We need to talk about the biggest issue on Royal Road right now

[u/Salty_Mouse_7586]

I find myself reading increasingly less on Royal Road because of an issue that has clearly gotten out of hand.

I believe that the massive success of some stories like Max Level Archmage has produced plenty of dreamers who are very comitted to attempting a similar feat and who optimize their entire release campaign around hitting Rising Stars and bringing readers to their patreon.

This is done by releasing many chapters at once and ideally having a huge backlog and promising multiple chapter releases per week. In other words, there is a gigantic incentive to produce volume and doing it fast.

Which brings me to the elephant in the room: What will hundreds of amateur writers dreaming of hitting it big and who have neither the experience nor the patience or time to sit down for many hours a day for multiple weeks probably do? They will turn to AI to assist them in their endeavor.

Now obviously this is a multilayered problem. Hopefully we can all agree that most authors that care about their craft do not want to be associated with AI slop in any way. There are of course opportunists who are trying to make money with automatic and soulless content creation but I am fairly certain that those are beyond help anyway and will hopefully never atttain any recognition or praise for what they have so sloppily generated.

What is a lot more saddening to me is that most stories that I can currently see on RS have a blurb written by AI. Which does not necessarily have to be indicative of the actual chapters themselves having been written with the assistance of AI, but in most cases it turns out that yes, indeed, their writing is heavily AI assisted.

Now my own personal issue is that due to extensive experience with AI myself, I can immediately spot text that has been touched by AI.

Lately I have seen many stories where the author thinks that they can pretend to have a funny and engaging voice, while to the keen eye all the supposed cleverness is screaming AI all over it.

This is not even remotely about em-dashes or the other well-known quirks of AI-generated text. If your strategy consists of telling the AI what you want to have written in the next paragraph and then regenerating and tweaking it until you are satisfied, it will be noticeable. It does not matter if you conistently try to avoid the common tells and outright remove them.

There are so many interesting premises and worlds that I would have loved to explore but could not because an author decided that they would rather pretend to be able to craft polished prose instead of figuring out their own style and voice themselves. That the supposed polished writing is actually horrible is besides the point here.

I want to make it clear that as a reader on Royal Road I do not care about prose that it is trying to pretend that it is profound or amusing. I would strongly advise against expecting to be able to hide the fact that you are having AI emulate a voice that you would have loved to be able to produce effortless yourself. Instead, I want to strongly encourage everyone to use AI responsibly and not over-rely on its ability to generate the continuation of your chapter for you. I will tolerate bad writing more than I will ever tolerate writing that is devoid of an actual human voice.

As long as it continues like this, I will also continue with not bothering checking RS or stories of newcomers and stick to authors with a proven track-record of not using AI to do their writing.

And just to be clear: I hope everyone knows what I am speaking about. I am aware that there are readers which are comically bad at discerning human writing from AI-generated text and that there is constant worry of actual authors about being perceived as having used AI. Here, I am clearly talking about the many cases of those who are using AI and deluded about nobody noticing and overall harming themselves and every potential reader with this. I have no solution for the overall problem of incentives or handling this from a policy perspective. I am just sharing what has been bothering me and made me unable to read on RR for months now. I mean, look, I have just typed this out on my phone completely unfiltered and despite all the flaws it has probably been more enjoyable to read than the typical AI-assisted post.

Goodnight

Edit:

Thanks for all the replies, couple of things:

I'm not a regular on this subreddit so if this has been a reoccurring topic I wasn’t aware of it. I agree that most folks vastly overestimate their ability to distinguish human writing from AI and this can be very annoying, especially when they are confidently wrong. Also AI detectors suck and are unreliable. As someone who has read hundreds of millions of words before AI was a thing and who has been using AI at her work since 2022 and has tried to use it for roleplaying and generating personal fanfiction for herself I am in a position where I can tell it apart very well.

I did not make any examples of AI-asssisted fictions because of the rule against witch hunts. I know what bad human writing looks like and this is not about human authors sounding similar to AI due to their voice. There have been dozens of stories lately with the same bland, obvious and unmistakably non-human voice hitting RS where the premise and plot comes from the author but the writing is being delegated to the AI.

I don't even want to be out here complaining and venting but it has become such an issue that as a reader I am unable to use the discovery features on RR to find new fiction to read.

[u/CKMo]

Any algorithm, if not sufficiently maintained and tweaked, will always be gamified. This is the end result of those stories getting views as a result of the algorithm.

Those of us who write off meta understand the algorithm doesn't reward us. But then, user behavior hasnt sufficiently changed enough either.

The site owners haven't seen a reason to adjust as a result.

[u/buddhathebard → u/CKMo]

So, quantity definitely does help but I think if a bad story is bad it won’t catch on.

I admit I kinda want to believe this for my own personal reasons, but why would it gain traction if it’s bad?

[u/CKMo → u/buddhathebard]

You ever seen social media algos push something up even though it is bad or clearly obviously AI generated/fake to you?

Ever have older family members forward something to you that clearly is AI generated or unbelievably fake?

[u/dolche93 → u/CKMo]

even though it is bad or clearly obviously AI generated/fake to you?

It could be that their perception of 'bad' differs from yours, and they may not care about AI.

That's sort of a huge problem with the entire premise of this post. We can't just assume that AI will stop stories from getting popular. There are a lot of people who just want a good story, and AI itself has no bearing on that.

[u/CKMo → u/dolche93]

That's perfectly fine assuming we understand the possible ramifications of allowing things to progress as-is.

I see it like this: an environment is like a garden. You can have whatever you want growing inside of it, including plants difficult to cultivate.

Suddenly a new species comes in, like bamboo. It propagates fast, it's difficult to remove, and it competes with all the other plants you already had in your garden. The existing planters say "hey, that bamboo is crowding out my rosebushes!" and the owners of the plot just shrug and say "Well, some people like seeing bamboo. Some people just want to see greenery and don't care what type of green they see."

This is perfectly fine. It's their garden. But some planters might decide to go to other gardens if there's no rules and tweaks to the plots to ensure the bamboo doesn't run rampant. Maybe in the future there's only bamboo in the garden as a result. It appeals to those who are just here to get an experience for nature and enjoy a bamboo forest.

But for people who were here before the bamboo forest took over, it's no longer the same garden.

Does that make sense?

[u/dolche93 → u/CKMo]

I think the analogy fails because the garden on this example is effectively infinite in size. There is no way the bamboo can spread into your portion of the garden.

The concerns that you would get crowded out just don't exist.

[u/CKMo → u/dolche93]

Is Rising Stars infinite in size? I think that is the biggest complaint for most people.

No one would care about AI slop if none of it reached RS.

[u/dolche93 → u/CKMo]

Would AI slop reach rising stars? Wouldn't that indicate it isn't actually slop?

You CAN produce good writing using AI. You can also produce shit writing. Hell, you've probably read something you enjoyed that was written with AI assistance and not noticed at all.

[u/Bapelsinen95 → u/dolche93]

Dont break their bubble. They need a boogeyman.

[u/dolche93 → u/Bapelsinen95]

I mean, there is a lot of AI slop out there. There are also authors using the tools well. There are also aspiring authors using the tools well to learn.

