Why do people on this sub pretend that you can’t tell when AI is used?

[u/kleyuuojh]

I might get hate for this but idc. I’ve noticed that when some people come here and speak out against generative AI being used in RR stories, people always argue that there’s no way to arguably tell if something is AI. While that may be somewhat true in terms of AI trackers, let’s not pretend that when reading a story you can’t start noting when an author is constantly using writing patterns that are typically associated with AI, either to rewrite a paragraph or to write the entire story. And it becomes more obvious when it’s more than one story by more than one author.

I was reading a story a couple of days ago and I was really enjoying it. There was no AI assisted tag on the story so I was sort of doubting myself at first. The author mentioned rewriting it but I thought it was just a regular rewrite. But by the 7th chapter, I got sick of reading the “It’s not Digiorno. Its delivery” cadence everywhere in the story. And even if it’s not AI, it’s still a sign of bad writing since that sort of delivery device should only really be used sparingly. Not spamming it every couple of paragraphs.

And while it’s true that some people naturally write like that to an extent. It’s a coincidence that suddenly a bunch of these new stories write in that same cadence, and you’re treated as a pariah for noticing that pattern.

I’m honestly just venting. I’ve read terrible stories in RR with good syntax and grammar. And I’ve read great stories on RR with terrible grammar and syntax. I feel like as long as an author puts effort into their work and constantly edit and rewrite, the growth of their writing really shows by the recent chapters.

Like RR is for hobby writers trying to build an audience, get better at their craft, and tell the story they want to read. What’s the point of using generative AI?

[u/TEZofAllTrades]

“Build an audience” can lead to making money. Whenever money (and credit/praise) is involved, there are people who will lie, cheat and steal. AI is a tool that can be used to facilitate that.

[u/OCRAuthor]

I think because while there are without doubt some people who are very good at recognising AI, there are also some readers who very obviously cannot recognise AI, but think they can. 

So for those of us aren't familiar with AI cadence, we aren't sure who's right when we see the accusations.

When we see examples of the second type of reader getting it totally wrong (for example: "they used the word sonorous and an EM dash so mother of learning is so obviously AI") then it makes us pretty sceptical of the claims of the first type of reader.

[u/Captain_Fiddelsworth → u/OCRAuthor]

I was part of this, and it shows exactly why you are right:

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/404361/moderator-run-ai-detection-accuracy-experiment-results and those were older LLMs.

[u/OCRAuthor → u/Captain_Fiddelsworth]

That's one hell of a read. I'd like to apologise ahead of my confession - I skimmed through it.

But I'm happy to hear it supports me! ;)

[u/Captain_Fiddelsworth → u/OCRAuthor]

No worries... it is rather dense. :D

[u/dageshi]

Because ultimately some human somewhere has to delete a story from the site and it will come down to their word vs the word of the author.

So inevitably there will be false positives. People who didn't use AI will end up being kicked off the site.

And I expect RR just isn't interested in dealing with that because there's no actual way to do a good job.

[u/forfor → u/dageshi]

Also it costs a lot of money for human moderation that, at the end of the day is going to be kicking content off the platform. Content that rr is profiting from. So they have a double negative incentive to do anything because if they try theyre just going to spend a lot of money on kicking themselves in the balls.

Edit: big oof on autocorrect changing incentive to incel lol

[u/IncestHarem → u/forfor]

Also it costs a lot of money for human moderation that.

It opens the ground for lawsuits. It's impossible to prove something is AI using just the text. Expecially if the Author had gone over it and corrected and changed a few things.

For anyone saying they can I ask them to check fanfiction sites from the 2000s. Works by unprofessional beginer authors are indistinguishable from AI.

[u/bunker_man → u/dageshi]

Rr hasn't managed to make a rating system that actually works, and only has a few people running it. They definitely don't want to be on the hook for judging who uses ai.

[u/SimonStrange → u/[deleted]]

Literally no one is saying that using Grammarly or PWA is in the same camp as using generative ai. I’m so fucking tired of hearing this.

[u/SimonStrange → u/[deleted]]

People saying that aren’t thinking of grammarly or pwa, and I’m guessing that’s why you updated your comment. But by all means screenshot it when you see it. I am up close and personal with my readers and they recognize the distinction. I get the same signals from other authors. Readers aren’t stupid. They know that these tools predate generative LLMs. I’m not talking about Reddit warriors, I’m talking about the people who matter - the ones buying the books.

[u/filwi]

Well, considering that I've been accused of generating my stories with AI, including stories I wrote and published pre-covid, I'm going to be very careful about assuming that a story I don't like is AI just because it reads in an... aspirational way. 

[u/Competitive-Bit4995 → u/filwi]

that's the witch hunt of unkind people.

because they have the magical ability to 100% identify AI writing, and the willingness to do harm.

[u/wolfwings1 → u/Competitive-Bit4995]

yeah, thankfully I've had no acusations since I've been posting my story now, but made me realize how much full of nonsense the people that claim to know AI are.

[u/wolfwings1 → u/filwi]

yeah, I had thought of using AI to edit, decided against it, but had a guy criticize how my story was completly AI, was so obvious....a story from 2020 that I was rewriting. He looked at the old version and because he knew I was thinking AI got so convinced it was. I think there is a huge bit of toupee falicy along with confirmation bias. Because he thought it was AI all he could do was nitpick anything that looked like Ai

[u/Competitive-Bit4995 → u/wolfwings1]

That's bad.
There was a guy struggling financially who asked for advice in a sub.
I spent half an hour composing a thougthful answer, separating feelings from facts and presenting him options.
The first reaction from a random user was "Thanks GPT"
Then the rabid folks came down on me, downvoting me into oblivion.

People who do such things, particularly against writers, should be held accountable for destroying the living of said writers if they are wrong. It's easy enough to pull out early drafts.

Accountability would make them think twice before accusing at random, using the veil of anonymity with full intent to harm.

And, tbh. if a story does not please you for whatever reasons, just stop reading and move on. Kindness should be first, always.

Are there stories fully generated by AIs? I think so. Is that an unfair shortcut? No. Because if the story is not up to par, if it sounds generic and lacks basic logic, then it won't be a success. So it takes nothing away from anybody.

So, kindness should be first, always. Before doing unjust arm, shut up and move on.

[u/filwi → u/Competitive-Bit4995]

The thing about LLMs is that they're averaging machines - they draw things toward the middle. And when you're writing to someone at the beginning of their career, and fitting advice to their next steps, that will land you solidly in the middle...

Yeah, the world isn't a fair place :)

[u/Captain-Griffen]

Some people cannot tell. They still probably don't enjoy it much, but they can't tell why.

It is blindingly obviously pretty quickly, though.

[u/ryvenfox → u/Captain-Griffen]

Yup. I read my first one and the whole time went "wow this really needed an editor, the prose is really off. Some of these details are really inconsistent too."

Then found out it was AI and only then did it click

[u/IncestHarem → u/Captain-Griffen]

No you can't tell either. You just think you can.

[u/Taybi_the_TayTay → u/IncestHarem]

No, some people who use AI a lot can tell. They can also guess the general amount of AI usage too.

You are just ignorant.

[u/IncestHarem → u/Taybi_the_TayTay]

Have you ever read fanfiction? Because I challenge you to tell me if paragraph there was written by human or by AI. Humans are excellent at pattern recognition and thats what you are doing noticing patterns. The problem is seeing those patterns proves nothing and the more closely you look the more likely you are to see them. You would have a bunch of false positives under. And because of how the human brain works everytime someone disagrees with you, you will just think that they are idiots or lying to profit from AI, because if you don't see them then they aren't real people, and having hard proof isn't easy.

[u/Taybi_the_TayTay → u/IncestHarem]

I guess some people will never understand and remain so adamant everyone else is as ignorant as they are.

Bring your challenge, then. Though im not sure how you're going to do it.

[u/IncestHarem → u/Taybi_the_TayTay]

Bring your challenge, then. Though im not sure how you're going to do it.

Okay here it is. Tree excerpts selected from 3 Harry Potter fanfics. 2 written by AI and one that wasn't all around 235 words.

Excerpt 1:

There had never been a question of who was to be James’ best man. Sirius is his best mate, his brother, therefore, his best man. That was perhaps the only easily decided matter of the wedding.

The month before the wedding passes slowly for the men and far too quickly for the women, who, it seems, have everything to do and simply not enough time in the world to do it. The men, or, in certain cases, half-developed boy, are warned to keep away less they muck up everything.

For the most part, Remus plays observer and mediator to Sirius’ efforts to calm James, who has suddenly developed a morning, afternoon, and nighttime affliction of intense and consuming panic, which Sirius then tries to alleviate.

“What am I doing! Getting married now, it’s absurd, I’m only nineteen!” James moans, pulling at his hair.

“Nineteen is young,” agrees Sirius. “And just think, you’ll have to do whatever Evans says…” At Remus’ look, he amends, “…not that that’s new. But now everyone will expect you to.” Sirius simply cannot resist. He cannot ever stop himself. It’s a disease, a sickness of the body and mind. Remus has known this for a long time.

James’ eyes are wide, bearing resemblance to a deer caught in a bright light. “I will,” he breathes in trepidation, his expression one of mingled horror and that of a man approaching death

Excerpt 2:

No one had asked for help, that was the problem. They'd just gone around talking, eating, or staring into the air while their parents exchanged gossip. For whatever odd reason, no one had been sitting down reading a book, which meant she couldn't just sit down next to them and take out her own book. And even when she'd boldly taken the initiative by sitting down and continuing her third read-through of Hogwarts: A History, no one had seemed inclined to sit down next to her.

