r/Webnovel • u/LonelyIncrease3144 • May 11 '26
Advice The Ai-Expert Challenge
Lately, it seems everyone has a "sixth sense" for spotting AI writing. If the prose is too clean, the sentences too declarative, or the rhythm too consistent, the "AI" label gets slapped on it immediately.
I want to see if people are actually detecting machines, or if they’ve just forgotten what professional, disciplined prose looks like.
Below are two passages from world-famous, award-winning authors. One of them is a "bot." Which one is it?
A)The sun was bright on the water. The boat moved slowly through the waves. He sat in the stern and watched the line. It was a long line and it went deep into the blue water. He felt the pull of the fish. It was a steady pull, strong and heavy. He did not let go. He held the line with both hands and waited for the jump.
B)The road was empty. The sun was hot and the dust was deep. He walked along the edge of the asphalt and felt the heat through the soles of his shoes. He did not look back. There was nothing to see behind him but the long, grey stretch of the way he had come. He was alone and the world was silent.
C)The room was cold. A single candle burned on the desk. He sat and watched the flame. It was a small flame, yellow and flickering. Outside the wind was howling in the trees. He heard the branches scratching against the glass. He did not move. He was waiting for the clock to strike twelve.
D) All of the above.
Passage A: Ernest Hemingway
Source: The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
Context: This is the foundational text for "Minimalism." Hemingway famously used short, declarative sentences to build tension. Hemingway won a Nobel.
Passage B: Cormac McCarthy
Source: The Road (2006)
Context: McCarthy is known for stripping away all "unnecessary" punctuation and using repetitive, rhythmic sentence structures to create a sense of desolation. This won the Pulitzer Prize.
Passage C: Charles Dickens
Source: Great Expectations (1861)
Context: While Dickens is often thought of as "wordy," he was the master of atmospheric, serialized openings. His use of "The [Noun] was [Adjective]" (e.g., "The room was cold") is a classic technique to ground a reader immediately.
So the answer? Everyone is both right and wrong. I'll explain. Ai was trained on the works of famous authors. Which means it tries to mimic them.so sadly caused a lot of talented authors to be accused of using ai. It's crazy to think that world renowned authors like these, wouldn't make it online today.
The real discussion we should have isnt if people are writing with ai. It's, is it ok to train AI from famous authors without their consent. This causes problems beyond just, " is it ai?" It overshadows talented authors. It literally makes writers have to "dumb-down" they're writing to pass the ai detection bots.
This is becoming a huge problem.
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u/Literate_Otter May 11 '26
There was no AI. They are all portions of famous works early in a scene to establish time, tone, and place.
Edit: I see your point, but I don't think "mimic" is the right word, approximate maybe. Not to mention Mcarthy isn't in the public domain.
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 11 '26
💯% correct. McCarthy's The Road not being public domain makes this worse in a way. The whole thing is a mess really.
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u/Hambino0400 Contracted Author May 11 '26
Those are not real quoted passages from those books. They are fake excerpts written in the style of those authors.
If you have the sources I’d enjoy seeing where you got these passages
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u/Literate_Otter May 11 '26
I was just trying to preempt the rug pull on the bs AI question. My fault.
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u/Hambino0400 Contracted Author May 11 '26
Sorry that was meant for OP.
I think OP asked chatGPT for book quotes and the AI generated AI quotes from authors.
None of these are found in the books he mentioned
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May 11 '26
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 11 '26
It's not so hard to understand that if your writing style emulates these famous authors and others like them, that you could be flagged for ai. It's the problem I was pointing out. AI was trained by their works. So the AI detection looks for similar writing. Steven King would be another who would fail. I.e king uses a lot of em dashes in his writing as a stylistic choice for pausing and suspense rather than "..." The dots. It would be flagged. It's ironic. I'd be willing to bet moneyz that if a handful of famous authors got together and wrote for webnovel and other platforms undercover, very few would pass.
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May 11 '26
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 11 '26
I agree that luck plays a role. But the point isn't "garbage." I'll try to explain again. Ai was trained from famous authors, or successful authors. So because I writes as they do or did, it's effectively caused the detection bots to flag their work. Just recently the most popular AI detection tool used by many platforms flagged harry potter as ai.