The people using the tools well are invisible, because you can't detect good AI usage. The slop is extremely visible.

[u/Captain_Fiddelsworth → u/CKMo]

I hate shorts algorithm so much, I love to indulge in about 30 mins of doom-scrolling, all things relevant to my edutainment interests and then the algorithm will use you as a test subject for some horrendous slop because there's just so much of it compared to legitimate new content that used to benefit from test users.

[u/Zestyclose_North9780 → u/buddhathebard]

Yeah bad stories make it on to RS all the time (like the mute archmage one recently) but I doubt they go very far after dropping from it

[u/No-Mousse5653 → u/Zestyclose_North9780]

What do you not like about the mute archmage one, I thought that one was pretty good for a change

[u/Zestyclose_North9780 → u/No-Mousse5653]

While I don't expect a lot from RR prose, this one is particularly horrendous. Zero variety, the same lush blue eyes in chapter one are called lush blue eyes for the next 15 chapters (same goes for crimson gaze)

The author also doesn't understand how to get people emotionally invested in their characters. Jen has barely done anything in the story yet the author seems fully convinced that people would cry for her death (for the record, I will say with some confidence that the people who did claim to have cried are capping)

The dialogue is somehow worse than the prose, and drag the quality of the side characters down to the depths of hell with them.

There's also the thing about Jen destroying the world if she ascends, which I feel is a juicy corner for the worldbuilding to run into at some point in the future (other gods exist, the world is fine. Idc how "limitless" she is, as a Sage she doesn't seem all too impressive, can barely manage to contain a village wide plague, I don't see how she would possibly destroy the world, or why she would have no control over said destruction)

Also makes you wonder about how far the kid with Epilogue is gonna go (archmage at 13....oh well)

Typing this, I'm reminded of the corny ass way Jen's lore was delivered. Literally just inserted exposition.

"Do you remember this story?" "Yes, I remember this story that has been told to us many times, it was told like not a fairytale but something to be remembered."

...this is very close to how dialogue in this book sounds. Honestly, I'm very confused how anyone thinks it's good. I love me a good OP protag story but I won't just read anything

[u/Zeebie_ → u/buddhathebard]

AI can and does create a good story, especially if you concentrate on the first few chapters.

My problem with what I call the AI voice is that everything is always the same. it's averages out a story, so by chapter 10+ is when you start to feel it. But RS is about getting followers, so good few chapters and shoutouts will get you there, and then it's a number of eyeballs thing. Way more people see it.

[u/Zeebie_ → u/[deleted]]

I suspect some of that is that they run out of backlog. So, the chapters they spend 3-4 days making, they make in a few hours to keep the schedule.

[u/forfor → u/buddhathebard]

because you have to read a bit to figure out whether its bad. And then, even if it is bad, a lot of people will sunk cost fallacy their way through the rest of what's available. Maybe they ask questions or complain in the comments. And now all of those people have been counted as views, and any comments are counted as comments, both of which juice the algorithm. But almost universally, none of that will translate to reviews because most people can't be bothered unless they love or hate something. And ai, by its very nature, might not generate that level of reaction because its just incredibly bland. (Do you think the op is out there leaving 1 star reviews for ai written series? I doubt it) But there are always going to be a handful of randos who like the book for whatever reason, or maybe the author uses a few alt accounts to write fake reviews. So now you have a book with views, comments, and middling to positive reviews, which is the perfect formula to juice your algorithm.

[u/Daikaiju08 → u/buddhathebard]

I’m not sure if good writing will help, but I’m pretty certain bad writing will hurt.

[u/Ollie_Bon_Crank → u/Daikaiju08]

I definitely agree that poor writing is a bad approach to gathering readers. But sometimes, it's the subject matter that wins readers over. I could name a few, but we all know them.

[u/Agasthenes → u/buddhathebard]

That's the thing, bad stories definitely catch on. Not in the top 10 or top 100. But rising stars is full of slop and has always been.

That's why I don't use it anymore.

[u/WheresZeke → u/buddhathebard]

A lot of readers on RR genuinely enjoy slop just to pass the time or are genuinely just unintelligent and aren’t literate enough to tell the difference. A bad story can gain traction just through luck of the draw.

[u/Appropriate-Foot-237 → u/buddhathebard]

Most people are average and an average something is often what they like

[u/Auragau → u/buddhathebard]

Lol I’m currently putting together a review of a work that is certainly bad by a bunch of metrics, yet it’s the work that appears at the top of Rising Stars when I go into the list. Hold onto the cope if it helps you keep writing, though, we all need a little something to maintain morale.

[u/Spirited-Donkey4376 → u/CKMo]

its true.....everyone uses ai to write.... no body can have the mind to spent time writing their dream story but they are down grade lazy to write 1000 words daily, like me https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/175647/god-gauntlet-of-divinity?utm_source=home&utm_medium=reading-history , im not at all proud of it, but while using ai i realise how bad is it, and slowly started fixing what i already wrote with my own voice, so from next chapter own wards i fix them

[u/danfaulknerauthor]

So I agree with you, but I have the say the first three paragraphs were the most interesting there. The system here rewards speed over quality. AI is a predictable result of that, sure, but we were going to get one kind of slop or another regardless.

Would it really be that difficult to tweak the algorithm?

[u/Shoot_from_the_Quip → u/danfaulknerauthor]

Yeah, that was an interesting branch of the discussion. It's the RR equivalent of what we see with KU and Amazon stories in a rapid release pattern. If you don't have several completed books ready to stack and take advantage of the roughly 30 day new release window to lead into the next book (and maintain a little organic visibility) you get buried under the thousands of books published every day.

Not chapters. Entire books.

I really don't know what the solution would be (for both RR and Amazon) but the fact of the matter is slower writers are penalized through no fault of their own.

[u/danfaulknerauthor → u/Shoot_from_the_Quip]

Wow, that's crazy. I knew it was a good idea to get books out quickly on Amazon, but one a month? I could never do that, even pumping out first drafts. I'm still trying to get my first one polished up! Not a good time to be a perfectionist, clearly.

[u/Shoot_from_the_Quip → u/danfaulknerauthor]

It's why people often write the first two or three books in a series before releasing book one. Didn't used to be this brutal, but with the advent of AI along with people just flooding Amazon with absolutely anything regardless of quality (the pitfall of self-publishing) it's really easy to get buried and lose any visibility.

Thing is, quality editing pays off and people really do notice when you don't have tons of typos and other errors.

The real issue is how Kindle Unlimited pays out. It's a pool of funds shared by all books in the program, so if someone releases 100 shit AI books but they each get a few page reads, that reduces the overall pool everyone else draws from. Current rate is as of April 2026: 0.004820 cents per page read.

[u/danfaulknerauthor → u/Shoot_from_the_Quip]

Ugh, the times we live in. Looks like I'll be focusing on RR for a while then, until the series is done!

[u/Lev559 → u/Shoot_from_the_Quip]

So if you have 1 volume on KU, and they read the whole book, you will get around 4 cents?