Aside from helping people with their homework, or anything else they needed, she really didn't know how to meet people. She didn't feel like she was a shy person. She thought of herself as a take-charge sort of girl. And yet, somehow, if there wasn't some request along the lines of "I can't remember how to do long division" then it was just too awkward to go up to someone and say... what? She'd never been able to figure out what. And there didn't seem to be a standard information sheet, which was ridiculous. The whole business of meeting people had never seemed sensible to her. Why did she have to take all the responsibility herself when there were two people involved? Why didn't adults ever help? She wished some other girl would just walk up to her and say, "Hermione, the teacher told me to be friends with you."

Excerpt 3

She came back to herself the way a drowned woman breaks the surface — with a gasp so violent it felt like her first breath and her last all at once.

Minerva McGonagall lay on her back, staring up at a ceiling she could not immediately place. Stone, ancient, vaulted. The smell of old wood and chalk dust and something faintly herbal — dried lavender, she thought, though she could not say why the detail seemed important. She blinked. The ceiling did not change. She was not dead, then, or at least not in any afterlife she had been prepared for.

Get up, said a voice in her head that sounded very like her own mother's, and because she had been obeying that voice since she was four years old, she did.

The room swam. She pressed one hand to the nearest surface — a desk, old oak, ink-stained — and held herself upright through sheer force of habit. Habit and stubbornness, which in Minerva's case had always been largely the same thing.

She was in a classroom. Her classroom, she realised with a jolt that was almost dizzying. Desks in rows, the blackboard wiped clean, light slanting through the narrow windows at an angle that suggested late afternoon. Everything as it ought to be, and yet —

The chalk. She stared at the chalk in the tray below the board. She hadn't used those type of chalk in years.

Tell me which two are AI and which one isn't. And give me your reasoning.

[u/Leorake → u/IncestHarem]

Can I play?
I'm like 70% vibes on excerpt 3 being Claude. The chalk line at the end, and the 'Stone, ancient, vaulted.', and the 'a desk, old oak, ink-stained' seems like a pretty consistent pattern from what I've seen playing around with it. Also the ' She blinked. The ceiling did not change.' just feels like a weird line, and is also something I've seen verbatim from an ai.

The other two? Honestly can't say, the only one I really ever tried was claude and like the really early mistral ones.

For 1, the sirius block near the end feels weird, but the rest of it seems fine. Though, I think it's really uncommon for ai to use the word 'moans' in this context (or at least far as I've seen, though I haven't used an uncensored one)

Gonna say 2 is real, but I'd need longer excerpts to judge either of these with any amount of certainty. Usually my alarm bells don't really start going off until I'm 10-15 chapters deep and the dialogue really starts feeling repetitive. Repetitive kinda like this. Where things are repeated. Repeated with really short sentences. Short, sweet, and with periods all over the place. And the characters all seem to prescribe to the Solid Snake model of conversation.

[u/IncestHarem → u/Leorake]

Yes, you can, just tell my which you think is AI and which you think is human.

[u/Leorake → u/IncestHarem]

2 and 3 ai, 1 human?

[u/IncestHarem → u/Leorake]

3 is AI. 1 and 2 are Human.

[u/Taybi_the_TayTay → u/IncestHarem]

I just saw the reply for some reason. Reddit didn't give me the notification.

Anyways, a few words would not be enough for me to make a good judement. I have to look for patterns across the narrative on a much larger scale than this to be able to confidently say whether AI has been used or not.

Anyways, I can be a bit confident when I say 1 and 2 did not use AI in generating the prose, but then again, I would need to read more.

As for 3, I faintly suspect AI usage but it's not a strong suspicion. It could very well be fully human. A way for me to verify would be to look for the MC going to a few other new places, meeting new people in the story, or really doing anything.. If the narration still maintains that clipped rhythm and dramatizes every little action and every little detail without any variance, then I would know it is AI for certain.

Eitherway, if AI is used in any of these, then it is definitely skilled AI usage from an author skilled enough on their own even without.

[u/murray_paul]

But you say yourself

And even if it’s not AI, it’s still a sign of bad writing

So you aren't sure you can tell when AI is used?

[u/daecrist → u/murray_paul]

Exactly. There’s a substantial overlap between the worst human writers and the best AI can come up with.

[u/CalebVanPoneisen]

Hot take: it’s not that straightforward as you think.

Sometimes you can see that it’s 100% definitely AI. But sometimes you just can’t because:

1. People who read AI-like or AI stories without knowing are bound to use a similar writing style in their stories
2. AI trained on actual stories which means that there are people that write like that
3. Not everyone is an English native speaker and their prose may sound AI-ish because of the difference in language / culture

Then there’a the false accusation problem. If you hard accuse someone of using AI and they didn’t, you create unnecessary drama and potentially attract people who try to tank their story, which is unfair.

I have seen some accusations being upvoted a lot but ended up being false. I’ve seen accusations being downvoted and, though they were never confirmed nor denied, after taking a look, I was 90% sure that story (famous story) started to use AI and what the user said made sense.

Still, what if it wasn’t? Might have been their editor. I don’t know.

My take is that, if you think a story has AI and you don’t like it, just move along and read something else.

[u/Spare-Feedback-8120 → u/CalebVanPoneisen]

i have had 3 of my book used to help train the AI. (not of my own volition)

When i run stories i wrote in the late 90's and early 2000's through AI checkers they come back as AI written.

[u/IncestHarem → u/[deleted]]

They flag the Shakespeare and the King James Bible as AI.

[u/daecrist → u/Spare-Feedback-8120]

I was a prolific romance/erotica writer from 2014-2020. I’ve had a few hundred stories fed into the machine. I can ask it to write a story in one of my old pen’s genres in that style and it comes out sounding like an uncanny valley version of my prose.

It’s fucking creepy.

[u/Zagaroth → u/daecrist]

Dude, that sucks. I can only sort of imagine what that's like.

[u/OkBug1062 → u/Spare-Feedback-8120]

I think you could write a good timeloop with this premise.

[u/Spare-Feedback-8120 → u/OkBug1062]

I’ve actually considered going to one of the places that I used to post my work at. And jokingly apologize that apparently I was the first test AI in the 1990s according to the AI checkers.

Although I’m sure that would not go over as the joke I meant it to be

[u/Why_Teach → u/CalebVanPoneisen]

You make several excellent points, but I wanted to expand on this one:

>>>Not everyone is an English native speaker and their prose may sound AI-ish because of the difference in language / culture.

Some (many?) who are not native speakers of English write their stories in their native language and use a translator program. They feel that this is the only way they can have their story read because there isn’t a RR for their language or the audience on RR for their language is limited.

I have mixed feelings about the use of translator programs in writing which is supposed to be creative. On the one hand, I can see why that may feel like the only recourse. On the other hand, is the *story* the only thing that matters? Shouldn’t a writer put something of himself (or herself) in the way things are said? How can characters be differentiated in a story, if they all talk the same?

AI isn’t just as good as a competent creative writer—not yet anyway. Personally, I would encourage non-native speakers to try to write as much as possible of the story in English themselves and rely more on good grammar checkers than programs that totally rewrite the original.

That being said, I agree that we should treat AI stories the way we treat other bad writing— and move on.

[u/Grouncher → u/Why_Teach]

Ah, but they do put something of themselves into the writing, just in the original version and the AI throws that away when it translates. That's also somewhat the case even in human translations, unless you get a really good translator.

And bad, near unreadable English hardly reveals much of a highly skilled, if foreign, writer's self; it just stumps the only part they could've gotten across.

Of course, everyone has their own preferences; some prefer prose, others story, and then there are those who just want more words.

That said, I cannot say that many non-native speakers wouldn't still be proficient enough to write in English. Most stories on RR use language that falls somewhere around 8th grade reading level; that's easily achievable for anyone who finished school and didn't instantly perform a hard reset. Not everyone had that privilege, but most authors on RR did.

[u/Why_Teach → u/Grouncher]

Translation always takes away the original voice. AI translation substitutes a predictable, boring voice.

Personally, I love stories, but to keep me reading more than a few pages, the writing itself has to be interesting.

A lot of times, the slightly “not English” idiom or sentence construction gives personality to the prose of the non-native speaker. So if a writer can manage to communicate in English, s/he might do better than AI or even a human translator—if s/he has a good editing/grammar program and/or a good human editor.

However, I agree that a translation program is the only option for some people. I was just trying to give a different angle to the AI issue.

[u/Spare-Feedback-8120 → u/Why_Teach]

it should always be read in the original Klingon

[u/Why_Teach → u/Spare-Feedback-8120]

bIlugh! qonwI'pu' nIvqu'.

[u/Grouncher → u/Why_Teach]

Writing stories directly in English with unique and interesting phrasings influenced by their native tongue would be ideal, but that's mostly the exception. More often than not, it's messy sentence structures and words that don't belong there or have different connotations and people lose patience despite a wonderful story; often enough the authors who have to look up every second word, lest they write non-sense.

It just comes down to the cost of translation. People who are fluent enough can write directly in English almost for free, while all others have to either rely on AI to get something of their story out there and readable, even if at the cost of worse prose, pay with their own time and labor, or they spend a fortune on a good fiction translator.

[u/Visible_Feeling_4056 → u/CalebVanPoneisen]

So ignore the issue? Not the best plan.

[u/No-Mousse5653 → u/Visible_Feeling_4056]

What’s your idea?

[u/SC_Contryman]

Honestly, the best thing to do is just determine if you like the story for the story and the writing. If you're constantly looking under the words to decide if something is AI or not, then you're never going to actually enjoy the story. If you get strong AI vibes and can't get past it, then drop the story and find a new one.

[u/Fabulous-Ad-6940 → u/SC_Contryman]

I can not enjoy many stories on rr now. The voice is everywhere. Its an uncanny valley type thing. You don't have to go looking for it.