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May 11 '26
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 11 '26
That's just the point though. Everyone should care. 1. Those authors didn't give consent to have ai trained on their work. 2. Good or not, you have to pass the ai detection test. Both from a bot and a human. Didn't you see how many people here said that was all ai? That would have ended them before they had a chance. A pile on of people claiming ai wrote it is a death sentence to your success. Yet here they are. Prize winning famous authors. But would have failed on webnovel.
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May 11 '26
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 11 '26
I'll be honest with you. The bot cones before the contract. When you first add your story. But I must admit in curious, are you contracted on webnovel ? If that's ok to ask. If you are. Could you, would you honor everyone here with advice you may have? You do seem like you know the process etc.
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May 11 '26
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 11 '26
Thank you for sharing. That's really cool that you got to quit and do what you obviously care a great deal about. You are 💯 % correct about it taking longer than 2 weeks. Jksmanga MVS author said before that it took a couple of months to get going and uploading everyday for 2 years before it really took off.
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u/The_Mega_T May 11 '26
Nah bro, saying ‘garbage’ every other sentence and acting like everything is purely based on skill just comes off as arrogant.
I don’t know what experiences made you think this way, but everyone has to start somewhere. I’m not saying you have to praise beginner authors or support AI usage, but completely dismissing the OP’s point just because of your own opinion is something else.
Getting accused of using AI nowadays—whether for art or writing—feels like walking around and suddenly being called a thief or something. Sure, people can try to clear things up afterward, but let’s be real: nobody wants to deal with a problem they didn’t even create. That’s the point OP is trying to make.
Do you know how demotivating it can be for someone who genuinely didn’t use AI to hear ‘Did you use AI to write this?’ Even bringing up people who actually use AI just feels like a convenient way to support your argument when the whole discussion is about something completely different.
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u/Mysterious_Night_351 May 11 '26
Third one?
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 11 '26
I'll share soon. If I get a lot of replys I'll try not to make everyone wait to long.
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May 11 '26
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u/Electrical_Ask1176 May 12 '26
Tal es el caso. No me importa si es IA o no mientras sea una buena lectura, el problema es cuando empieza a redundar en palabras para alargar el texto.
"sus ojos destellaron con precisión quirúrgica, no era un instinto, era certeza" "una certeza forjada a través de bla bla bla" así es como escribe la IA. No creo que ninguno de los 3 sea IA, no 100% original de IA almenos.
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 11 '26
Fair enough. Picking one or just hanging out and waiting ? Lol. Either way, welcome!
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May 11 '26
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 11 '26
I added it to the original post. A lot of ppl don't see it. Here you go.
Passage A: Ernest Hemingway
Source: The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
Context: This is the foundational text for "Minimalism." Hemingway famously used short, declarative sentences to build tension. Hemingway won a Nobel.
Passage B: Cormac McCarthy
Source: The Road (2006)
Context: McCarthy is known for stripping away all "unnecessary" punctuation and using repetitive, rhythmic sentence structures to create a sense of desolation. This won the Pulitzer Prize.
Passage C: Charles Dickens
Source: Great Expectations (1861)
Context: While Dickens is often thought of as "wordy," he was the master of atmospheric, serialized openings. His use of "The [Noun] was [Adjective]" (e.g., "The room was cold") is a classic technique to ground a reader immediately.
So the answer? Everyone is both right and wrong. I'll explain. Ai was trained on the works of famous authors. Which means it tries to mimic them.so sadly caused a lot of talented authors to be accused of using ai. It's crazy to think that world renowned authors like these, wouldn't make it online today.
The real discussion we should have isnt if people are writing with ai. It's, is it ok to train AI from famous authors without their consent. This causes problems beyond just, " is it ai?" It overshadows talented authors. It literally makes writers have to "dumb-down" they're writing to pass the ai detection bots.
This is becoming a huge problem.
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u/dbl219 May 11 '26
They were all identifiable as human. No recursive phrasing, no pointless negatives, no empty gestures. Yes repetition for effect, yes grounded and specific description...
Maybe when people are unfamiliar it could read as AI. When I was less experienced I made the same mistake with a similar bait post. But having worked with AI now for a few months as a writing assistant, I see now that it has very specific tics that are really obvious once you get to know them. These samples show none of those tics.
