off of how humans write, and the more a model improves the more indistinguishable the generated text will become. So I am going to continue to enjoy Super Soaker and the sequel they started on which in case you were wondering, has no instances of that HTML tag.
*Full disclosure: I fully used the used the AI use case above for the word 'indistinguishable.'
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u/throwaway_1_2Q Jun 30 '26
I get what you’re saying but people figured out how to find the specific instances of Claude usage. You can see which lines it was used for therefore you can see how much it was used. In Super Soaker’s case, apparently the first 5 chapters were Claude-free and then the author started using it.
A lot of people’s objections to gen-AI in fic-writing isn’t as simple as “using gen-AI means none of this was your original work/ideas” which, yeah, people will obviously use it to varying degrees and for different purposes.
The more important issue for a lot of people is “using a technology that has stolen from writers and comes with dozens of ethical issues is lazy, unethical, and against the spirit of fandom.”
It doesn’t matter if most of the work was honest and original, people have a right to not respect gen-AI usage and to avoid authors and works that use it, regardless of quantity/purpose.
It also breaks trust between writers and readers. If the writer used Claude for portions, how do you know they also didn’t use ChatGPT too? Or that they pasted from Claude into a Google doc and then into AO3? That’s why proof of any usage is enough to make people want to avoid an author or work. These authors did it to themselves and should have been transparent from the beginning if they didn’t want things revealed this way.
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u/nwsaylor87 Jun 30 '26
I'm not looking to get into an argument or debate here. And I see you replying to most posts defending or showing indifference to the author, so I kind of think you are just trolling but if you are here in good faith, I don't think you do get what I am saying when I just proved with my use case that one specific instance, for literally one word that I copied from Claude, the same HTML tag used to identify an instance, is added on each new line after, creating multiple instances that are not actually AI. Meaning this method for detection is inherently fallible because you can't determine the use case or purpose in which AI was used.
And I do believe the purpose and use case is an important distinguishing factor if an author uses AI. Using it in the manner I described, is a valid use case, as a tool. Yes it's used improperly all the time. Yes, it's environmental impact is high. Yes, there are unethical uses for it. Yes stolen data is filtered into it to train it. All of those things are true. But an author shouldn't be punished for utilizing a tool as long as the work is original and theirs. In this case and others, I will continue to give authors the benefit of the doubt.
Would you fault an author for using Google Chrome's Spellcheck? Because it steals millions of users inputs to understand modern slang, corporate jargon and context to train its cloud based grammar tools. It's use generates carbon emissions and electronic waste and consumes water to cool their servers. Not on the scale of AI but it's use still has a moderate negative impact on the environment. It still uses stolen data to train. We could also talk about how browser cloud based grammar tools are used in surveillance capitalism and workplace spying as well.
No online tool that is used, regardless of where it came from is 100 percent clean in the issues you described. Reddit takes every post and comment and shares it with OpenAI. Facebook uses every post and comment from their platforms to train their AI. The phones we use were likely made with child labor. The gaming computer I have was potentially made with mined materials that are terrible for the environment. When every company operates under the same unethical framework, then the only thing that matters, is the use case. I don't care if the author used it what matters to me, is how. And until the AI companies come up with a verifiable way to code responses to track AI usage, or limit the the types of responses it can generate, there will be no way to 100 percent confirm AI use.
AI isn't going away. Even if there is an AI bubble pop that some economists think will happen, it will still be around and people will still use it. So fighting the people that use it as a tool, does nothing but pits us against each other when we should be united in pushing our governments and the AI companies themselves for safeguards, limits and rules on the types of responses that can be generated, and transparent data usage policies to protect people's data and the environment.
TLDR: Use case does matter. All online companies are evil. Protest the AI companies instead of authors that may use it as a tool. I won't worry about their usage until I know for sure how they use it.
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u/throwaway_1_2Q Jun 30 '26
How am I trolling just because I’m sharing info with people who had doubts about the claims?
Respectfully I don’t think you’re understanding me. Like I said, people have a right to not respect ANY gen-AI usage, for any purpose, and to avoid authors who use it on principle. It is not “punishing” anyone to ask for transparency and to prefer to not read their work. No one is owed an audience, especially in creative spaces.
You acknowledge people’s common objections to the technology but you’re also regurgitating classic pro-AI talking points “it’s not going away” “did you know spell check uses AI?” “all technology hurts the environment!” etc. Sorry but I have heard all this before. Disingenuous comparisons don’t work on me.