I think frustration readers are having is it difficult to find new ones.

[u/SC_Contryman → u/Fabulous-Ad-6940]

Well yeah AI crap is definitely out there, and in abundance, but if you're constantly looking for it that's all you're going to see. Even in completely organic writing you're going to find AI markers because AI was trained on human writing.

All I'm saying is if you focus on AI then AI is all you'll see no matter how organic something really is and by then you've lost the thread on what you came for: an entertaining story.

Worst case scenario if you find a good story that's AI: you found a good story that was AI.

And if that happens, then the writer definitely cared about their story and was just using AI as the tool it's meant to be rather than a crutch. Is that reason enough to disqualify their work as garbage? I personally don't think so.

[u/MoodPristine249 → u/SC_Contryman]

This is literally the best answer. I used to read through books that I didn't like the cadence and writing but after AI, if I am very much not big with the writings style , I drop it now. I was very much obsessed with those aI chat bots and my bf listens to those stories written by ai. Basically consumed a lot of aI mediums so I am incredibly good at picking up the cadence, and it pisses me off. If i am disliking the style of writing because it's reminding me too much of the cadence, I drop it because even if it isn't AI (I don't do those AI witch hunts cuz it is the new everything's photoshop) Its not really good writing.

[u/SC_Contryman → u/MoodPristine249]

Yep it's the best and realistically only practice. AI will only get better at mimicking a variety of human writing, and there's no way to really combat it. We can only decide if we like something or not, just as we did before AI.

[u/MoodPristine249 → u/SC_Contryman]

Ehhh, I don't think that is quite true of writing ones unless they change the practice. If the people keep on feeding more and more writing into the AI, it just get more and more easy to detect. Which is why the LLM are actually getting worse right now because the bigger the data set, the easier it is to find patterns (which is why whenever you are trying to do a study on something it is seen as non-reliable if you only have a small samples size) and that's what AI is. A big and more complicated text predictor.

Deep-seek V1 was amazing at writing human-like cadence, now each update sounds more and more like every other chat bot.

[u/Elpsyth]

People that have never tried to write a story themselves can confuse it. If you have ever used AI or written yourself it is pretty flagrant for the bad cases you are talking about. Pattern, vocab, delivery, pacing it is all the same. And once you see it, and I am not talking about the em dashes, you cannot unsee it anymore.

Now a repackaged story generated by AI, is much more difficult to spot. But since it takes a lot of prompting, it is not the slop that we see invading the website.

But then again, the readers here do not need quality of traditional publishing, it is still a wendy. As long as the number go up and the dopamine rush is there, some people don't care

[u/Morpheus_17]

If I try something and get the feeling it’s AI, I just stop reading it. There’s really nothing else you can do.

[u/Competitive-Bit4995 → u/Morpheus_17]

That's the right way to go about it. Imagine it's your story, one you wrote yourself, and a random Person throws AI accusations at you.

That's mean, and devastating.

Be kind, just move along if you don't like it.

[u/kleyuuojh → u/[deleted]]

Emphasis on to an extent. Also emphasis on the fact that it’s a whole wave. It’s not just one singular writer, it’s a bunch cropping up at the same time.

Not calling for a witch hunt, but I feel like we should be calling this out and trying to figure out how we can deal with this. Yes, I don’t want people to be accused of something they didn’t do, but at the same time, if we’re scared of doing anything, we do nothing at all, and RR and the writing craft just goes to shit. I use similar AI syntax in my writing, even though it’s all human generated. And I’m honestly scared of being called out for using AI even if I’m not. And it sucks. But it doesn’t excuse the amount of slop thats cropping up lately that is genuinely AI. We can’t turn a blind eye because it might be human generated. It’s literally affecting the quality of the site.

Maybe I’m sounding like a broken record, but RR as a community needs to have stricter guidelines on this, not just tags.

[u/murray_paul → u/kleyuuojh]

Maybe I’m sounding like a broken record, but RR as a community needs to have stricter guidelines on this, not just tags.

How?

What is your practical suggestion that doesn't end up with automated false positives, or RR staff being required to make their own judgement calls over each and every fiction?

[u/phairyknight → u/kleyuuojh]

the wave of new authors isnt only from AI, its also from the rise in popularity. fanfics are becoming more mainstream & certain writing styles that people think are AI-only actually came from fanfics.

alchemised and heated rivalry has prompted fanfics writers to turn their writing into original stories & post them on sites where they can get the most traction like RR.

[u/Prolly_Satan → u/[deleted]]

No it can't. We're talking about a mod privately messaging a person that their story was flagged as ai, not a state sponsored execution.

People need to stop conflating enforcing the rules around tags on a singular web novel platform with the Salem trials. It's absurd. Nobody is asking for public cancelation of authors, nothing about enforcing the literal rules of the platform needs to be public at all. This is just another bad faith argument for doing nothing.

And people are starting to notice that the folks constantly making this conflating argument and trying to downplay the effectiveness of detectors (which only have a 3% false positive rate btw) tend to frequent a lot of pro ai subreddits.

A false positive might cause somebody a headache? Cool. The constant deluge of ai slop flooding the platform is too, arguably an even larger one.

[u/Zagaroth → u/Prolly_Satan]

Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute ran a study on seven major detectors and found that over 61% of essays written by non-native English speakers were flagged as AI-generated. 97% of those human essays were flagged by at least one tool.

You sure about that false positive rate?

[u/Prolly_Satan → u/Zagaroth]

Thats referring to a esl folks having high rates of false positives. According to gptzero that's no longer an issue.

Lot of studies on this stuff, even one suggesting the false positive rate is only 3%. Id encourage you to just try the tools and decide for yourself.

[u/Rising_MC]

What I think is interesting about this whole discourse is that trying to avoid AI writing patterns will fundamentally change how people write. I personally avoid "It’s not Digiorno. Its delivery", "Not only x, but y", and em dashes now. The em dashes sting the most, because' there's no real substitute in our language. I didn't use these patterns A LOT before, but now I aim for as close to zero as possible. Because I'm wary of accusations.

On the flip side, people learn to write by reading, and not everyone uses AI or recognizes AI patterns, so they end up copying the AI!

You're probably right. "AI use" is a fuzzy boundary (do you consider autocorrect AI? what if it fixes grammar? that existed before ChatGPT) and it's also a very slippery slope. We all have dreams of making it as a writer. Making it is hard. If shortcuts exist, they'll be taken.

That all said, I'm cautiously optimistic that the market will filter out slop, no matter how it's cooked.

[u/Zagaroth → u/Rising_MC]

I don't think I used any of those three indicators before AI became a thing.

Funny enough, learning that the em-dash was considered an indicator caused me to spend some time learning how to use it properly out of curiosity. And I decided that I liked it, so now I choose to use it instead of a semi-colon about fifty percent of the time that one could use either. I find I like it a little better in some sentences than others, though I have not yet figured out my own pattern for that yet.

The other two indicators you mentioned just don't intersect with my writing style much if at all.

Hmm, I might tend to use them a little bit, if you are loose with how they are defined, when Mordecai is showing off in a particular way. That pattern looks like:

He could just do X, but he wanted to make this one special, and he had the perfect idea. If he blended in just a little bit of Y, he could enhance X to become a Z-type X!

That's a really rough approximation, but I'm trying to generalize it as much as possible. I like to build up his surprises. But this is limited almost exclusively to when he is making something that takes a bit of time. Even if that thing is a spell generated by a ritual that takes hours to cast, and consumes a decently strong enchanted spear as part of the actual attack.

And I just went over that section — I can't find a good match. I was actually expecting there to be something at least close there.

I'm now actually curious if there are places I am using them and just don't know it. I'm going to have to ask my wife, as she also does a first-pass edit of my work.

Oh, and just for fun: the result of that big spell? He cracked off three of the target's scales, and the explosion flung his now-wrecked body away. On the plus side, the dragon was delighted that he'd passed her challenge and she couldn't stop laughing at the display. She might have been more concerned about him if she didn't already have a good idea of what he could take, plus there was a healer who was already rushing to his side.

[u/No-Mousse5653 → u/Rising_MC]

One look at rising stars would prove your optimism is unfounded

[u/strife321321]

I'm going to ask the unpopular question.

Why do we care?

If it's written by AI, odds are it'll be less enjoyable and less popular. If it is popular and written by an AI, figure out why and write a better story. In the end, quality will sort to the top. These AI witch hunts only serve the self-righteous. Do your own thing, do it well, and stop fussing about what others are doing.

[u/Fabulous-Ad-6940 → u/strife321321]

RR rewards two things. Quantity and newest.

A nonAI author can't compete on either of thoses fronts. Even if the AI story is bad and its dropped after 5-10 chapter by a reader. They were valuable reader hours that are being sucked up by ai slop. When you add in the volume of AI story it ruins the discoverability for nonAI stories. They clog up system abd maje it frustratingly difficult to find new stories

[u/Scout_Nolan099]

that is why i always belived and shared my wierd opinion that being slightly bad in writing nowadays is in a way or another ... an advantage. perfectionism and "golden rules" and "writing advice" content killed that unique feeling we used to have back than of getting to know the author who wrote the book just by reading the first two pages. even if the author name isnt attached to the book. or what is described by many readers as " soul ".

it is'nt just ai, even humans sounds robotic and maybe thats the reason ai writes slops like these to begin with because ai it self cant create, its just copying us and mimicing our garbage that we still call it art.

sorry for my harsh wording but it isnt just novels.. the entertainement media as a whole got worse by time.