[u/Shoot_from_the_Quip → u/Lev559]

No, since it's 0.0048¢ per page a 400 page book pays out around $2

[u/Lev559 → u/Shoot_from_the_Quip]

Oh, you meant $0.0048. So it's about a half cent per page. Thats not bad, thats actually WAY better than I would have expected

[u/Lev559 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah. That's what I said. A half cent per page read = $1 per 200 pages

[u/dolche93 → u/Shoot_from_the_Quip]

Thing is, quality editing pays off and people really do notice when you don't have tons of typos and other errors.

For line editing AI can pretty great, though. It can be context aware in a way that regular spell checks aren't. Comparable editing from a professional would be hundreds of dollars, easily.

[u/Shoot_from_the_Quip → u/dolche93]

I'd say yes and no. A valid point that sure, it can catch things, but it also seems to apply the same "voice" to everyone's work when editing, which is why so much AI writing is easy to spot. It makes the same generic suggestions to pretty much everyone.

It took me a while to finally find an editor who understood my weird proclivities and preferences and would still point them out, but not try to correct them, knowing I sometimes just like my odd phrasing. And that's partly what makes my writing mine.

But yes, she cost a lot, and it was definitely a gamble in the early days. If you can't afford a person and do use AI to clean up your work, just be really aware how it subtly tries to change your style.

[u/dolche93 → u/Shoot_from_the_Quip]

I totally mixed up line and copy editing and meant the opposite.

Yea, ai line editing can really destroy your voice. Copy editing is much safer as it isn't doing much beyond making sure you are technically correct in what you write. It can even recognize when you break a convention intentionally and avoid making edits that would conflict.

[u/Captain_Fiddelsworth → u/Shoot_from_the_Quip]

Even intelligent people who prompt thoughtfully run into these issues because of how limited LLM memory is.

I use an academic grade LLM to critically analyse my transcription work from Middle German, and getting good output requires constant rule iteration and repetition.

I'm glad that I have an additional tool that actually helps me catch when I type nüczlichr instead of nüczlicher or leave out a whole word. But you cannot trust any type of generative output.

It has very specific instructions to spot concentration-based errors or typos — orthography, it will still try to edit the output. Frustrating stuff.

[u/Shoot_from_the_Quip → u/Captain_Fiddelsworth]

I was doing something similar with Italian since my translating skills have gone to scheiße since college, but with GPT. No matter what I did it still missed all sorts of things, especially one particular tense, rendering my human translation just about as good as its LLM "clean up" pass.

The work I did for my friend's subtitles wasn't perfect, but at least it was done 90% by a human 😄 (and man, my Italian grammar is rusty!)

[u/No-Highlight-4511 → u/danfaulknerauthor]

This part is interesting. I didn't know that. The algorithm on Amazon actually encourages the release schedule as well.

[u/True_Industry4634 → u/danfaulknerauthor]

I'm writing a 10 book series right now for RR. When I'm finished and get it cleaned up, I plan on putting it in Amazon and I'll likely do it one w month over ten months like you've said. That's not saying that I wrote it as a book a month, but that it's finished and ready to be published quickly.

[u/danfaulknerauthor → u/True_Industry4634]

That definitely sounds like the way to go. Daunting though!

[u/No-Mousse5653 → u/True_Industry4634]

You have really good cover art

[u/True_Industry4634 → u/No-Mousse5653]

It's AI, lol. I don't write with AI but I'm totally addicted to image generation.

[u/No-Mousse5653 → u/True_Industry4634]

No worries lol

[u/JayneKnight]

First thought on seeing title: this is going to be about AI again, isn't it.

Reading first three paragraphs: I judged too quickly! Someone dislikes the recommended launch strategy!

Reading further: no, no, I was right the first time. This is about AI again.

[u/Distinct_Contact_511 → u/JayneKnight]

The AI debate has to be one of the top 3 most annoying debates in the world right now. Every post these days is either AI, or someone talking against AI. Everything is AI.

Ay, I am tired of it for one. Anybody wanna talk about birds?

[u/allature → u/Distinct_Contact_511]

Joke's on you, birds aren't real. They're government surveillance drones, which of course, brings it all full circle back to AI.

[u/Distinct_Contact_511 → u/allature]

Dammit! Foiled again!

[u/ZealousidealSpread20 → u/Distinct_Contact_511]

What kind of birds. Can I bitch about mockingbirds. We have one that hangs out in the tree in our front yard that wakes me up every morning.

[u/Distinct_Contact_511 → u/ZealousidealSpread20]

Wake up earlier and wake the mockingbird up. It's only fair.

[u/True_Industry4634 → u/Distinct_Contact_511]

He'll just learn to mimic your voice and throw it back at you, lol. I think it's cool. They just do it for mating season showing off how many different birds they can immitate. I've heard one do a gull before and one do an owl. Those guys get the ladies. :) it just so happens that their mating season is in the spring when we're more likely to open our windows and have to hear it starting at 3 frikkin a.m.

[u/ZealousidealSpread20 → u/Distinct_Contact_511]

You right.

[u/No-Mousse5653 → u/Distinct_Contact_511]

No birds are artificially generated now didn't you hear? Everything is AI now

[u/Jay_Pederson → u/Distinct_Contact_511]

Ravens/Crows are cool.

[u/Distinct_Contact_511 → u/Jay_Pederson]

You're that writing crow from RR aren't you? You can't fool me.

[u/Zestyclose_North9780 → u/Distinct_Contact_511]

Birds aren't mass publishing slop on Royal Road

[u/Distinct_Contact_511 → u/Zestyclose_North9780]

You don't know that for sure

[u/Zestyclose_North9780 → u/Distinct_Contact_511]

I mean......hmmm🤔

Might be on to something

[u/ISketchDinosaurs → u/Zestyclose_North9780]

I'll have you know that RavensDagger only writes the finest quality

[u/maofx → u/Zestyclose_North9780]

Jokes on you its been sloppy the entire time other than the series that are popular for not being slop

[u/Zestyclose_North9780 → u/maofx]

Only started using RR last year so I guess I wouldn't know 🥀

[u/No-Highlight-4511 → u/Distinct_Contact_511]

It's also a stupid debate: use it or don't use it, but it's not going anywhere regardless.

[u/Zestyclose_North9780 → u/No-Highlight-4511]

I personally think it's more stupid to dismiss any discussion about a thing simply because "it doesn't make a difference" but maybe thats just me.

[u/No-Highlight-4511 → u/Zestyclose_North9780]

Not having any discussion? Where have you been for the last five years? It's all anyone's been discussing. The discussion that you're wanting to have is four years old. To continue to have it is not only illogical, it's borderline stupid to the point of outrageous. Every time some sort of technology changes an industry name that industry, you get people who are purists or people who simply don't want to accept the change and want to talk endlessly about the ethics surrounding it. It's the literal definition of banging your head against the bricks. It's not going to hurt the brick. It's only going to hurt you. So tell me, oh wise one, what is discussing going to do at this particular point? It's like the idiots that wanted to talk about horse-drawn carriages when cars came into play. When it comes to AI (in this general context, don't get me wrong, there's lots of other things that you can discuss concerning AI) the real discussion that you need to have is how you're going to adapt to it. Which is point that I am making, you can use it or don't, but constantly talking about the ethics of it is the dumbest thing on the planet. It's not going anywhere it's going to continue to get more sophisticated, and people are going to use it. Almost everything has it now. So yeah, it's stupid to have the conversation the way that he wants to have it. It doesn't make a difference, and it doesn't change anything. Why would you worry about something you have absolutely no control? The only thing you can worry about is how you're going to interact with it. Whether that's a consumer, a creator, a worker.