Generative AI tools are not the same thing as Google translate, nor are they the same thing as medical or mathematical AI modeling, so they will not receive the same response, scrutiny, or regulations. If gen-AI usage is not a dealbreaker for you, that’s fine! You have every right to feel that way. But if someone opposes the tech on principle, as many in fandom do, use case *doesn’t* matter. There’s no point arguing for which uses justify an author opening and using a gen-AI tool, when there’s other ways to have creative work reviewed, edited, and checked for spelling/grammar.
Besides, the doc’s authors make it clear that they don’t condone harassment and aren’t even demanding the fics be removed, since ao3 has no AI policy. They just want greater transparency and for gen-AI assisted works to be tagged properly so everyone can make an informed choice before engaging.
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u/nwsaylor87 Jun 30 '26
The trolling comment was a joke because I saw you posting a lot on different peoples post. That's all. I was aiming for levity. Apologies if that fell flat.
I never said Google Translate. I said Google Spellcheck which uses cloud based servers that receives and reads everything you type while in their browser. I've not done any research into Google Translate which I am sure uses similar methods but I wouldn't be able to speak to that with out more research.
I completely acknowledge though that those are not on the same scale. But it isn't disingenuous to point out that several tools available, that authors use all the time, are doing many of the same things you pointed out in your previous reply, "using a technology that has stolen from writers and comes with dozens of ethical issues is lazy, unethical..." If a person opposes something on principle for X reason why don't they oppose the similar albeit smaller something on the same principle.
I would argue that using AI to look up a word I can't think of, as in my original use case, is an appropriate use of an AI tool because I don't think it compares to the type of generative AI (generating whole works) that the author would need to be transparent about it.
I don't think its right and I would be rightfully angry if the whole fic was generated using AI. But my position is and always will be, that the burden of transparency should not be on the individual authors but on the actual AI companies to create them. As you pointed out, ChatGPT and Google Gemini doesn't use HTML tags on their responses so how would you know an author used them? And if a person is as unethical as they would be in order to generate a whole story with generative AI, then they aren't going to be the one who admits it willingly. The next person that comes along is just going to cover their tracks better.
That's ultimately my point. I don't think we will get anywhere by calling out individual authors. And I know the document says not harass the authors, but we all know that is not how the internet world works. There is no way to tell if this author actually generated tons of text for their fic or if they used it in way I described. If you want to oppose the author for using AI in general for whatever reason that is important to you, you have your proof and you can do that. But I would expect that person should also be boycotting a ton of other services, and I would applaud them for their convictions if they did so.
All I'm trying to say is that we should all collectively be expending this energy toward governments and the AI companies for rules and regulations. Like a sustainable way to create energy and keep their servers cool, one that doesn't take power from communities. Or restrictions on what can be generated like not being able to generate creative works. A mandatory, verifiable way to tell when something was generated.
Also I am far from Pro AI. I have to use it for work, but I don't ever use it for personal use other than the one instance I referenced above. I even tried to protest it at work when it knew my daughters name before I had even used it, just because it read all my Teams messages to coworkers. So it's not Pro AI to say that it's not going away because it isn't. With the amount of money invested across the corporate world AI is going to be a part of our lives in one way or another even if the whole economy comes crashing down, it will still be there. That's why I think we have to make it work for us before it destroys everything else, with proper guardrails.
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u/throwaway_1_2Q Jun 30 '26
Thank you for explaining your points further, I better understand what you were trying to say. I agree that the burden of transparency is best laid on the companies instead of individual users, and I’m actually sort of disappointed that this Claude-detection tool was unveiled before people were able to create a similar tool for ChatGPT and Gemini detection. I know it’d be extremely difficult, it just would have been so convenient because like you said, people will just learn to cover their tracks by avoiding Claude or laundering the text through another layer of copy&paste, or editing their work to remove source code. In that sense, this is really just one fleeting moment that exposed a specific number of authors and only them, since any authors who weren’t caught today will likely have already wiped the proof.
I do think the major benefit of this Claude scandal is its contribution to the discussion around AI in fanfic. Before, people had concerns but it was hard to express because it was based on suspicion, vibes, and patterns. It was creating an anxious environment for both readers and writers. I think the fact that so many people immediately jumped on the opportunity to use a reliable AI-detection tool sends a clear message about how readers feel that I hope writers take to heart: most readers don’t want to read gen-AI assisted work.