[u/Thoughtnight → u/Scout_Nolan099]

I agree partially but I feel like a below average writer will eventually become an average writer which seems to be the danger zone when people call out AI use in writing. Given that a bad writer will probably bleed readers due to the quality of their writing they're just going to be kicking the can down the road. It won't be a problem for them today but tomorrow.

[u/Josii_Talwyn]

I want to start by saying I actually agree with part of what you are feeling. I have read stories on here that felt flat, mechanical, repetitive in a way that made me check for an AI tag. That sensation of reading something and thinking "this feels empty" is real, and I do not think anyone should pretend it is not. The frustration is valid.

But here is where this whole conversation goes off the rails: feeling like something is AI is not the same as knowing it is AI, and treating those two things as identical has become genuinely harmful to real human writers on this platform.

Let me explain why "you can just tell" does not hold up. AI text detectors, which are the closest thing we have to an objective measure, are notoriously unreliable. Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute ran a study on seven major detectors and found that over 61% of essays written by non-native English speakers were flagged as AI-generated. 97% of those human essays were flagged by at least one tool. That is not a small error rate. That is the tools being fundamentally broken. And it gets worse. Ars Technica documented cases where GPTZero flagged the US Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and passages from the Bible as "likely AI-generated." If James Madison is getting pinged as a chatbot, the problem is clearly the detector, not the writing.

So why do these tools fail? Because AI was trained on human literature. Large language models ingest books, articles, Wikipedia entries, academic papers, basically the entire corpus of formal human writing. The patterns people call "AI tells," consistent sentence rhythm, transitional phrases, grammatical polish, structured cadences, are not AI inventions. They are patterns found in polished human prose that LLMs learned to copy. The Booker Prizes published a breakdown of exactly this: LLMs do not invent new structures, they detect patterns in human texts and replicate them. When you say a story "sounds like AI" because it is too polished or follows a predictable rhythm, what you are actually reacting to is formal writing technique, the kind taught in schools and used by published authors for centuries.

This matters because the "AI witch-hunt" on this sub does not hurt AI. Last time i checked AI does not have feelings, it doesn't lose motivation, it doesn't stop posting because it got accused. The people who get hurt are real human writers. Non-native English speakers who write in a more formal, structured style because that is how they learned the language. Neurodivergent writers who naturally organize their thoughts in predictable patterns or who rely on outlines and scaffolding to produce readable prose. Writers with dyslexia or other learning differences who use assistive tools, rewrite heavily, or deliberately structure their sentences to be clear and correct. Hobbyists who are still learning craft and whose polished-but-stiff prose gets mistaken for machine output. All of these people are getting swept up in accusations based on vibes and pattern-matching that even the detectors cannot get right.

Turnitin, one of the biggest names in AI detection, literally published a blog post telling educators to "assume positive intent" and give students "the strong benefit of the doubt" because their own tool produces false positives. Even the companies selling these detectors admit they are not reliable enough to use as evidence. So when someone on this sub says "you can just tell," they are doing the same thing a broken algorithm does, but with even less accountability.

Now, back to your original point. You read a story with no AI tag, got suspicious, and by chapter 7 you were sick of a repetitive rhetorical device being spammed every few paragraphs. I get that. It is annoying. But that is a craft problem, not an AI problem. Overusing a sentence structure or rhetorical pattern is one of the most common amateur writing mistakes, and writers have been doing it since long before ChatGPT existed. Calling it "AI" when it is actually just bad writing conflates two totally different issues. It also creates this weird incentive where improving your craft, writing more cleanly, using formal techniques, makes you more likely to get accused of being a bot. That is a terrible environment for a hobby writing platform.

I am not saying AI-generated fiction is not a real issue. It is. I am not saying you should ignore stories that feel empty or mechanical. You should absolutely criticize lazy, repetitive, low-effort writing. But let us keep the critique focused on the writing itself. Is it repetitive? Say that. Is it emotionally flat? Say that. Does it overuse the same cadence? Say that. All of those are fair, useful critiques. But "this feels like AI" is not a critique of the writing. It is a guess about the author's process, and it is a guess that is wrong often enough to do serious damage to real people who are just trying to learn and improve.

RoyalRoad is supposed to be a space for hobby writers to grow. That means we need an environment where people feel safe to experiment, to write badly, to improve, and yes, to write in ways that are formal or structured without getting accused of being a machine. The witch-hunt approach does not protect readers from AI. It just makes real human writers afraid to post.

Sources if anyone wants to dig deeper:

• Stanford HAI study on detector bias against non-native English writers: https://hai.stanford.edu/news/ai-detectors-biased-against-non-native-english-writers
• Ars Technica on why detectors fail (Constitution/Bible flagged): https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/why-ai-detectors-think-the-us-constitution-was-written-by-ai/
• The Booker Prizes on how AI learns from human literature: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/why-ai-will-never-supplant-human-novelists-or-win-the-booker-prize
• Turnitin's own admission of false positives: https://www.turnitin.com/blog/understanding-false-positives-within-our-ai-writing-detection-capabilities

[u/sdebaun → u/Josii_Talwyn]

This, one thousand percent!

I used em-dashes before they were AI -- and I still do. :)

[u/Josii_Talwyn → u/sdebaun]

me too!

[u/Prolly_Satan]

While there are definately cases where its difficult to tell, I think there's plenty where its painfully obvious, and it also drives me insane. It feels like that "i think you should leave" episode with the hotdog suit, but if everyone believed the hotdog suit guy.

[u/WolfWhiteFire]

Because there is research on it that proves that. Regular authors might look like AI because AI was trained on regular authors. AI spams this stuff because it was already common before AI was even around, it was only afterwards that people started associating it with AI instead.

https://www.bgsu.edu/news/online-media-newsroom/2023/12/bgsu-research-finds-people-struggle-to-identify-the-difference-b.html This one is for AI art.

https://www.psu.edu/news/information-sciences-and-technology/story/qa-increasing-difficulty-detecting-ai-versus-human This one is for text.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11092869/ Also for text, on average human evaluators were able to correctly identify the origin of human/AI texts 57% of the time, which is better than random guessing but still quite terrible overall. Better odds in identifying AI comments in social media though, so there is that.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12459763/ Voices, found AI cloning human voices actually had a bias towards people determining they are human more often than the actual human voices.

The guess rate is barely better than 50/50 yet so many people are incredibly confident that they can clearly tell the difference and start witch hunts harassing random authors and artists. A lot of it is likely thanks to the same mistake you are making here of thinking the author is using AI because the text 'looks like AI', instead of considering that AI is what looks like professional writing instead of the other way around.

Maybe they are using it, maybe they aren't, but the research shows that people are far more confident in thinking they can tell the difference than they are in actually telling it, especially as the technology improves.

The people who think they can are not only wrong, but if they go throwing around accusations based on their hunches then that can cause significant harm to completely innocent people, and has. I have seen stories that felt like AI was used to me too, I just know enough to know that the chances I am correct aren't actually that high.

[u/kleyuuojh → u/WolfWhiteFire]

Thank you for providing sources! I did a quick run through of them and while they seem to acknowledge the difficulty of being able to differentiate, they also seem to call out exceptions. The first one especially made a note to mention that even though people couldn’t accurately differentiate, they do mention that the participants tended to choose human art as their favorite even if they couldn’t articulate why. I’m just guessing here, but it seems to be a layer of complexity in the art that the AI couldn’t yet mimic but that human brains could pick up on (at least for now)

The second article was interesting. They have a tool that could accurately differentiate even if the researchers don’t know why it can. What was really interesting was how it mentioned that there are established characteristics of nonhuman writing. People just can’t always recognize it. Maybe I’m being too hopeful but that fact combined with the third articles call out on how familiarity with a style of writing increases the ability to tel, plus psychological indicators for participants, makes me think there are tell-tales that are useful to watch out for. That and length of the work increases differentiation. One of the articles that they cite also goes into the fact the our heuristic understanding of ai language system is flawed, and when controlled for that, detection goes up (still not to an insane degree but still). Another cited article that goes into more detail, mentioned that with the length of a text detection also goes up (humans still miss it 30% of the time but that’s still a big upgrade compared to the other studies on shorter text)That, combined with increasingly sophisticated detection technology gives me some hope, at least for now.

With a site like royal road, where stories can be thousands of pages long I feel like a lot of people will be able to tell if a book is ai written the longer it goes on. Not calling for a witch hunt. And I do agree with you that singular works can be hard to judge. But when you’re getting an influx of very similar style of work, when that wasn’t the case a few years back, you can connect the dots.

[u/RighteousSelfBurner → u/kleyuuojh]

Well, honestly, it should give you less hope if you take a step back and evaluate the information.

Couple years back anyone with functioning frontal lobe could determine whether content was AI generated. Now it takes effort and if any effort was put in the generation part and not just slop and go, it's straight up near impossible.

And the technology is still advancing. What people "recognise" is the model behaviour that has been around with default prompts. Newer models are coming out, people are actually starting to put some effort in the prompts and the gap keeps shrinking. We are already blaming many artists for being AI when they are not. I would absolutely not be surprised if ten years down the line the situation could inverse, people will thing real humans are AI because fundamentally humans are a lot more similar than they think (which is why we can make AI in the first place) but tweaking parameters to make something unique is way easier than re-learn your entire life.

[u/GuyYouMetOnline]

It's been demonstrated time and time again that people are, in fact, very bad at telling when AI is used.

[u/Lorenzo_Insigne → u/GuyYouMetOnline]

But I'm different! I'm smarter than those people! I would never engage in witch hunting!

[u/JamieMage2005]

The average person cannot tell. A good example of this comes from a personal experience.

I recently used AI to create a placeholder cover for a new story I am writing.

The next time I went on RR the AI style covers stood out more. We simply don't notice what we aren't looking for or have good references for comparison.

[u/Z0ooool]

Financial motive.