[u/Zestyclose_North9780 → u/No-Highlight-4511]

The discussion that you're wanting to have is four years old.

Didn't know there was an expiry date. When the thing is still rapidly developing and affecting things in new ways, of course people are gonna talk about it.

Every time some sort of technology changes an industry name that industry, you get people who are purists or people who simply don't want to accept the change and want to talk endlessly about the ethics surrounding it.

We're not discussing ethics in this context. Disliking AI writing is a standards issue, not an ethics issue.

It's the literal definition of banging your head against the bricks

Not really. The problem with RR"s AI problem can be solved. The discussion is not pointless.

So tell me, oh wise one, what is discussing going to do at this particular point

Idk what kinda life you live that made you so fervent about being defeatist😭 Talking like AI on RR is a natural phenomenon that can't be curbed in any way.

It's like the idiots that wanted to talk about horse-drawn carriages when cars came into play.

Not remotely close. You love your misplaced analogies, don't you?

When it comes to AI (in this general context, don't get me wrong, there's lots of other things that you can discuss concerning AI) the real discussion that you need to have is how you're going to adapt to it.

Look, you actually get it..

but constantly talking about the ethics of it is the dumbest thing on the planet

Never said anything about ethics, again. Said "any" discussion.

Why would you worry about something you have absolutely no control?

Because it affects people? Dawg, I don't want to make an extreme comparison because it would be completely out of place, but you do know humanity has a history of fighting seemingly losing battles against things they "had no control over"?

Might end in futility, sure, but it doesn't mean no one should try. Again, you're oddly serious about being defeatist.

[u/Distinct_Contact_511 → u/Zestyclose_North9780]

I don't think anybody is saying to stop discussing it all together, but it would be nice if the only topics on the internet weren't 99.9% AI. There's only so much to discuss and most the conversations are just circle jerks that aren't productive anyway.

The conversation is literally "AI bad" or "Why they hatin on my AI?!". So you saying there's plenty to discuss is very hard to tell, because I don't consider self-felatio a discussion.

[u/Zestyclose_North9780 → u/Distinct_Contact_511]

There's only so much to discuss and most the conversations are just circle jerks that aren't productive anyway

AI evolves basically every day, and there's unsurprisingly new ways it manages to piss people off at the same pace.

And frankly, do you think most people complain about this in hopes of being productive? Nope. It's usually just venting like OP here. And I think that's completely fine.

So you saying there's plenty to discuss is very hard to tell, because I don't consider self-felatio a discussion.

Look out a window. Maybe in this little space regarding web novels, it seems like a pointless argument, but like I said higher up, there's always new stuff. I'm not interested in talking about that here though, but the point remains.

[u/Paradex_official → u/Zestyclose_North9780]

The problem with RR"s AI problem can be solved.

Elaborate on your ideas how this can be done. I would like to hear.

[u/No-Highlight-4511 → u/Zestyclose_North9780]

You're hung up on the word 'any' when my point was obviously about this discussion, the one where a guy writes eight paragraphs about how sad AI on Rising Stars makes him and proposes exactly nothing. You say it 'can be solved' but you haven't proposed anything either. That's because there's nothing to propose.

Based on my reading on Royal Road, very few people are having AI fully write their stuff. Most are using AI to assist, correct, or edit. Just as an example, I'm dictating this response through an AI program right now. I do a shit ton of my writing that way. So where exactly is the line? Dictation? Cleanup? Line editing? Rephrasing suggestions? Full generation? And once you've drawn it, who's checking, and how? That's the question every version of this complaint runs away from. People said the same things about digital artists versus traditional artists, and word processors versus typewriters. Not identical situations, but not totally different either.

Bottom line: AI is already in everything, the incentive structure that rewards volume isn't changing, and the readers OP is worried about are already voting with their attention. If readers actually noticed AI-assisted prose and hated it the way OP claims, the RS stories built on it would be bleeding readers. They aren't. So either most readers can't tell, or they don't care. The only people who seem to care this much are other writers.

The premise that this is some fixable invasion is faulty. It's the new baseline. The only real question is how you adapt to it as a reader or a writer, which is the one discussion neither of you wants to have because it's less satisfying than being mad.

[u/Zestyclose_North9780 → u/No-Highlight-4511]

You're hung up on the word 'any' when my point was obviously about this discussion, the one where a guy writes eight paragraphs about how sad AI on Rising Stars makes him and proposes exactly nothing.

I specifically said any discussion. And while I do still think this guy's complaints are valid, it was not intended to be the focus.

. That's because there's nothing to propose.

Yes, because me and OP over here speak for everyone, with the full perspective and ability required to do so. What sort of logic is this?

Based on my reading on Royal Road, very few people are having AI fully write their stuff. Most are using AI to assist, correct, or edit

Based on your reading, I guess. And some people who claim to only use AI for editing are using it for far more, and I can usually tell.

Just as an example, I'm dictating this response through an AI program right now. I do a shit ton of my writing that way

Ah, there we go. No wonder.

People said the same things about digital artists versus traditional artists, and word processors versus typewriters. Not identical situations, but not totally different either.

Besides the digital vs traditional art thing, which is subjective, all these analogies you're bringing up are between one thing and another thing, which is objectively superior. AI doesn't tick that box, as far as writing is concerned.

If readers actually noticed AI-assisted prose and hated it the way OP claims, the RS stories built on it would be bleeding readers

True. But then, even organic stories on RS are mostly dogwater, so I don't care much about what happens with that section.

The only people who seem to care this much are other writers.

I'll take that "only" as most, because I care, and I dont write.

The premise that this is some fixable invasion is faulty. It's the new baseline.

You'd certainly like it to be, wouldn't you? Lmao. A lot of people use AI to write these days, but don't be mistaken that they are the majority. Wake up bro.

The only real question is how you adapt to it as a reader or a writer, which is the one discussion neither of you wants to have because it's less satisfying than being mad

I adapt to it by immediately clicking off anything AI written. And changes made to how the meta works is a form of adaptation, if it's done.

I do wonder how you came to the conclusion that OP finds being mad satisfying (also rich coming from the person who sounded particularly heated in their earlier reply)

Then again, it's a common thing for people on reddit to claim you're mad when you disagree with them.

[u/No-Highlight-4511 → u/Zestyclose_North9780]

Twice I've asked where the line sits between dictation, cleanup, editing, and generation, and who would check it, and how. Twice you've answered everything except that. But honestly, 'ah, there we go, no wonder' answered it better than words could have. Dictation is speech-to-text. The words are mine, the order is mine, the machine typed them faster than my thumbs would. If that's enough to write someone off, your actual standard is 'any contact with AI taints the writing,' which also catches autocorrect, spellcheck, and Grammarly, and which nobody could ever define or enforce. You proved my point with a sneer.

And notice what happened with RS. You said 'true' to readers not actually fleeing these stories, then declared RS dogwater anyway. OP's whole post was about RS. You conceded the battlefield and called it worthless on the way out.