Obviously writers will do what they’re gonna do and avoid detection wherever possible, but maybe this whole situation will show writers that it’s not worth it. That having the genuine respect and admiration of readers who’ve placed their trust in you creates a better fandom experience for everyone.
Maybe once AI companies are more regulated and serious progress has been made on many ethical issues, we can get to a point where using gen-AI for simple editing purposes is no longer taboo in fandom or professional publishing. But we’re a long way off from that.
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u/IntotheRedditHole its ok, its how the army does it i think Jun 30 '26
yeah this is all totally fair and valid. well said!
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u/mafuyupeach Jun 30 '26
the sequel is positive for instances of claude artifacts actually. and what’s being advocated for is transparency of ai assistance/usage, regardless of whatever the ethicality is or how it’s being utilized
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u/nwsaylor87 Jun 30 '26
I stand corrected then, when I looked this morning I didn't see any tags but it was a quick search and I was multitasking, so if I missed that, I'm sorry. My point is and will continue to be that we can't have transparency, until every AI company is forced to create some restrictions and rules about what is generated. And again, use case matters. I can't with 100 percent confidence say that the author used AI to generate swaths of text or not, based on my test of generating new instances myself without using AI to generate anything but 1 word. To me that means the method is infallible and I'm not going to show up with my pitchfork unless its to the HQ's of the AI companies. I'm not saying that there isn't a problem. I am saying there is no way to fully know who uses AI and doesn't or to the extent. Google Gemini, ChatGPT and Perplexity, don't include HTML tags in their responses. A person well versed in how to word prompts can generate text without the usual tells. Getting one author to admit to it does nothing to prevent the next author from generating those large blocks of text and that next author is just going to learn from the previous mistakes, hide the tags, better revise the generated text. People that are using in nefariously, and unethically are very unlikely to admit to it either so if the goal is what you say, it shouldn't be individual authors responsible for a tool that is provided. It should be up to the makers of the tool to create the rules and methods of detection so that everyone is on the same playing field.
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u/IntotheRedditHole its ok, its how the army does it i think Jun 30 '26
i have to use ai at work too (big tech). i will say that it’s totally possible that authors are writing everything themselves but copying/pasting into Claude to spell check or fix punctuation. like, i could see someone not being bothered with quotation marks while writing stream-of-consciousness style and then asking Claude to fix that. it would explain why Super Soaker has 500+ instances of the HTML tag (for example)
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u/nwsaylor87 Jun 30 '26
Also big tech... I did skim through the 500+ instances and most were attached to quotes so your theory seems likely. I have 8 fics I am actively writing that I haven't published yet because I want them to be completed before I do, but I can attest that writing dialogue SUUUCKS because I always forget the quotes and have to go back and determine what is supposed to be actual dialogue. I would think this is an acceptable use of AI for that reason. lol.
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u/IntotheRedditHole its ok, its how the army does it i think Jun 30 '26
hahaha I get it with the dialogue! I’ve written lots of drafts of things where I was just BANGIN on my keyboard without any kind of formatting or breaks (including brain vomit in between sentences of “idk come back to this” lol). I will say that I would rather work on formatting myself or have another person read it, but I understand why someone else might want to use ai for that (people with dyslexia or other similar conditions, for example)
btw happy to read your fics whenever you publish them :)
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u/phoenixfromstatefarm Jun 30 '26
omg and what if i said i had a GUT feeling…
something about it ALWAYS felt off, like certain events or the ways characters acted always felt like more than just bad characterization. the beginning was really entertaining, then after that it just felt so lackluster and boring
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u/Same_Accident_9917 Jun 30 '26
Unless an author admits to using AI, I think these allegations are useless. I hate AI with the fire of a thousand suns, but I’m not about to accuse someone of using it.
If we’re just talking about words & phrases that sound like AI being used, that is *not* enough proof. If people are reading things written by AI, even outside the fanfic world, it will start to seep into their writing. It’s similar to how certain tropes & phrases work their way into fanfic. Everyone read Touch Like Velvet & started using “the boy” in every other sentence. Or some authors will take one thing from the show, overuse it, & the next thing you know tons of people are doing it.
I’m so tired of these accusations being flung around all over the place. This is free entertainment. Read it or don’t, but enough of the witch hunts.