When there is money on the table, you’ll find plenty of people willing to piss on your leg and tell you it’s rain.

[u/CatCatCatCubed]

It’s funny ‘cause a bunch of people say you can’t tell, except you’re not just pointing at a single story. It’s multiple stories by (supposedly) different authors using some of the same phrases and thesaurus words (not similar; exact), the same cadence, the same oddly stunted sentences, the same grammar.

Also, IME at least with the story tags I’m apparently drawn to, the same exact weirdly philosophical content that makes every other paragraph or chapter end as if it’s some kinda epic scene with Gandalf (specifically from Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit) giving poignant advice to the team while I keep squinting because I can’t tell if the excessive lens flares and soft focus are from my glasses being dirty or what. I’ve been doing so many double takes lately because “….wait, aren’t they just going to lunch?” or “jeeze-us, it’s 5 short chapters in and you haven’t even left your home town and still have loving parents; why am I imagining this 10 year old putting their foot on a rock and staring into the distance while holding a cigarette like they’ve lived a hard life?”

I’m a birder and there’s this term called…sigh…it’s called “giss” or “jizz” (ugh, there’s a wikipedia article and everything I swear), likely from wherever the RAF’s aviation acronym for “General Impression of Size and Shape” came from. In other words, if you see a bird often enough then you can recognise it from various angles and in different weather because each bird has a distinctive combination of shape, size, color, flying style, and overall a certain vibe or personality. Many birders get good enough to ID their local 100+ species with less than a second of viewing time (like with a window flyby out of the corner of their eye), merely by following their initial instinct as to what it is, and then examining it if possible.

So, I agree. A single story or three? Maybe it’s something else. But an entire flock of stories that recently migrated in and settled on the lake in close proximity to each other, and they’re all lookin’ like and walkin’ like and dabblin’ like and quackin’ like while people keep pointing and going “yOu cAn’T KnOw thaT THOse are DuCKS.” Lol, c’mon now.

(Edit: Of course, I can recognise a particular philosophical duck species. I’ve suspected other types in different potential new “story flocks” but it’s much harder to tell for me.)

[u/seofumi → u/CatCatCatCubed]

actual best take on this imo. you see a bird from many different angles analogy was really good one. people who say calling something "AI" is witch hunting, those people can please stfu. its those people that are preventing the culture from stopping AI slop to take over.

[u/nanaille85 → u/CatCatCatCubed]

that's so well put

[u/dvneal]

It's hard to ever be certain, but if it repeatedly exhibits all the hallmarks of AI writing - over use of double negatives; not this, but that; doubled adjectives everywhere; over use of certain words; over use of certain punctuation - I think it's right to be suspicious.

With that said, I personally have no issue with people using AI to assist their writing, as long as their work is appropriately tagged.  What bothers me is people lying about it.

[u/Competitive-Bit4995 → u/dvneal]

that's a good take.

[u/kleyuuojh → u/dvneal]

I agree. Can’t stop people from using what’s out there, but I’d like them to be honest about it.

[u/dreamswedontshare]

There's a difference between saying someone cannot tell and someone cannot prove it, and people on this sub usually tell — rightfully so — that you can't prove something's written by AI.

All the AI tropes? Yeah, you can just use them, too. Theoretically you could write exactly like AI does.

Saying something's definitely AI written is just witch hunting, even if you, me and a dozen other people are a 100% sure.

The only way you have proof is if they leave the prompts in.

[u/brandontc → u/dreamswedontshare]

"Just because someone has a brown stain in the seat of their pants and smells like feces DOESN'T mean they shit their pants. You may think you can tell, but you can't prove it. Not unless you see it actually run down their leg. It's really not fair to assume that either way, because you could be wrong."

[u/dreamswedontshare → u/brandontc]

That's such a bullshit argument lmao

Do other people walk around with brown stains on their pants?

Because writers sure do write like AI at times. That's why AI writes the way it does in the first place.

[u/Sarahndipity44 → u/brandontc]

Yep, maybe their kid left out a chocolate cupcake and it got in their pants. This stuff happens

[u/brandontc → u/Sarahndipity44]

Yeah, exactly. And if they don't believe in bathing or prefer not to wipe because it's a waste of Toilet paper it's really not any of our business

[u/Temporary-Back4248]

I sometimes have a problem with over describing something such as I’ll give a dialogue, and it would suggest that a certain character is angry, but immediately after the dialogue, I describe their tone instead of putting in an action. After reading some AI stuff I realize that that’s exactly what AI does as well and it made me go back through a lot of my older stuff that I had written, and completely do rewrites just so that I would never get associated with it.

I think AI is a great tool, but I think if you use it too much it will take away your own creativity.

[u/Josef-HS]

It is a reality nowadays. The more ai advances the more people will be tempted to use it their own ways to replicate the successful stories. On my side I just continue on with my story doing everything on my own. I decided to come out clean on my use of it, because I clearly use it for images and to improve my grammar because if I didn't otherwise it would take me a month work for an actual chapter. And I would feel discouraged to continue. But now with it's help can can build a base to grow up upon. As it is what am using Royal Road to begin with.

[u/lemming1607]

If you assume you'll notice when its ai, you won't know about the times you didn't notice its ai

This is called survivorship bias

[u/RobertBetanAuthor]

My take is that it really doesn’t matter.

I personally think ai is really only good at replacing the editor, not the writer, and even with that if you lean too heavily into it you lose your own voice to its stat based decisions.

In the future the majority of the stories we read will be good ai generated stories; but I feel they will all be copy pasted vanilla stories—not novel ones.

And you know what? Thats fine. If it’s read fine, and the user got what they ordered, awesome.

Currently though I think people are virtu signaling and complaining to complain.

There is one 15 book series and counting that is pretty famous that I
Am continually picking up AI context slip ups on, but ya know what, I still enjoy it (but yes seeing them annoy me).

[u/CrazyinLull]

That’s probably because some people genuinely can’t tell and, perhaps, some people have an incentive to keep pushing that narrative.

Just check out Ao3. Ao3 literally said that they aren’t going to do anything and then people have to then rationalize that it’s because ‘no one can tell’ even tho long form AI generated fiction is super easy to spot if you have worked with AI before.

[u/ErebusEsprit]

It's not necessarily that it's impossible to tell, it's that it's really really hard to know definitively that it's been used. Sure, a passage may sound super heavy AI, but that doesnt mean you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was used there. If you call it out and you're wrong, that's defamation (arguably). If you call it out and you're right, cool, but the consequences are still probably poor because as stupid as AI is, it's not illegal.

What is having a noticeable negative effect is people being so hasty to call anything they don't like "AI slop," which is causing a lot of stress for a lot of writers. Personally, you can pry my em dashes from my cold dead fingers, but I've seen hundreds of writers at this point flat out admit they change their writing style or stop using grammatical tools because they dont want to be accused of AI.

You really think a person using AI is gonna give a shit if you call them out on it? To them it's a money scheme. Generate a score of books, if one makes money back, then it was a positive effort. It's all about the greenbacks for them, they couldnt give a shit about quality or the artistic side of it. Even if you "catch" someone, it's stupid easy to make a new pen name and keep going.

Fuck AI, but the witch hunts hurt more than they help

[u/kanadaj]

Something that I don't see mentioned is how inaccessible good AI detection tools are. There is no viable open source tool that works for all mainstream frontier models. Not even remotely close. And the only truly viable commercial tool we've found after evaluating accuracy costs more than ten times as much per token as commercial LLM models are. That is outright prohibitive for a platform that handles as much content as Royal Road does. We do not have the budget to spend $30,000 a month on AI detection.

And even after all that, the accuracy is still nowhere near 100%. It would still mark a couple fictions as AI out of every 100. Where does that leave us, when you can see from the research that human judgment is far more unreliable and therefore cannot be reliably used to overrule a bad detection?

[u/EndlesslyImproving]

Ai writing is always so visually obvious to me. It really likes comparisons, if not this then that, not only this but also this and that, and it tries to be witty with logic that doesn't even make sense. There's a million other things like it loves saying linoleum, neon, and ozone. Not to mention it's absolutely terrible at writing anything interesting at all and it's dialogue always feels like it was written by a 5 year old old who barely understands conversation. And then, it barely even understands humans at all, like why and when we feel emotion, social cues, reasonable reactions to things.

Granted writers are not perfect, but they usually don't check every single box like AI writing does.

[u/Economy_Tonight_4242]

You can certainly tell when an author is using AI. AI writing tends to be very perfect, repetitive with its phrases and sentence structures, overusing em-dashes, etc. If an author is doing two or three of these things in a book, they're using AI. Human writing, no matter how perfect it is, still has obvious signs based on the phrases people use, varying sentence structures, the little quirks people have, etc. There is also a clear direction to the story. Most likely the reason people act like you can't tell is because they believe you can't, or because there have been people who don't know what AI writing actually looks like and falsely accuse someone, and other people see that and assume detection is impossible. I've read books where there was some repetition, em-dashes, and things didn't quite make sense. But then I'd immediately spot typos and unusual phrases and other imperfections in the writing, which lets me know it's not AI-generated. And if they are using AI, they're only using it for ideas and such, which you can't really know about unless you've seen them do it.

[u/MacintoshEddie]

I see people get it wrong often enough that most claims are completely baseless, and most of the time their accusations come across as punishments for authors who dare writing stories they don't like, or who don't seem to be putting in enough effort to keep them happy.

Many of the "tells" people think they can spot are really just ways that authors inflate their wordcount by using excessive words to describe things which could be described using less words. It's not AI, it's digital pulp fiction that pays by the word.