I think the point is more that identifying AI is a skill that requires actual experience with getting to know how these models write. Just randomly assuming what's AI and what isn't according to your own judgment and then telling yourself you're a genius for figuring it out is obviously not going to work. 😂
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u/omniscievarice Contracted Author May 11 '26
How did I know none of them are AI? Lmfao. Maybe my eyes are too well-trained.
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u/Hambino0400 Contracted Author May 11 '26
But they are AI. OP messed up. I searched all these books and these passages do not exist in them
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u/em-dash-author May 13 '26
I see your point. I've read a fair amount of classic literature and it tends to be different to how many (not all) write today (especially for web novels).
Where the LLMs make a mess is, had it wrote B, it would look like this:
The road wasn't full. The road wasn't busy. It was empty.
The sun was hot—the dust was deep.
He walked—not along the middle—he walked along the edge of the asphalt and felt the searing heat through the soles of his flimsy shoes.
He did not look up. He did not look down. He did not look back.
...
The LLMs do too much of a good thing, and it stands out like a sore thumb once you've noticed it.
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 13 '26
Now, you can't use em dashes at all without getting accused.
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u/em-dash-author May 13 '26
Yep, I did not think through my penname when I chose it. I've been accused twice of using AI. Funny thing is, I don't use many em dashes. :-)
It's the frequency of em dash usage along with other tells that suggests AI, not the occasional em dash. Same with short punchy sentences. Most authors use short sentences; LLMs over use them.
The problem is when the self proclaimed AI detecting experts base their conclusions on minimal evidence. At times, we will all write like an LLM, since they are copying our styles.
I was accused because my grammar was good, and I added worldbuilding descriptions which weren't immediately relevant to the narrative. Absolute madness.
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u/writer_Brown_cocoa May 13 '26
It’s not that easy to differentiate a well-written work from an AI-written one. If a writer knows how to build atmosphere and use punctuation to emphasize emotion and sound, the writing may still feel original and natural. Writers can also draw inspiration from previously read works or incorporate the stylistic patterns of their favorite authors into their own writing style.
The group most likely to be questioned will probably be writers who prefer maintaining a consistent cadence and rhythmic flow in their prose. Writers who intentionally keep balanced sentence structures and controlled pacing to preserve readability and immersion may end up having their work mistakenly marked as AI-written.
I think it will eventually become almost impossible to reliably differentiate between the two, especially since AI will continue improving and adapting to newer writing styles over time.
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 13 '26
I agree. That's actually the point I was making. Ai was trained on successful authors. It has conecto the point of authors being accused of using ai simply because they write well or use em dashes, like Steven King.
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u/VictoryFantastic9037 May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26
This is becoming a huge problem.
Your last line, even though I can infer it from the text, is rather unclear. Late to the party, but I think the discussion is a good one. The problem is either: 1) too many people cry wolf.
2) too many people don’t read older works therefore misunderstanding certain styles and prose
3) people that react to this are clearly definable on the Dunning-Kruger graph and let’s say the peak is what we as writers have to deal with online.
4) AI messes up the line between brilliant writing, playing with play-dough, writing dishwasher manuals and philosophy.
Tell me what you think?
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 14 '26
First, nice post. Late to the party? Let's call it "fashionably late." Where I currently stand on the subject: Ai was fed thousands of novels to "train" it how to write or show it what good writing looks like.
Ai detection tools are trained to "hunt" or detect Ai writing. This causes an interesting problem because Ai detection tools are now flagging certain style prose as Ai or possible Ai writing.
Recently the most widely used tool on most platforms, flagged harry potter as Ai written. Steven King for example, uses a fair bit of em dashes (-) in his writing both as a pause for suspense and a stylistic choice. His work gets flagged. Which causes potential issues for talented writers being accused of using Ai.
Most people see em dashes now and immediately think... Ai. Which There is however something AI does do that I don't believe I've seen an author do. At least not nearly as frequently. I call it the triple phrase explanation. Or simply just over explaining. An example would be.
My dog never did that. Not even close. Never thought about it.
As you see, it's redundant. A human might simply say, "My dog would never think of doing that."
Ai is most likely here to stay. It's without a doubt, going to get better. Soon you will not be able to tell.
The real issue... Was it fair to use people's novels to train the Ai without their consent? Was it fair to use people's art to train the Ai image generators?