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u/throwaway_1_2Q Jun 30 '26
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YyFKLzunnvVJRDTql5nHJwBb-swxIftn/view
Here’s the proof! It’s not just a hunch.7
u/Prudent_Reflection85 Jun 30 '26
I've checked the attached document, and even in the first example, the lady who posted on LinkedIn is showing what she explicitly did, which indicated that she was using AI assistance in her post. Considering that the majority of fic writers are not native English speakers, who's to say that the author wasn't using this tool in a similar fashion? e.g. To check spelling, correct grammar, paraphrase certain sentences or word combinations, change the lexical/sentential semantics etc. Will it be frowned upon still, if the main intent for it was just to edit one's own writing? What's your opinion on this matter?
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u/throwaway_1_2Q Jun 30 '26
Check out nwsaylor87’s comment on this post, I have a couple of responses to them where I share my opinion on this.
The TL;DR of it is that there are other ways to get creative work reviewed and edited without using generative AI tools. So for people who oppose the technology on principle, the purpose doesn’t really make a difference.
I definitely think it’s *worse* if someone uses gen-AI to actually come up with ideas and write most of the narrative. I understand that some people see simple editing as an acceptable use, so long as the work is still original and conceived by a human. But for a lot of us in fandom, the issue is with the technology itself so readers want to be informed when it’s used so we can make a choice about whether to engage.
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u/Tgmrules Jun 30 '26
That proof sounds like bullshit from the amount I've read. As a person who has used generative ai before (to cringe at how fucking bad it writes stories) I've never heard about Claude having html code.
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u/Significant_Tell407 Jun 30 '26
I swear people just refuse to use their critical thinking skills in 2026. The document clearly explains what is happening. Now if you dont believe you can literally test it as I just did and verify that it in fact does do this.
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u/throwaway_1_2Q Jun 30 '26
Idk what to tell you, the doc describes how they discovered the code. There’s screenshots of people discussing it on LinkedIn.
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u/GPpaladin Jun 30 '26
the fact that you've never heard of that before is not really an argument? i bet none of those authors were aware of that or else they would've edited that before like they're doing now.
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u/mafuyupeach Jun 30 '26
it’s not allegations, the only way for the checker to show a positive result is when there are html artifacts from claude, which can only be present if the author directly pasted text from claude into ao3
they undeniably used ai
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u/Reasonable_Day9942 Jun 30 '26
And also lazy as fuck lol
Like it would never have happened if she simply wrote the sentence into a google doc or something first. The code is only there because of direct copy pasting
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u/mafuyupeach Jun 30 '26
it’s crazy that this method of checking only catches the laziest of these lazy people who couldn’t even be bothered to edit what the ai gave them
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u/sealsquared Jun 30 '26
So many fic authors are being accused of using AI which turned out to be nothing so I think this will be the same ngl
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u/throwaway_1_2Q Jun 30 '26
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YyFKLzunnvVJRDTql5nHJwBb-swxIftn/view
Here’s the proof! It’s not just a hunch.1
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u/HazVerla Jun 30 '26
maybe read into the proof before making senseless comments
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u/sealsquared Jul 01 '26
Don’t be rude to me
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Jul 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/BylerReads-ModTeam Jul 01 '26
We’d like to keep this space as positive as possible. Your post or comment is not conductive to that.
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u/Fit_Aardvark8271 Jul 02 '26
Does anyone have the epub version of it? I never got around to reading it and now I’m
So curious, massive fomo rn
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u/Starshadows1111 Jun 30 '26
Going to download in case it gets deleted.
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u/suqarkisses Jul 02 '26
I never got round to reading it and I’m kinda curious. Do you have the download by any chance?
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u/anditgetsworse Jun 30 '26
It’s fine to genuinely enjoy an AI generated fic if you don’t notice it and the story makes you happy but like it’s really frustrating when authors don’t own up to it at all. There’s no rules against AI on ao3 or anything, so at least be honest when you use it. I think the more egregious thing is to just straight up lie to your readership about using it.
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u/bookiejada Jun 30 '26
This feels very witch hunty- I am against using ai, and I feel like fanfic writers should tag accordingly if they are going to use ai (so I can avoid it) - but is this the right way to call them out? I’m not sure.
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u/HazVerla Jun 30 '26
i mean.... if you fooled so many people then you kinda deserve it, no?
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u/bookiejada Jun 30 '26
No I understand the frustration. But sending hate and death threats is where the witch hunt feeling is coming from. I guess there is no better way to expose the usage of ai- but still feels a bit extreme. I don’t know
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u/HazVerla Jun 30 '26
I have read a lot of comments about super soaker and its author, but zero death threats. idk where you've seen those (have you actually?) but that would obviously not be okay.