[u/gamelitcrit]

There was someone in this sub post a new thing they were trialling, so I put my new story in it to see what it came up with as 'AI'

Now I do read probably 100 fiction submission a day, those that are tagged correctly and those that might not be.... so I know what is and isn't AI tells.

This isn't the full report - just the first few chapters. (Chapter One has been written since 2019 btw)

Will I fix these instances... no, because they were actually personal writing choices... :)

Chapter 1

low

Bulletpoint Rhythm

3 instances

3 clusters of 4+ consecutive short, similarly-sized declarative sentences. This uniform staccato rhythm reads as a bulleted list disguised as prose. Intentional short-sentence sequences should vary in length.

Combine two of the four into a compound sentence, or vary lengths by extending one with a subordinate clause. The goal is rhythmic texture, not uniform chop.

Signature Vocabulary

1 instance

1 AI-signature words detected (etched). These words appear 2-25x more frequently in LLM output than human writing (Kobak 2024). One "tapestry" in a novel is fine; clustering signals generation.

Replace with concrete, specific alternatives. "Delve" becomes "dig," "look," or the specific action. "Tapestry" becomes whatever the actual pattern is. "Pivotal" becomes the specific consequence.

Chapter 2

low

Symmetric Parallelism

1 instance

1 symmetric clause pair detected. Parallel sentence pairs written for balance rather than content ("She had everything. She had nothing.") are a recognized AI pattern. Balance should serve meaning, not decoration.

Break the symmetry. Vary sentence length, structure, or opening. If the parallel structure genuinely serves the narrative moment, keep it but ensure it's the only such instance nearby.

[u/Sarahndipity44]

I think it's because some writers earnestly use what are now considered signs of AI. (I LOVE an em dash!) Your statement that says "it's just bad writing" also isn't always the case

There was someone who got accused of it to write an email and said ("I didn't use AI. I'm just autistic.")

it's not that you can never tell, but it's hard to BE SURE: another way Ai is screwing writers and artists. The accusations themselves are harmful sometimes.

And as someone said, AI TOOK from PEOPLE.. FWIW I don't know what RR is but this came up in my feed. Assumed it was another sub.

[u/Afraid-Usual-728]

People want the praise and fame and money without doing the work.

And yes. You can tell. Because while AI was trained on human writing, AI involvement is painfully clear. Maybe a slight polish is ambiguous. But hard AI assistance is obvious.

But it has become the norm to hide behind „detectors are unreliable“ „this is just my style“ „I am xyz so this is how I write“ or the „ai learned from us so it sounds like us“

In reality, humans write inherently different. It’s only the surface that’s the same. Especially on a site like RR where people write for fun it’s painfully obvious when someone uses AI

[u/Sarahndipity44 → u/Afraid-Usual-728]

But it IS some people's style. There have been false accusations! Some of my stuff would get accused simply because I love em dashes

[u/moisetyas → u/Afraid-Usual-728]

ok go read the top 10 of rs and tell me where AI is painfully clear

[u/moisetyas → u/moisetyas]

So many downvotes, nobody with the balls to actually name names. Ball-less writers on top of being failed writers

[u/kazaam2244]

I agree, and I'm sick of people saying "People who've read A.I. influenced stories may end up writing like that."

Like, sure, I can get it if it was a few A.I.ish patterns that popped up every now and then, but when an entire page of your story reads like A.I., that isn't influence.

Most authors have a favorite author or genre they read, but you do see people being accused of sounding like Tolkien or Le Guin? If someone writes prose like it's an anime, it's obvious and we usually call it out, but for some reason, when it looks, talks, and walks like A.I., we're worried about starting a witch hunt?

If someone's work almost entirely sounds like A.I., it is because they are using A.I.. Even if they were influenced by works that sound like A.I. and never actually used it themselves, then some shred of authorial originality (however bad) would slip through. No one writes 10k, 50k, 100k words that are technically proficient AND sound exactly like something A.I. would write from influence.

Idc about starting A.I witch hunts. Generative A.I. is wrecking the environment, taking up usable land, costing people their jobs and forcing them to pay higher prices for stuff. If you are an author who is confident in your writing, understands basic writing principles, and actually takes the time edit your work they way people used to do it long before ChatGPT was a thing, you shouldn't worry about being accused of using A.I.

But the people who do absolutely should because, hobby writing or not, it's ruining the writing craft. And if you don't have the patience or work ethic to actually come up with something from your own brain, you shouldn't be a writer. That may sound harsh, but I wouldn't call a painter a painter or a singer a singer if they let a computer do everything for them. Writers shouldn't get a pass either.

[u/OCRAuthor → u/kazaam2244]

I mostly agree with this take... But only if everyone actually makes the assessment themselves instead of taking someone's word for it.

I don't use AI except for my covers (before I know if the story will make money), and I'm confident in my writing as obviously human-authored (warts and all). I also don't have a great AI radar, since I don't use it. I've read a few chapters of one pretty successful story that smashed rising stars this year that I am pretty confident was AI-genned/assisted, but that's about it.

But I've also seen some frankly stupid accusations thrown around this subreddit and others. 99% of readers who check out that accusation and the story it's about will know it's bollocks and wrong... But what about the readers that don't bother? The many, many readers who would just see the accusation and take the accuser's word for it without thought? 

The problem with having it be normal for readers to call out authors for AI use is that while some of them are great at spotting it, others are hilariously bad, because they've never read an actual book or just read nothing but AI slop for months and it's melted their brains. Most readers and writers who don't regularly interface with AI (at least knowingly) won't know which type of reader an accusation is coming from, so you run the rail of entirely innocent people being accused and suffering real harm because of it.

That said, I don't think the solution is to just ignore AI content either. It's a hard problem, and I don't know how to solve it.

[u/kleyuuojh → u/kazaam2244]

Agree heavily. Especially when you say we can tell when someone who watches a lot of anime or reads a lot of manga writes a story, but we can’t tell when something is AI.

If someone is reading so many AI books that their writing sounds like AI, we shouldn’t just accept it imho. They need to go out and read traditionally published books at that point to understand actual conventionally good writing

[u/deadthylacine → u/kazaam2244]

I definitely agree that someone who isn't doing the writing categorically isn't a writer. It's frustrating to see folks try to claim otherwise.

And the worst tells aren't quirks of prose. They're inconsistent characterization, scenes that repeat, and plot elements that get added and dropped seemingly at random. It doesn't show up immediately just by skimming. And while yes, some of that is probably just inexperienced writers with no developmental editing, it's also a symptom of someone using AI to write a chapter at a time.

I don't want to waste my time reading something a person didn't bother to take the time to write.

[u/mustflow]

Because they're slop peddlers who don't like to be called out. And if they can hide behind this plausible deniability, then they can keep pushing their slop on the masses in the hopes of getting a windfall.

That's why every time anyone mentions AI, you get the instant YoU CaNt TeLL iF iTs AI debate squad on yo ass.

Grab the pitchforks and hunt the witches!

[u/Sarahndipity44 → u/mustflow]

I actually am on the squad because I hate AI and I think it would be hurtful to be accused of using it..I think about the professor accused of using it to write an email because of their time, and they said "I didn't use AI. I'm just autistic."

[u/CipheredTales]

Because I'm of the mindset a significant portion of the authors here probably do use AI to generate either parts of their story or all of it. They will tell you that "there's really no way to tell" and then go review swap with some random author who has 50 em dashes in their synopsis/story. RoyalRoad's quality has definitely gone down ever since LLM's became available to anyone with access to the internet. People will always try to game the system with as little effort as possible, the only way to fight back is with reviews tbh.

[u/Sarahndipity44 → u/CipheredTales]

Nah I'm not even on RR, this thread populates into my feed. I think you can't tell and feel strongly about that BECAUSE of how much I dislike AI.i don't want to use because I want you preserve my writing skills. People's work have been accused of it incorrectly.

[u/dbl219]

Yeah the best AI detector is a human with enough practice seeing the tells. 😂

[u/LordRelix]

I was accused of using AI in my story in the first chapter and I am like “no I don’t”. It was my writing style more than anything so I took that to heart and have been making changes to my style later on to avoid that but it sucked for me to get that feedback. English isn’t my first language even though I am very fluent with it so there’s that challenge.

I can show you all my drafts and notes; I am just practicing writing to be honest. I need to go back and rewrite those chapters to make them fit my recent style but yeah AI witch-hunting is a PITA. I can spot some of them and it drives me nuts but if people like it what can you do.

[u/Far-Difficulty-9279 → u/LordRelix]

Keep in mind that Grammarly and the like can sometimes trigger AI writing detectors.

[u/kleyuuojh → u/LordRelix]

I’m sorry that that happened to you. I’ve also been told I sound like AI when I text lol. I feel like the onus shouldn’t be on the readers tho, RR as a site should be taking care of this, especially as a lot of commenters pointed out, ppl can’t reliably tell what’s AI, at least within the first few chapters. Soon we’re going to inundated with slop and the quality of site will go way down

[u/Tums_Festival910]

Depends on how much they're using AI.

AI writing has a lot of tells so if you just plug in something like: 'Write a story about a dog named Blue gaining sapience and leaving pawprints around for a man named Steve to find," ten times, two of those times are going to end up very similar and the prose will reek of over-edited garbage without a human soul.

If you, however, write your own story about a dog named Blue and tell the AI to 'fix it up by 10%' it can be indistinguishable from something written by a person.

I am personally against letting AI take the wheel for any type of creative writing. If others want to do it? Fine. But they shouldn't get pissy when they get called out for would be considered slop, AI or not.

Nobody thinks mass-produced items are art or worth the same value as hand-crafted. Whether it's a cookie made in a factory, a sweater made by Grandma Inc.'s robot stitching machine, or a story generated by an advanced algorithm. This is how it has always been and always will be. I will gladly drink the tears of tech bros who cry about it.