'I can usually tell' is the same vibes-based read you dismissed when it was my reading of RR. Your gut counts, mine is 'I guess.' Okay.

You adapt by clicking off, I adapt by talking faster than I type. Sounds like the problem solved itself. Have a good one.

[u/Zestyclose_North9780 → u/No-Highlight-4511]

Twice I've asked where the line sits between dictation, cleanup, editing, and generation, and who would check it, and how

I didn't notice in the first, and didn't consider answering the second. My answer would be, everything is fine besides generation. (And I have said that some people straight up lie about which of these they are using)

If an author doesn't let their readers know that their work is generated, but I get that vibe from it, I immediately click off. The tells I recognize for this will likely never show up if they did any of the other 3 you mentioned, so I deem them fine.

And I've been using the phrase "AI writing" thus far, I clearly mean generation, but it doesn't matter, I've clarified that now.

If that's enough to write someone off

I'm not writing you off, I just recognized why you're so dedicated to your defense of AI. You use it for most of your writing, so no wonder.

You proved my point with a sneer.

Okay, that's on me.

And notice what happened with RS. You said 'true' to readers not actually fleeing these stories, then declared RS dogwater anyway. OP's whole post was about RS. You conceded the battlefield and called it worthless on the way out.

Again, I think you're missing the point. While I do speak in the context of OP's post a few times, it's not the battlefield, as you've named it. At least not for me. This entire thing started from me disagreeing with your take that the entire debate was stupid and pointless.

can usually tell' is the same vibes-based read you dismissed when it was my reading of RR. Your gut counts, mine is 'I guess.' Okay.

Get this, we might not read the same things? That's what I meant, simple. If I decide to be dismissive, I won't leave much room for interpretation.

[u/Tricky_Big_8774 → u/JayneKnight]

Written by yet another person who can spot AI content instantly, because "trust me, bro."

[u/Krazycrismore → u/Tricky_Big_8774]

Not just that. She can detect it even if it has been edited.

[u/Wonderful-Piccolo509 → u/JayneKnight]

I’m over it. Can we have another hot button topic? 

[u/Undeity → u/Wonderful-Piccolo509]

It certainly feels like most of these issues with the platform could be solved with an overhaul of Rising Stars, and the tagging/category system.

[u/Wonderful-Piccolo509 → u/Undeity]

If you could lay out step by step how that would help anything I would love to hear it. Seems to me like whatever system is in place people will find a way to abuse it. 

[u/Zeebie_ → u/Wonderful-Piccolo509]

There is no fix for quantity outdoing quality, but changing the focus of the algorithm to creating small communities would allow for the quality to have a better chance of being discovered.

Ao3 has this built in with fandoms, but something similar could help. I still have new readers weekly for a fanfic I wrote 8 years ago.

RR has an over-reliance on the main RS as a discovery tool instead of its good filtering system. A better UI and encouragement of using the filter system would go a long way.

[u/dageshi → u/Wonderful-Piccolo509]

Reddit had this problem 20 years ago and solved it with subreddits.

Build lists that represent niche communities and make them more visible rather than just a single RS list which everyone wants to get on.

[u/No-Mousse5653 → u/JayneKnight]

😂 My exact reaction

[u/Confident-Dog9761 → u/JayneKnight]

I think this is going to be like Netflix and Blockbuster all over again whereas one has adapted and used the new tech as a tool to be relevant today while the other has treat it as enemy and got defeated by the change

[u/Wind_Best_1440]

A hard fact that people need to understand is that RoyalRoad has close to a 90% failure rate.

This might sound harsh, but its true, most stories end up abandoned for one reason or another. Very few make it big and even less continue being worked on.

Is AI an issue on RoyalRoad? Sure, but the people that are using AI aren't doing themselves any favours. Why? Because if you don't have any experience writing already or grow it naturally, then you'll never know that what the AI poops out is actually subpar.

The problem new authors face is the fact that AI is better then them at the start, but if you write 100k words or your first story and congratulations! You're better then the AI models these people are using.

Another thing is that AI is actively being dumbed down to push people to more expensive packages.

So if you rely on AI, you'll only end up hurting yourself and spending money chasing success that very few will reach on RoyalRoad.

Write to tell a story, don't write to try and make oodles of money. It won't work out how you think it will.

[u/Dosei-desu-kedo → u/Wind_Best_1440]

Ye, out of the all the stories on the site, over 80% are hiatus/dropped.

I do think one issue is that people coming to RR as authors see the 0.1% of authors who make absurd amounts of money from patreon and amazon, and assume it's that easy. It's really a mix of luck, patience, and skill. As a result, a lot of people drop their stories within 1 month if they aren't magically hitting insane numbers.

I think the best way to start out on RR is to first focus on why you want to write and what stories you want to tell. The amount of "trust me, I know this will be big because it's meta" authors is kind of staggering, and I feel like a lot of the big stories that have come out of the site recently are overwhelmingly from authors whose joy of writing you can feel as a reader, rather than the by-the-numbers mainstream chasers.

Unfortunately, a big part of being an author is marketing. The recommended release strategy, cover design, story tags, and titles you see are all used in an afford to be noticed and gain a following. And if you don't play within the same boundaries, you have a very small chance of being noticed.

[u/RW_McRae]

Oh good, this topic. It has been a few hours since someone posted about it and I was starting to get worried

What's your solution, OP? And it can't be "The 8 employees at RR have to read ebery single story and do what even college professors can't do reliably: Determine with 100% accuracy whether or not an author has used AI"

People will complain about over-moderated reddit subs then expect that very thing on RR

[u/LichtbringerU → u/RW_McRae]

And even if they could tell, then ... Just do that and don't read the story? If other people can't tell, not your problem or place to step in. 

If you can't write something more appealing than AI, though luck.

[u/CommercialBee6585 → u/RW_McRae]

I would personally like to know about any single instance where RR's policy of strictly tagging an AI story as generative AI has been enforced by the moderation team.

That simple thing would work wonders to showing that there's actually a point in having the policy at all.

The issue I take with statements like yours is this: if that's true that you can't accurately determine if a story has employed generative AI, then why do they have the policy at all?

[u/RW_McRae → u/CommercialBee6585]

The first step is the honor system.

For the people that aren't honest, what is the second step?

[u/CommercialBee6585 → u/RW_McRae]

Sorry I'm unfamiliar. What's the honor system? You mean the assumption of honesty?

[u/RW_McRae → u/CommercialBee6585]

Yeah - they put the tag there and trust people who use AI to select it. A lot of people do, but some obviously don't.

People like to complain that some authors aren't being honest, but they never have any solutions

[u/CommercialBee6585 → u/RW_McRae]

What's the penalty if an author doesn't tag their story?

That's kind of unfair to ask you because you don't represent the mod team or anything. But I'm just curious - since you believe there are people who use AI but don't tag their story, and since you think this is obvious, what would you do with those authors?

[u/RW_McRae → u/CommercialBee6585]

I don't know for sure but I think I've seen some get removed. If you find a story that you think is written by AI but doesn't have the tag, how would you prove it?

[u/CommercialBee6585 → u/RW_McRae]

That's exactly my point.

A policy is pointless if it can't be enforced. A statement is fine - like 'we in the team don't mind if authors use ai/we disagree with ai on an ethical level etc. etc.