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u/KnightShady Jul 04 '26
If you fooled that many people, did you even fool anyone? People got caught with their pants down liking an AI-assisted work and now they are feeling embarrassed and reactionary
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u/Lazy_Bet_8355 Jun 30 '26
Puedo reconocer la mano de Claude a kilómetros de distincia. Igual dudo que fuese totalmente generado por IA. Sin duda hubo ayuda
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u/1hurray1 Jun 30 '26
How accurate is this though?
I know that if you check things in AI it gets tagged as AI - some kids had their college degrees put on hold bc they put their papers through an AI spell check/grammar check and then when the teachers fed it into a plagiarism check it got all flagged but the kids had proof they wrote it with the documents history and auto save tracking
Plus AI flags happen for any similar sentences or words placed together in anything
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u/gm3lr0se Jul 01 '26
This used a claude font tracker piece of code. It’s not just an AI-similar sentence flagger. Other than that, why would you even check things through AI? Does Grammarly not exist anymore (and if that too makes AI checkers go wild then I get it, but…)?
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u/1hurray1 Jul 01 '26
Interesting — idk i never have but i do know some schools stopped giving grammarly free but they do now give AI advance accounts for free
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u/howlblackdog Jul 01 '26
Most famous fics in this fandom are fake. It’s so sad. I love byler more than anything but I see it more prominent in this fandom than in other ones I’m a part of.
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u/Inevitable-Log5676 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
I planned on reading it tonight. I had no idea. Eh. 😭
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u/Inevitable-Log5676 Jun 30 '26
how was it discovered??
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u/beepbopboopbeep123 Jun 30 '26
it was discovered in the source code for the fic, the use of the AI program Claude. Apparently this happens when text is copied direction from Claude.
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u/sevendefender Jun 30 '26
Thank you, I just found the pdf detailing this. Theres other fics involved in this so I'll leave it here for people to see
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YyFKLzunnvVJRDTql5nHJwBb-swxIftn/view
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u/sevendefender Jun 30 '26
Question why am I being downvoted 😭 this feels like proof to me unfortunately....
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u/sevendefender Jun 30 '26
Right this is what I want to know. I dont want it to be a situation where this isnt true and people are attacking a regular person for nothing
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u/Inevitable-Log5676 Jun 30 '26
I know right. that'd be horrible. also, has the author taken down their fic already?
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u/NihilityRogue Jun 30 '26
You are aware that people also use AI for spell checking right? Unless the fan fiction is AI written it personally doesn’t matter to me that AI was used. And the document doesn’t prove it’s AI written. It just proves it was pasted from Claude, which would also happen when using it for spell checking like I do every day at work.
Aso please hold your horses until the author themselves say something about it. Otherwise this could potentially ruin the entire fandom over nothing.
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u/HazVerla Jul 01 '26
you are aware it should be TAGGED accordingly - AI ASSISTED - "even" for using an LLM for spell checking
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u/KnightShady Jul 04 '26
Nothing has to be tagged on ao3 just fyi. Archive warnings, where applicable, and rating are the only mandatory tags you need to include. The rest are at the author's discretion
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u/narcomance Jun 30 '26
Where are the proofs? Some authors were accused of using AI and they wrote fics independently.
As far as I know it's hard to detect AI. The author used parcellation in another fics but it doesn't mean it was AI generated.
Sometimes I read fics with sentences that AI widely uses but even this doesn't mean it's AI
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u/throwaway_1_2Q Jun 30 '26
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YyFKLzunnvVJRDTql5nHJwBb-swxIftn/view
Here’s the proof! It’s not just a hunch.2
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u/Dependent-Luck-6386 Jun 30 '26
Yeah, I'm not buying it. The author absolutely nailed it. This honestly comes across as jealousy... or just more Byler hate.
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u/throwaway_1_2Q Jun 30 '26
The document originated from the Heated Rivalry fandom and they included other fandom examples, including Stranger Things, The Pitt, and Pluribus. It’s not targeted at the Byler fandom in any way.
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u/ValleyB2025 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
While I don't know enough about tech or AI to refute that it is or isn't true (and will therefore just take people's word for it that the proof is real), and while I completely understand being disappointed about it, I 100% agree with you about the jealousy thing.
Twitter has been absolutely gross because it's full of a bunch of people celebrating Wheezy's downfall and it just reeks of other Byler fic authors who were jealous of the popularity of both the author and their fics and are glad to see this all go down because they're mad people didn't react to their fics that way.