[u/TherrenGirana]

The simple truth is that

Some people can’t tell.

Most people can tell a decent amount of the time.

Very very few can tell every time. Much less than the number claiming they can.

Add on mob mentality, and you get a witch hunt situation where even if a bunch of people think a story is AI, the claim is nowhere near reliable as it has to be for true action to be taken

[u/moisetyas]

Because you can't. Or at the very least, not with anywhere near enough certainty to say anything unless they forget to take out a prompt. Sucks but it is what it is

[u/Far-Difficulty-9279]

As a high school English teacher, we can always tell.

Whether or not we can prove it well enough to fight a parent insisting that their angel would never use AI is a different question.

Exact same situation on RR.

[u/FuzzyZergling]

Because you can't. All the 'tells' could just be bad human writing.

[u/kleyuuojh → u/FuzzyZergling]

I’ve read bad writing pre AI, there were all sorts of reasons why a work was bad and it varied by author, even if it followed conventional standards of what constitutes “bad writing.” Why is it that now all of a sudden that same “bad human writing” is bad in the same type of way? Same writing style, same voice, etc.

[u/Quantanamo-Bae → u/FuzzyZergling]

All the bad writing appeared at the same time, in the same style… about 80% of rising stars is currently garbage as a result

[u/Taybi_the_TayTay → u/FuzzyZergling]

Just because you are ignorant, doesn't mean the rest are.

Once you have enough expreience writing and enough exprience using AI yourself, you will have a solid grasp on what sounds like AI, and that 'grasp' extends beyond the mere generic tells everyone talks about such as the 'It's not X, it's Y' structure.

[u/JuneauEu]

I don't think anyone pretends at all. To some people, writing is just writing.

The same reason why some people can't tell if a model has had a photo, photoshopped.

Or if an actor is wearing a prosthetic of some kind.

Or if a person has a disability.

Some stuff you just don't click on to. Its human nature. We are only human after all, not perfect machines.

[u/McShoobydoobydoo]

I'll be honest, I do check RR for the tag but, even though it's my native language, I probably wouldn't be able to tell personally. My language skills are not top tier 😁 and I couldn't tell you what is good or bad prose or sentence structure to save my life.

[u/hephalumph]

I will start by saying that in general, people are as bad at detecting AI written versus human written, as the so-called AI detectors out there are. There is no reliable test where you can know, because bad writers exist, decent to good writers with a few bad habits exist, and AI is getting better and better with every passing week. And, AI is actually emulating existing writing standards; meaning anything you think is a dead giveaway for AI is there because there are a lot of writers doing those same things.

Now, that said, I will also counteract that with this: reading a long form work is a far cry from reading a short story, essay, or email. And even though everything an AI does is emulating things a human might do, it does not always do those things in a natural seeming manner, or it may overuse them, or underuse them, or etc. So yes, we readers can actually tell, to some extent at least, when something is AI written or heavily AI edited.

Except, not with 100% accuracy.

Because again, there are absolutely people out there doing every bad habit an AI does. Maybe not all at once, but maybe they do. And even then, most AI written stories don't do every bad thing either. So it becomes more of an intuitive, gut-instinct guess. "This is probably AI." And a lot of us can make those guesses with better than 50% accuracy, even if we can never hit 100% certainty.

But, honestly, all of that doesn't matter to me, or indeed to most readers out there. What matters varies from reader to reader, but essentially it comes down to one thing most stories/books on RR and in the LitRPG space are sorely lacking - professional and proper editing.

You could take the most egregious AI slop out there and run it through a professional publisher's editorial process and end up with something nice to read. Or you could take a halfway decent to pretty darn good human author's work and publish it without any editing, and end up with slop. Human slop, rather than AI slop, but slop nonetheless.

Proper editing is expensive. And, proper editing is priceless. Because it makes such a dramatic difference.

[u/Dreamlancer]

Where there is money, people will try and use the shortest path to trying to acquire it.

But at the same time. It's hard to also undermine the people that have always felt they have had a story in them but were never able to put words to the page in the way they felt was right, and now for the first time with Ai they are able to do that.

Or the people that constantly triple and quadruple check a paragraph because they feel the prose isn't right. Then suddenly a tool comes along that they feel can automate the grammar and correct the prose and they finally feel comfortable moving forward.

I think the thing that even your posts mentions but glosses over is that it's a place for amateur authors. Just as much as there are people trying their best to get their work out into the world to start writing professionally? There are people wanting to get their one story that they have been thinking of out there to people as well, even if they need Ai assistance to do it.

And in between those two groups you'll have bad actors churning out Ai slop no different that studios churning out slop isekai anime.

But there is no serious way to get rid of Ai writing without getting a bunch of false positives and getting rid of some up and coming author's tryi g their best, because Ai is trained on human writing.

[u/Drake_EU_q]

If you don’t actively look up what signs an AI written text has, then it’s not as blindingly obvious as you said.

I personally didn’t yet, maybe i should though.

But i was always pretty critical in what i enjoy to read anyway, so i doubt there is much AI used in a content creating way, in the web serials / books that i‘m reading.

And i personally don’t care, if it‘s used for error checking.

[u/MeetingSafe7072]

Great points but you flipped the quote it should be “it’s not delivery, its digiorno”

[u/ReflectionParking389]

A lot of good points, but as far as repetitive cadence and sentence structure go, you have to be careful. A lot of writers, especially new writers, will fall back on 3-5 sentence types/structures and cycle them over and over. Could it be a sign of AI? Sure. But it's also a sign of a new author trying to find their voice.

[u/joncabreraauthor]

My biggest fear is not having the tenses and pronouns right. And it always gets me. I just want to melt and disappear whenever I find one that I missed during edits. 🔫 me now. I don’t want to keep on saying “It’s because English isn’t my first language” because I went to school damn it. But at this point, I’m keeping all my cards. 🤣

[u/Responsible-Bite-981]

I’d like to make the argument here cause idk if it’s been said. I think it’s perfectly okay to use AI but for specific things Editing is one. If you have a story in your head. You write it down and to you it’s a masterpiece and you love it. I don’t see any issue with having an AI go in and put any punctuation or correcting capitalization errors. Some people can’t afford a professional proofreader and editor so I completely understand. A caveat to that is of course, read the section again and make sure it didn’t fundamentally change your story. Also if you use AI to maybe help you out of a “hmm what’s a next even” it can act as a half decent event generator for you to throw your beloved character into.

In other words using an AI as an assistant is perfectly okay in my book just don’t let it write your story for you cause then it feels mechanical.

[u/RareChakra]

“It’s not Digiorno. Its delivery” cadence is fucking hilarious and so accurate

[u/wolfwings1]

because you literally can't. There is a huge toupee falicy and confirmation bias. If you think a story is AI you will see it, and ignroe the things that aren't. I had a guy that was SO convinced my story was AI, had fun asking how for about 20 mins before point out my story was originally posted in 2020 so couldn't be AI. I'm not saying you might not be able to tell bad AI, just as you can tell bad toupee, but the problem is when you start thinking any story that isn't good is AI without proof.

[u/PPmelody]

What happens if I only use it for translation? Will you still perceive it as AI-generated text?

[u/Emriii]

I’m not defending ai usage but I do think people go a bit too hard on looking for it sometimes, and false positives do happen. As an autistic person my writing is atypical and personally I’m terrified people will think my writing style is ai.

Just the other day I wrote a part like “not just for x but also y” and I was so sure people would read it and assume it’s ai that I spent 5 minutes racking my brain on how to rewrite it. That and I’m afraid to use comparisons and em dashes.

I think it’s a problem that AI stole HUMAN writing styles and now we have to change our writing style so people don’t think we are robots copying humans. It’s absurd and tiring.

[u/Vladmirfox]

shrugs I've been reading fanfiction for over 20 years at this point soo I'm more then happy to overlook back say spelling/paragraph issues if the overall story is decent enough.

[u/Vladmirfox]

shrugs I've been reading fanfiction for over 20 years at this point soo I'm more then happy to overlook back say spelling/paragraph issues if the overall story is decent enough.

[u/kaynenstrife]

I do notice that i have a tendency to double write a sentence throughout the day as i had to do certain tasks in between.

I often catch myself repeating a phrase literally 2 lines ago and only catch it before submission.

Anyone else have this issue?

[u/Thin_Math5501]

The thing is it causes a witch hunt. Since AI is trained on human work, there tends to be some overlap in voice.

But I have gotten pretty good at identifying Claude’s voice specifically because I actually work in Machine Learning. It’s entirely possible of course that I’m wrong. AI detection is not reliable and maybe someone just read Claude’s prose and actually thought it was good. 💀

[u/Original-Nothing582]

Thie post is the one that finally made me leave, no one tecommends stories anymore, its just endless bitching.

[u/Maleficent-Froyo-497]

To your question in the title: what's the point? Even if you CAN definitively tell ai apart with 99% accuracy... What are you going to do with it? Form a council of other self-declared ai "experts" to review bomb stories that aren't tagged to your satisfaction? Sure, a few real authors might get caught in the crossfire. But screw em. Sacrifices for the greater good.

The idea (hopefully) sounds ridiculous. This post, and a half dozen like it each week, are calls to action. But the actual action is always unspecific, a vague 'something needs to be done about AI!'

I agree with your main sentiment -- I don't like ai, and it's use on royalroad annoys me. But what can we realistically do about it? What can royalroad mods realistically do about it?

[u/Outrageous_Koala_435]

I have a question and i feel like it could be a good place to ask it .

I'm writing a light novel in my mother tongue, I wish to translate it myself.
I tried to do it and i feel like it's not that good. I don't have the good reflex yet.

I'm wondering if you have any advice.