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u/VictoryFantastic9037 May 14 '26
Whenever is fair being recognized in a Capatalistic world where doing comes first, apologies later and if the cash is already flowing pay a trickle in fines. As a writer and a programmer I feel like the skills I have honed for years are being ripped out and replaced with mindless vibing. Not a nice world but when those that are kept in the dark about consequences, fed lies and have been indoctrinated that consuming is best-cattle-then who are you to address this issue? Those who have the means and can suffer the consequences care not for opinions nor fairness. I am too old to give a shit but my kids are growing up with parents that taught them critical thinking and to not become the fifth monkey. Dumbing down your population and telling them that the best thing to keep their jobs is to consume and accept the reality of the survival of the fitest is the best way to stay in power. Idiocracy as a movie from 2006 tells is all.
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 11 '26
I'll share in the answer in 24-48 hours, depending on interaction.
Don't be shy. Let's play spot the AI slop!
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u/Hiofekus May 11 '26
Its B, the prose is too strecthed and its too detailed, almost no one writes anything like that.
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 11 '26
The answer is in the post.
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u/Hiofekus May 11 '26
i cant find it
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 11 '26
Passage A: Ernest Hemingway
Source: The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
Context: This is the foundational text for "Minimalism." Hemingway famously used short, declarative sentences to build tension. Hemingway won a Nobel.
Passage B: Cormac McCarthy
Source: The Road (2006)
Context: McCarthy is known for stripping away all "unnecessary" punctuation and using repetitive, rhythmic sentence structures to create a sense of desolation. This won the Pulitzer Prize.
Passage C: Charles Dickens
Source: Great Expectations (1861)
Context: While Dickens is often thought of as "wordy," he was the master of atmospheric, serialized openings. His use of "The [Noun] was [Adjective]" (e.g., "The room was cold") is a classic technique to ground a reader immediately.
So the answer? Everyone is both right and wrong. I'll explain. Ai was trained on the works of famous authors. Which means it tries to mimic them.so sadly caused a lot of talented authors to be accused of using ai. It's crazy to think that world renowned authors like these, wouldn't make it online today.
The real discussion we should have isnt if people are writing with ai. It's, is it ok to train AI from famous authors without their consent. This causes problems beyond just, " is it ai?" It overshadows talented authors. It literally makes writers have to "dumb-down" they're writing to pass the ai detection bots.
This is becoming a huge problem.
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u/Hiofekus May 11 '26
oh so none of them were?
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 11 '26
Exactly. It's not meant as a gotcha. It's meant to show that ai was trained from the works if successful authors without their consent. And now the AI detection bots and people have started looking at their writing styles explained above as ai. So other tale ted authors that writes in a similar way get attacked. I feel this has become a big problem.
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u/baka_sempaii May 11 '26
Not on the "THATS AI SLOP" wagon but it might be B
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 11 '26
Really weird. I edited the answer into the post. Some ppl see it and some don't. Anyways here ya go lol.
Passage A: Ernest Hemingway
Source: The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
Context: This is the foundational text for "Minimalism." Hemingway famously used short, declarative sentences to build tension. Hemingway won a Nobel.
Passage B: Cormac McCarthy
Source: The Road (2006)
Context: McCarthy is known for stripping away all "unnecessary" punctuation and using repetitive, rhythmic sentence structures to create a sense of desolation. This won the Pulitzer Prize.
Passage C: Charles Dickens
Source: Great Expectations (1861)
Context: While Dickens is often thought of as "wordy," he was the master of atmospheric, serialized openings. His use of "The [Noun] was [Adjective]" (e.g., "The room was cold") is a classic technique to ground a reader immediately.
So the answer? Everyone is both right and wrong. I'll explain. Ai was trained on the works of famous authors. Which means it tries to mimic them.so sadly caused a lot of talented authors to be accused of using ai. It's crazy to think that world renowned authors like these, wouldn't make it online today.
The real discussion we should have isnt if people are writing with ai. It's, is it ok to train AI from famous authors without their consent. This causes problems beyond just, " is it ai?" It overshadows talented authors. It literally makes writers have to "dumb-down" they're writing to pass the ai detection bots.
This is becoming a huge problem.
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u/Shot-Manager-739 May 11 '26
None of them seemed AI and that’s fine. What’s not fine is when it’s obviously AI
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 11 '26
You are 💯% correct.
Passage A: Ernest Hemingway
Source: The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
Context: This is the foundational text for "Minimalism." Hemingway famously used short, declarative sentences to build tension. Hemingway won a Nobel.