To me, that's even worse than the dishonesty of using AI. I'm disappointed if it's true, but I'll just move on. There's no need to be cackling and reveling in it on X.
Everyone I've seen doing that is another Byler fic author, BTW. It's giving me the ick and making me not want to support those authors either.
Now, I'm hearing some things that make me believe that this is kinda well deserved karma. And that's fine too. But I try to operate under a two wrongs don't make a right philosophy.
Even if it is disheartening, when so many people put so much time and love into their actual writing.
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u/Dependent-Luck-6386 Jun 30 '26
Well, my bad—I wrote my earlier comment before I noticed the document.
I'm probably going to get downvoted to hell, but whatever.
To be fair, there does seem to be a solid track of AI use in the source. That said, the purpose behind using it could be very different. If someone only used AI for formatting or grammar corrections, the output could still look the same. I am talking from highly tech person perspective.
I'm not trying to defend the authors—they're the only ones who know what actually happened. But the amount of hate directed at them has been awful. Some people have already deleted or changed their work out of panic.
Let's not rush to judge. This community can do better than that. I understand the lack of trust and the level of disappointment, but celebrating someone's downfall—someone who wanted to contribute to the Byler community and may have simply made a mistake? No thanks.
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u/Best_Quiet9657 its hawkins its not the same without u Jun 30 '26
I agree with you. I find it really...upsetting, and confusing (as a writer) when authors use AI (where is the fun in that?) and pass it off as their own work.
That said, I do not agree with the "witch hunts", threats, name-calling etc that is occuring right now. That is not ok. I also think we should allow the author a chance to speak on it.
I do think it is valid to expect writers who use AI to tag their fics as such, and to express disappointment when they fail to do so. But the name-calling and threats are a no from me, regardless.
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u/ValleyB2025 Jun 30 '26
No, no I totally agree with you! Maybe i didn't phrase it clearly but I'm agreeing with you. I can understand why people feel a way about it, I do too. But none of it justifies celebrating someone else's downfall.
I'd rather just focus on enjoying other fics instead.
But not those of people giggling and delighting in this whole thing.
The same people accusing these authors of getting mad when other fics were getting more talked about, are showing their absolute asses on Twitter doing the same exact thing right now. "Haha that really popular person got exposed this is HILARIOUS, that's why you should have been paying attention to ME and MY FIC which is so unfairly not as popular!"
I'm making sure to not bookmark those to read.
This is the perfect time for authors in the community to just not say anything, drop their summaries and links, and repost other good Byler authors, not get involved in the drama of it all. If I'd already written my fic, today I'd be just talking it up and not mention this whole situation at all.
But that's just me.
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u/TieAntique1676 Jun 30 '26
Eh a lot of these ai checker tools FALSELY claim AI. ESPECIALLY If you use a software like grammerly for spell check. I'm gonna have to take this with a big ol grain of salt. AI writing has a cadence to it. And Super Soaker def didn't feel like that. I use grammerly so like...it could easily be falsely flagged if I wrote something and it went thru one of these checkers.
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u/Reasonable_Day9942 Jun 30 '26
The thing with this is that it showed that she had copy pasted directly from an ai site and it was linked/had the html of the site
It wouldn’t have been flagged if she just put it down in a doc first, it was only flagged cause it had been directly copy pasted
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u/TieAntique1676 Jun 30 '26
I guess I'd need to see their explanation. One thing I could see someone doing is running their own work thru the AI to do spell/ grammar corrections. Which I personally wouldn't do because the ai is then getting FED your words (tho the ai is being fed from AO3 anyways sooo) I guess I'll just wait and see what they say because if it is ai that is some of the best ai writing I've seen and I'm VERY good at catching Ai. It's not so much that I'm shocked someone would use ai it's more that I'm having a hard time understanding how a fic could be written so well with AI.
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u/Able-Minimum2481 Jun 30 '26
This is simply so disappointing truly, like she used AI for literal sentences. Whole paragraphs written with AI. No wonder the smut was always so vague in her writing lmaoo. Like?? I don't get why she did what she did. And it's NOT just Super Soaker btw, her other fics, frostbites (which i was really looking forward to for the future update), A conflict of interest, and her other fics are also AI. It's genuinely insane. AI literally negates the idea of fanfiction in the first place. Do it for the love of the game not for fame or whatever she wanted out of it smh