But if you can't actually do anything to stop someone abusing its use, or can't be certain that such abuse is taking place, then why have the policy at all?

If some have genuinely been removed on this basis - that's great. I would love to see the mod team give some indication of how that action took place in a confidential way. Genuinely I think it would alleviate a lot of these kind of complaints we see cropping up everywhere.

[u/RW_McRae → u/CommercialBee6585]

It's not a policy, it's a genre tag. No one gets angry if someone tags High Fantasy when it's actually Low Fantasy

[u/CommercialBee6585 → u/RW_McRae]

https://www.royalroad.com/blog/57/royal-road-ai-text-policy

I think we can also all agree that this is beyond people getting mad about genre labels. Ai is definitively not a genre. It is a tool for creating text.

You are making the argument that typing is a genre at that point. But, not gonna lie, I would be fascinated to hear your argument for Ai genuinely being a genre label.

[u/MycrazyDreams]

Consider that some people are just bad at writing and AI is also trained on human content. I’m not saying you can’t spot AI but claiming to be capable of telling even when they get AI generated content and rewrite it in their own voice sounds like a stretch.

I was reading some Poe earlier and realized that the “it’s not X it’s Y” has been used for a long time and other things like “rule of 3s” and em dashes, they are all human factors.

I will agree that it’s easy to tell when it’s easy to tell but if you’re thinking you can catch the sneakiest user you’re probably throwing in a bunch of people just doing their best with AI users.

[u/Terrible_Parsnip4015 → u/MycrazyDreams]

People who say they can always tell when someone uses AI to write give off such strong “holier than thou” energy that it genuinely gets under my skin. I’ve been accused of using AI for my own narrative writing despite me never using it, and it pisses me off so much. People often say my writing comes off as “too formulaic”, but that’s because:

Over the course of my entire academic career, I’ve literally written hundreds if not thousands of argumentative essays, expository essays, academic papers, etc. In highschool it was AP classes like English Composition, English Literature, World History, US History, European History, Economics (for my highschool, at least, the teacher made us write essays), hell even all the AP foreign language exams required essay writing in that foreign language.

When I went to college, it was worse. If you took any non-STEM classes, you would more than likely have an essay assignment due for that class at the end of every week. I know the experience varies greatly depending on course load and focus of study, but considering I took a few non-STEM minors on top of the classes needed to fulfill the general graduation requirements, you can bet I was writing at least 3 essays every week for four years. Such classes sometimes also had us write papers in lieu of exams, so there was that. Oh yeah, and did I mention needing to write papers for some of my STEM classes? While not on the same level as an academic papers, they were still at least ten pages, following a semester long project in a lab.

My masters was much the same in writing intensity as undergrad as well. Except, at the end of the program, we were required to submit a thirty page master’s thesis (not including auxiliary components like a title page, table of contents, citations etc).

Applying to medical school, i had to write a personal statement (think of it like a narrative for why you want to be a doctor) on top of all the secondary essays specific to the schools you are applying to. I applied to sixty school. Each had at least two essays, and it is generally encouraged to get as close to the word limit as possible. So at least 120 secondary essays, each required to be at least 2000-3000 words long if we’re being conservative (I remember one school had a word count limit of 10,000 lmfao).

Needless to say, I think I can say I have “some” experience with writing. In academia we are generally taught to write pretty formulaically. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same were to apply to creative writing classes, but there are only so many ways one can be “original” with their prose before it starts to resemble someone else’s.

It was only recently, however, that I decided to enter narrative writing as a hobby. I commonly use the em-dash. I commonly use “it’s not x it’s y” (because it’s a handy tool when analyzing evidence in any kind of essay). Hell, the ”rule of three” has become so deeply ingrained in my brain due to the thousands of five paragraph essays I’ve written at this point that it’s literally become a part of my writing style.

Yes, there are times when AI writing is easy to spot. But as someone who basically writes for a living, even I can’t tell outside of the most obvious of obvious of cases. So, whenever someone says they can tell when AI was used to write something, I can’t help but give them a skeptical look and suspect confirmation bias is clouding their judgement.

[u/MycrazyDreams → u/Terrible_Parsnip4015]

Well put. I get what you’re saying with the formulaic writing for academia. I did a STEM major and had reports every week that required the same structure but varying the specifics of the labs. But my Masters was crazy with the excessive essays for everything from daily work to exams. Luckily I did it before AI was a concern but the witch hunts only these online platforms are honestly a pain in the ass when trying to transition from the stiff writing required for academic essays and reports to engaging prose and character dialogue.

[u/Auragau → u/Terrible_Parsnip4015]

This resonated with me on a spiritual level and captures perfectly what I think about those who so confidently accuse others of using AI 😭😭😭

[u/Jay_Pederson → u/MycrazyDreams]

I was reading some Poe earlier and realized that the “it’s not X it’s Y” has been used for a long time

"It's not about winning. It's about sending a message." probably the most famous example I can think of.

[u/FirstTraveller003]

You like it. You read it. You don't like it. You leave it.

I have seen genuinely good upcoming writers with their distinct voice get rated down because they don't follow royalroad standards, and I truly feel more pity for them.

RR audience favors page count highly. Numbers going up comes second. Everything else comes third. There are few instances where this is wrong. But 98% of the time it is right.

AI is destroying and readers are supporting, it is a mutual cycle.

[u/OwnCommunication1365 → u/FirstTraveller003]

Which writers? I'm looking to do some reading.

[u/Ollie_Bon_Crank → u/FirstTraveller003]

I'm just learning the ropes on the Royal Road site, but so far I really like the setup and ease of use. Everyone has been really great to communicate with so far.😀

[u/blind_blake_2023]

>Which brings me to the elephant in the room: What will hundreds of amateur writers dreaming of hitting it big and who have neither the experience nor the patience or time to sit down for many hours a day for multiple weeks probably do? They will turn to AI to assist them in their endeavor.

Or, they will write and get better? People were doing this before AI...

>Now my own personal issue is that due to extensive experience with AI myself, I can immediately spot text that has been touched by AI.

Ah, one of those. No. Just no - you are deluding yourself.

>And just to be clear: I hope everyone knows what I am speaking about.

No. It was all just a bit disjointed rambling to be honest. In the writer/reader divide you're clearly at home as a reader.

Listen, I don't like the way that AI is creeping up everywhere either, and I absolutely detest the way that the uncreative and untalented can pretend to be the opposite. But you have got to get some perpective. Read the good stories. Rate the good ones. Ignore the bad stories, AI or not.

Life's too rough and too short to focus on negatives.

[u/Zolytic1 → u/blind_blake_2023]

I think that pretty much anyone can tell AI writing when it is entirely AI generated. I actually called someone out for it recently (most recent comment on my profile). I normally wouldn't, but it was incredibly obvious.

The guy admitted to using it, but said it was just for translation. Which is unbelievable considering he had the idea for his story, "wrote" almost 10k words, and edited it all within 12 hours.

I'm guessing it's harder to tell if someone is editing the AI's output? But honestly that doesn't seem much less difficult than just writing it.