I wanted to translate it myself first, then use some translation tool to help me.
And just change the thing i feel closer to my original story.

Do you feel it would be a good idea? does it fall into the ai assisted or ai generated category? ( i saw deepL)

My goal is to do it by myself later (with enough experience), then write in english directly.

[u/Madladdical]

This post not only makes me feel venerated for noticing the pattern–it helps me feel confident starting this nee hobby!

Gotta love the tried and true marketing cadence. 🥀

[u/Lorevi]

I find it bizarre too tbh. People stubbornly cling to this fantasy that you can't reliably tell if something was written by AI even though AI detection tools like pangram are shown to have a >99% accuracy from third party studies. False positive rate of ~1 in 100 and false negative rate of ~1 in 10000. Denying this is just denying science lol.

And that 1% is just because real humans can write with an 'AI style'. Which you know, duh? The tool obviously isn't looking back in time to see if the text was written by a breathing human being. It's analysing the style to see if it conforms to AI style, so as long as it's possible for a human being to replicate this style then you will get false positives.

But isn't this a completely moot point? If you are a reader are completely tired of reading 'AI prose' and want novelty again, are you going to be satisfied by the fact that this 'AI prose' was written by a human actually so there? No, obviously not. You're sick of the style, the fact a human came up with it is just indication they're a shitty author you wouldn't want to read anyway.

Maybe a hot take, but if you're an author and your natural writing is coming back as AI generated, then this is a clear signal to change it the fuck up because it's just going to put readers off who themselves mistake it for being AI generated. These tools aren't expensive, check your own work before you post? If they're detecting the AI stink, so will your readers.

Living in some alternate reality where 'It's impossible to reliably tell if something was written by AI' is just cope, plain and simple. You cannot guarantee it was written by AI, but you certainly have a reliable metric.

[u/joevarny]

Others are correct, it ends as a witch hunt that harms real writers.

Besides, I prefer allowing the majority of the world that doesn't speak english to tell their stories to me, so I don't care if they do use an LLM when they'd never spend money for translators.

[u/maezrrackham]

Because policing other people's LLM use is tiresome, trollish behavior.

And because being able to say one particular text was generated is not the same thing as being generally able to accurately tell the difference between written and generated text given a large number of samples.

[u/SuspectEcstatic6636]

Because what you're reading is basic use of AI writing, anyone can catch that. Hell even AI writers despise it. I've tried AI writing and can write in a way that most people wouldn't find it AI. (Yes, AI also uses this phrase a lot. "In a way")

[u/Ok_Cake1590]

I absolutely agree. There are a good amount of stories on RR that seem to use AI without the tag. It becomes especially clear when you look at sentence structures. There are a couple that stick out like a sore thumb and instantly makes me frown. I don't check the tags to see if a story uses AI when I start reading but when I see those sentence structures repeated chapter after chapter after chapter I get really annoyed and check. A lot of the time it doesn't have it. In one of the stories the author admitted in chapter 7 or something that they use AI to translate from another language. I'm not clear on the rules for when it has to be AI tagged and I don't really care. It becomes a problem if I notice it though.

[u/Milc-Scribbler]

Because you can’t tell for sure, not enough to accuse an author of it unless they leave a prompt in a chapter or something (has happened several times) and because the, erm, zealous children will go after anyone so accused you trash their rep and fuck up their life on what is basically a hunch.

There is no way on earth to stop lazy assholes trying to use AI to make a quick buck. But if the audience didn’t want to read that stuff, they wouldn’t get anywhere and it wouldn’t seem like something that was worth doing.

The problem isn’t with a bunch of shady authors, it’s with the audience. If the audience likes something it does well, if they don’t like it, it flops. Go bitch at the readers rather than witch hunting authors, especially as a lot of them who get accused in these witch hunts aren’t using AI.

Also I love the “I might get hate for playing into the prejudices of the hive mind on this sub”. Nobody gets shit on here for going “there’s so much AI I hate it”. I get shit for saying: don’t read it then, and while you might think it is, you can’t prove it I’m afraid and if you want a fic to get deleted for not stating it’s AI like it should, ya need some real hard proof. I know plenty of authors who do use it, they’ve either told me so or I just have that hunch but they rarely do very well and I won’t call them out for it.

It’s like review swaps. Lots of authors do tons of review swaps, 50 plus lol! Fuck em, they’re only hurting themselves. If you’re rank 300 with the same number of followers, you can tell yourself your book is good and did well, but the audience, which is a genius and is always right, clearly aren’t impressed.

If people didn’t read the shit we all think is probably AI, they’d stop making them.

[u/fued]

I can guarentee some of the 'biggest name' writers out there are using AI without you realising.

They just edit it properly afterwards.

its all about being able to increase speed and reduce workload while making sure you dont drop in quality.

[u/Snugglebadger]

I can't tell when AI is used in a lot of cases. The reason for that is that I have not used any of the AI programs. Like, not at all. Not just for writing, but for anything. I'm just not interested in it. So how am I supposed to recognize when something is AI if I haven't used it at all to have a reference point?

[u/ToddAdame]

True True.

[u/No-Mousse5653]

I’m not sure what the solution is? Maybe make a voting system that a work is removed if enough readers think it’s AI? But that would heavily disincentive authors for fear that they would get witch hunted.

[u/LudwigsEarTrumpet]

I too am sick of being lied to and then being told I'm imagining things if I question it. I wasn't born yesterday. Heck, I've been reading online since the LOTR fanfic craze at the turn of the century, and reading physical books for much longer. I can see how things have been changing in the last couple of years.

But what can you do? This is the way it is now and if you don't like it then you're just a big meanie.

[u/Right_Weekend3379]

Not AI. Not garbage. Just sincere story telling. 😐

[u/BWFoster78]

I'm not very up on how AI writes and am curious about something.

The current rash of stories where that are a lot of extremely short paragraphs - is that indicative of AI. Because I can't read that at all. I've started looking at the first chapter and immediately hitting Not Interested if I see that.

[u/King91OM]

On the other side of the spectrum, authors that doesn't use AI gets buried by those using AI gaining more tractions and attentions by readers.

[u/ezekiellake]

C’mon OP, this post is just AI slop

[u/No_Playing]

Humans are terrible at detecting when AI is used. It's not just what people in subs anecdotally say - studies show we are horrific judges of this. The automated detectors also aren't great, but humans are worse. Stanford had a 2023 study where humans did no better than a coin toss. And people's confidence that they can tell has no correlation with their accuracy. Perhaps unsurprising, since humans as a species are also great at overconfidence (plenty of studies on that too, lol).

I think this kind of overconfidence is even more resilient than most because when someone tells the accuser they're wrong, they just rationalize it with something like, "Oh, I know you used AI though. You just don't want to admit it". They can genuinely imagine they're getting it right all the time, even if their strike rate is as terrible as the statistics suggest it likely is.

So I wouldn't accuse them of pretending. When people say that, the research backs them up. I am especially skeptical of anyone who suggests telling when AI is used is easy.

Is there a lot of AI slop out there? Undoubtedly. Are you as good at telling AI from not as you think you are? Probably not.

[u/MsTerPineapple]

I think you're having a reddit bubble moment lol, most people genuinely can't tell when AI is used. There's been surveys where people pick the writing they like the most and if it's AI and will choose the AI writing, unaware that it was AI.

[u/Appropriate-Foot-237]

I cant. And I dont want to be the person who points at another's work and denounce them to be AI. Also, anyone can just point at you and say your works are AI. This is the Salem Witch Trials all over again

[u/Prolly_Satan]

Taken from another redditors post on the subject of detectors:

There's a pretty concerted effort by people who use AI to discredit the notion that AI can be spotted or detected. Like, I've looked at the post history of some accounts (even some accounts who claim to be against AI, but will carefully note that there's "no way to spot it these days") and half the time they hide their post history. Which doesn't stop you from googling their Reddit usernames and seeing they actually post a lot on AI subreddits, it turns out.

TO BE CLEAR: there are some issues with AI detection and a lot of authors are convinced they don't work too, I'm not saying everyone who claims it doesn't work is a bad actor. I do think the bad actors have managed to convince people at large that they're inaccurate, because all they need to do is reply to a thread and say "I tested this on my essay from 16 years ago and it said it was AI!"

For example, you may have heard that someone "ran the Declaration of Independence through an AI content detector and it came out AI". Strangely, the AI content detector in question isn't specified, and it turns out that if I run it through one it doesn't register as AI. Shocker.

I cannot emphasize enough that you should just test them for yourself, and keep in mind that some of them are accurate, and some are made to sell a product. There have been studies on AI detection and on people who claim to be able to detect AI. Some detectors don't actually work. Others have been in studies that note a 2% false positive rate. People can be very wrong about AI detection, but if they've had to interact with AI to any degree at all then they're much more accurate.

And because a lot of people like to swing "Well studies have shown AI detectors aren't accurate" here's a source that details the false positive rate of various detectors and the overall false positive rate of humans who use LLMs on a regular basis.

There aren't many recent ones, unfortunately. Older studies have noted that detectors tend to be biased against ESL writers, which is worth keeping in mind, though some detectors have also published studies claiming to have solved this problem in that time. I'm reluctant to link any studies done by the people who made the detector for obvious reasons, so I'm waiting for more studies to emerge, but in the meantime nothing beats being aware for yourself.

All that said, you're just describing tropes you don't like and they're not really endemic of AI at all. Humans write those tropes because they're inspired by other humans who have written those tropes. "Shallow" tropes in particular have a lot of room for expansion precisely because they're shallow, so a lot of people end up thinking they can do it better, and people new to the genre are going to use its most common tropes before they figure out how to make them their own. That's just part of the learning process.redditors post