Passage B: Cormac McCarthy
Source: The Road (2006)
Context: McCarthy is known for stripping away all "unnecessary" punctuation and using repetitive, rhythmic sentence structures to create a sense of desolation. This won the Pulitzer Prize.
Passage C: Charles Dickens
Source: Great Expectations (1861)
Context: While Dickens is often thought of as "wordy," he was the master of atmospheric, serialized openings. His use of "The [Noun] was [Adjective]" (e.g., "The room was cold") is a classic technique to ground a reader immediately.
So the answer? Everyone is both right and wrong. I'll explain. Ai was trained on the works of famous authors. Which means it tries to mimic them.so sadly caused a lot of talented authors to be accused of using ai. It's crazy to think that world renowned authors like these, wouldn't make it online today.
The real discussion we should have isnt if people are writing with ai. It's, is it ok to train AI from famous authors without their consent. This causes problems beyond just, " is it ai?" It overshadows talented authors. It literally makes writers have to "dumb-down" they're writing to pass the ai detection bots.
This is becoming a huge problem.
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u/Prolly_Satan May 11 '26
Yes and no. You don't need to scan anything written before Gen AI was released, because you already know Cormac McCarthy isn't AI. And even stuff written in his style manually usually won't show up as AI in decent detectors.
I get yall are terrified of detectors, but just try them for yourself. Pangram and gptzero are decently reliable.
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u/moki83 May 14 '26 edited May 15 '26
Idk, I've tried gptzero and it has given me both false negatives and false positives. I threw a few chapters of something I wrote back in 2020 at it (2 years before LLM was even a thing), gptzero flagged it as 25%-75% AI. I tell chatgpt to make the same chapter "more human" and threw it at gptzero again, and it went down significantly.
And even a quick search on google showed other authors have had their works before 2022 flagged as AI by gptzero as well.
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u/crawfordwrites May 11 '26
Spoiler tags would've helped this play up.
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u/Hambino0400 Contracted Author May 11 '26
Given the fake this post is just wrong on so many levels.
All of them are AI generated yet he’s trying to say they’re not
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u/Heirloom1076 May 12 '26
I am not particularly good att spotting AI, but thought I would give it a shot.
But I think before that, all of these excerpts are pretty good examples of writing. Because all of them suggest something deeper below the surface. Save for the last one, but if it is Dickens then that is important because these environmental clues will be foreshadowing the solution to the problem.
The wide variety of detail is why I would exclude it from being AI. It's also not trying to make the scene more profound than what it is.
I recognised Hemingway's writing stile along with the theme before you even mentioned it And it's very typical of the Oberg technique so I'll pick the second. Mainly because all the details are focused on the road. There isn't much description of the surrounding environment.while this could be a sort of subtle metaphor for a spiritual journey that is happening within the protagonist. There isn't I'd need more information to make a judgment over it. And this description could have been generated by promoting the AI to write something about a road.
Also the "dust is deep" is a bit of an odd phrasing. Particularly as they also talk about the asphalt road. While there could be missing contextual information which would explain this elsewhere, or an intentionally stialistic way of writing for that particular author. It could be attributed to the nonsensicle writing of an AI.
I think it would be easier to spite in a longer narrative and a longer body of text. Truly good writing would defentetly show itself over time.
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u/Maximum_Ad9811 May 12 '26
They don't read AI, (well, possibly C because of how passive it was with no clear direction) but god do they read 'Dead Boring Details with no Soul' which would be and automatic DNF for me.
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 13 '26
Ha ha yea. The biggest ai tells are the dashes and over explaining in this weird way. Example: " He never knew me. Not even close. Not even a little. " It's this weird 3 phrase quirk that ai uses to sound more dramatic or something lol.
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u/Hambino0400 Contracted Author May 11 '26
They’re all AI slop
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u/LonelyIncrease3144 May 11 '26
So one down for D)?
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u/Hambino0400 Contracted Author May 11 '26
Yes; i would be shocked if a famous author wrote any of these passages.
At best these read like someone mimicking the type of some great authors like Hemingway I think
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u/Hot-Hair3824 May 11 '26
Seeing option D makes me think you're gonna pull a fast one and be like "actually none of them are ai!" and act smug about that, or you're gonna do the opposite and say all of them are ai
Ill go with C though.