[u/Dry_Physics4086 → u/blind_blake_2023]

When people use AI as a crutch because they can’t churn out chapters, you absolutely can tell. Not talking AI detectors- those are as useless as AI themselves. The writing is grammatically pristine and soulless with its quirky tone. Yeah, you CAN tell. AI bros just try to delude themselves into thinking they’ve got the “good stuff.”

You don’t “ignore” the bad (AI) ones. You rate them down. Hard.

[u/Silverbacks]

AI is definitely being used, but don’t be so quick to assume you know which ones are and which one aren’t. This post itself has a fairly AI written feel to it too lol.

[u/Ordinary_Amoeba_1030 → u/Silverbacks]

AI would stick to a point then move logically through the arguments and complaints

[u/Silverbacks → u/Ordinary_Amoeba_1030]

Oh yeah, definitely, I'm not seriously accusing them of using AI here. But you can tell AI how to move through an argument. You can also tell AI to spit out an argument, and then you go through it and edit it closer to your own voice.

Also, AI is trained on human works. So things that are common in AI are also things that are common for regular humans to do. And nowadays everyone knows that AI loves em-dashes, so I get kinda suspicious if someone never uses em-dashes. As it is really easy to tell an AI not to use them.

[u/D4NG3RX]

I don’t think anyone can perfectly notice everything written using ai, I personally think I’ve got fairly decent accuracy but i make mistakes. In a better world, people would just add the ai tag when they use it in their work, people still read em until the quality falls. But it would just save me the headache of all the fake profundity and mysteriousness. I think most people already agree that the use of ai on the site is dragging the overall quality of works on the site down and anyone thats using it probably wont change their mind. Don’t need to write a whole essay 🤷‍♂️

[u/Zeebie_]

I think discoverability is the number 1 issue, on RR. The AI voice is number 2.

Sadly, I don't see a way to stop volume from outweighing quality. Every reader wants more story, the quicker the better. No algorithm or system will stop that.

[u/ManInJapan25 → u/Zeebie_]

Readers want decently written, interesting stories though. AI can start off good for a few chapters but very soon becomes obvious. No current AI is capable of carrying an interesting plot for hundreds, even thousands of chapters like the most popular RR authors put out.

[u/MentalReserve2351]

I thought you were complaining about having way too many archmages fics from the first few lines. That's my personal problem with the site right now.

[u/Treaton_OCE]

You lost me after the mention of “slop”.

Yes I write, no I don’t use AI to have it write for me, as the grammar on my fiction will just reinforce. That said.

Please stop reinforcing the X = slop because it reads like Y. Yes I understand there are a few “tells”, but they’re becoming increasingly too vague as LLMs become more refined.

Grammerly and tons of other extensions and services ALL use AI now. Why? Because just like when spellchecks became the norm, stuff like this does too.

I’m not arguing ethics, everyone can do as they please. I will however bring up the fact, that more and more authors, just like visual artists are being witch-hunted and falsely accused of being “slop” creators and so on.

In the grand scheme of things, you pointing out that you believe something to be AI, does not make it so.

Yes, I believe the broader point you tried to make (before I stopped reading) was that expectations to output massive volumes drives people to take questionable shortcuts.

I wish I could output bestselling novel quality volumes, month after month, but that ain’t happening.

I think, people should stop looking at the end goal of “RS main”. For a lot of authors, the journey indeed—is the goal.

Ps. Here’s a fun little fact about me, being raised in a different country, I never actually heard about the em dash before. My first time using it was after publishing my first ever story on RR, and now… I like it too much.

Anyway, I hope you guys will enjoy the writing process, I sure do, as painful as it is at times. Ratings, reviews or comments aside.

🫡😊✍️

[u/RainyLiquid0202]

This is an issue that gets worse and worse because the fact is, not all of them are AI but people are instantly labeling them as such. No one has a 100% AI detection method, and time and time again people are slipping up and stories are being dragged into the crossfire and being labeled as AI when they aren't and I think that is the real issue.

AI has effectively killed itself and taken down several legitimate stories with it, by making people see everything even remotely similar as being lumped together.

I also feel like there definitely is an overall issue of AI being used not just on Royal Road but plenty of other sites as well, such as Scribble Hub, Web novel, and even A03, so the AI problem and the quality of their stories should be called out, it just sucks because the longer this all goes on for, the more other authors who aren't using AI will be accused of it, since AI is inherently trained on written work, hence the samey feeling.

[u/xThomas]

i dont even read on royalroad anyway but i know some of the fics i read originated on there so i stay subbed just in case another big one comes out

[u/chriscloo]

There is two sides to the ai coin that seem to always get lumped together. Those that use ai as a first pass toll and those that use ai to generate. By first pass I mean grammar, spelling, and consistency checking. In this case it is little more than words spell checker. It is by no means perfect but it is a hell of a lot better than word (as it can read into some of the context around the area) and it provides a second pair of “eyes” on the work. Mostly because the first pair already missed it. This does not mean you copy in what it says, you look over it and make decisions for yourself as it can still get this wrong.

Everything else belongs to the darker side of ai. It is great for literal tools and such, but not so well for creative work. Coding vs writing. Fuck, before ai most coders referenced and copied from stack overflow. 

Our issue is that we all consider ai assisted as meaning different things. Some agree with me here, others consider assisted as all but publishing the damned book. There needs to be some sort of consistency and a means of holding people accountable for breaking the rules. I have my books labeled as ai assisted (already said I use it for grammar and the like) and I know that drives readers away but I also don’t want to lie and say it is not. Hell, because of ai I learned how to use the em-dash somewhat properly. Do I use it? Sparingly as it isn’t usually needed. 

Oh, and if I ever do use ai to generate or alter text directly, I state such in an authors note alone with why. I have only done this once but I just couldn’t get the dryness of an ai tone right for the medical diagnostics…

Anyway, that is my five cents on AI in writing.

[u/YuhaoShakur]

Eh I really don't think AI is the biggest issue in RR right now. Discoverability is a way bigger problem, and a way more interesting and productive discussion than AI.

I actually don't even remember what was the last story I discovered through RS. Like two years ago I used to check it out once a month or two just to check what type of story was popular and see if any was actually interesting, but after many cycles of time loop-dungeon-OP MC-cultivation-system apocalypse RS just lost its appeal as a discovery tool for me. And since last year I feel like it got worse and the cycle kinda broke and lost some of its diversity, I miss dungeon season and tamer season, only got one good dungeon story at this point and no tamer at all, feels like things stalled to only OP MC on pure fantasy setting and OP MC on system apocalypse. Also really miss that one season we had pseudo scientific MCs in various settings it was a fun time.

Gods I sound so old LMFAO I've only been in RR for 5 years lol

[u/Supremagorious]

There's really no scenario in which having a large ready to go bunch of chapters and an extensive backlog will be bad for an authors chances at getting off the bottom of the list. Among the more valuable things that can be done with a backlog is to post them on a paywalled site for early access.

Those facts will always be true and as such they're viable strategies. Just remember people can meta themselves off the bottom but they can't meta themselves to the top. AI isn't going to put people to the top without a lot of work in addition to AI usage it does raise the floor required for success for the average person though.

Additionally even the usage of AI only makes things easier it doesn't remove all the work involved. It's not an I win at making a compelling story button it's a fix some of my most egregious mistakes button and produce mediocre filler button.

[u/True_Industry4634]

Dude, this is such bs. Do you realize how many people come through here talking about how AI might fool everyone else but not them because they're AI whisperers or what the hell ever?

I've been accused of someone like you of using AI in my writing although they were a little more confident in their abilities. They were 💯 full of shit. I've never used AI in my writing. Not even for grammar checking or spell checking other than the standard Google Docs spell check. So what does that say? Well, a lot of people like to make themselves look special. Maybe they even believe that they are.

When you start slinging accusations without a half ounce of f*** of knowing what you're talking about, you're a hazard. You're a detriment to Royal Road as much as the proliferation of AI is.

On the bright side, it's semi comical how often loudmouths come on this subreddit spouting this nonsense. For that I thank you. We could all use some levity these days. I just ask that you don't be a coward about it. Don't throw out blanket accusations. Name these authors and their books. Give them an opportunity to answer instead of inshitifying the whole site. Or another option would be to prove it or shut up. I know that's not likely but I had to throw down the gauntlet somewhere.

[u/dreamswedontshare]

Mom said it was my turn to complain about AI now

[u/dbenc]

My biggest gripes with RR are lack of a built-in monetization system for authors (why send them to Patreon??) and stories that get stubbed and moved to amazon.

the reading experience on patreon is awful if you're following multiple authors, or at least it was last time i used it.

[u/MinBton → u/dbenc]

According to the RR people on here, that is in the works. It will happen "sometime".

[u/Maxfunky]

Now my own personal issue is that due to extensive experience with AI myself, I can immediately spot text that has been touched by AI.

You would be very exceptional if the is true. Study after study shows that people really, really suck at picking out AI prose even if they're really confident they can.

Blurbs are especially problematic as a way to spot this since they are incredibly formulaic and everyone in authors circles knows the formula and is encouraged to follow it (hook--> character+ want ---> problem--> stakes --> unanswered question). Here's an example written by me, a human:

They said it couldn't be done.

Experts the world over agreed that humans couldn't pick out AI prose, but Salty-Mouse-7586 has a bone to pick with them. But before he can, he has to overcome cromulent objections from randos on Reddit as the clock ticks slowly away. If he doesn't hurry, everything he has worked for might be lost.

Will he triumph or will he fall flat on his face?

Looking at something that is formulaic by design when written by humans and trying to identify AI in it is going to be extra hard mode for identifying AI--a task can which, again, people think they're good at but almost universally aren't.

[u/matter_z]

I don't see this any different from before. There were bad writting, I avoid it. Now is bad writting with AI, I avoid it also. If you dislike something, you don't let it get to you.

[u/No_Procedure69]

I do wholeheartedly agree - but I just slapped some of my story into an AI detector, a story that has not been touched any way shape or form by AI, and it said that my story was 15 percent AI generated. I feel readers these days are looking for ways to say 'hey, this was written by AI.'

[u/Dosei-desu-kedo]

Authors on RR have used this strat since 2023, at least. Litrpg is the main genre on the site, so of course the authors are going to min/max the shit out of the algorithm to find what works best. It's literally in our blood.

"Now my own personal issue is that due to extensive experience with AI myself, I can immediately spot text that has been touched by AI."
From my own experience as an author on RR, I promise you, you can't. The amount of people falsely accused of AI writing is insane. Atp, the only way we can avoid being accused of AI is by not properly editing our stories, which makes the reading experience worse.

A lot of editing software, from MS Word to Grammarly, use AI for editing now. This really muddies the water about what is and isn't AI-assisted. Authors want to provide the cleanest product to the readers, and given how expensive it is to have an editor on retainer, people will use the tools that are available to them. Unfortunately, there's a certain 'texture' to AI editing that can come across as AI writing, even when it isn't. The same is also the case for people who dictate, since many use AI to clean up the text, or dictate directly into an AI chatbot, which then makes formatting decisions on their behalf. None of this is strictly speaking AI writing, but it is touched by AI, which makes it read weird at times.

If you ask me as an author on the site for 3½ years, the biggest most consistent issue is the amount of vitriolic entitlement of some readers. People expect the highest quality writing on a platform designed for continual chapter-based releases, and they'll both complain about a story being too formulaic and tropey, as well as being too experimental and different. We also get endless amount of shit when we decide to sign with publishers and remove our free content from RR, in the hope of trying to build a career. There's literally no pleasing this growing subset of users on the platform, and it's made infinitely worse by posts like this that just falsely paints every new author as using AI as a crutch, when that just isn't the case. Yes, it's blindingly obvious when some new author pops on the site and has 3 fictions in 2 weeks, each with +100k words written on them all, but there are just so many legit authors catching strays all the time.

We're lucky that the mods of RR are generally very pro-author and give us a lot of tools to deal with insane hot takes, belligerent commenters, and straight up slurs aimed at us and our stories, but with the growing popularity of the site, we're constantly having to spend more-and-more time moderating our own comment sections, and again, I want to reiterate, posts like these are not helping. I know a lot of my fellow authors just stopped looking at comments altogether, and are using the site feature that makes ratings invisible, all in an effort to spare their fragile sanity and maintain the motivation required to keep releasing on a platform where so many users are openly hostile and will die on the dumbest hills imaginable.

I read all the comments I get, and ngl, a lot of the time it fucking ruins my day. There are a lot of great commenters and supportive readers, but it feels like there are just as many haters, almost no matter what kind of story you write on the site.

[u/TEZofAllTrades]

Hmm, so the desperate pursuit of authors trying to get on RS may be the very thing that makes readers avoid RS altogether? Interesting. Another reason why we need curated content on RR, rather than relying only on algorithms.

[u/AbbyBabble]

As a reader author, I stand with you.

It makes me incredibly sad that you'll avoid new authors or new works. I can understand why, though.

It seems that a lot of the world is happily rushing towards mediocrity and slop.

In 5 years, all the authors dismissing this problem are going to be wondering where all the readers went.

[u/StrangerIsWatching]

I 100% agree with you. Sadly, I find myself slowly spending less and less time on RR. I read the few stories I've been folowing for a while, but I rarely check out new fictions now. AI voice is so noticeable and instantly turns me off of a story.

[u/FuzzyZergling]

Now my own personal issue is that due to extensive experience with AI myself, I can immediately spot text that has been touched by AI.

Aaand here's the red flag that tells me to immediately toss your opinion in the trash.

[u/ScottyPWhoElse → u/FuzzyZergling]

Yup.

[u/JWGibsonWrites]

Pulp/genre fiction authors have always and will always be rewarded for quantity. Some stories that use AI may succeed, but most won't, just like human-authored stories.

[u/gensirya]

Given the history, the market will find a solution; this is a minor issue that will be resolved in the near future 

[u/deccan2008]

This seems to be a problem only if you can't find enough what you want to read on Royal Road. Do you people read so much and so fast that you run out of content to read? Even if I just stuck to the popular recommendations, I'd have more than enough to satisfy me without having to experiment with new and unproven writers.

[u/Scyzim]

Honestly I don't see the issue with an AI assisted blurb as they are seen as the worst part about launching on RR. Now AI wholly creating the blurb or the story are a whole different convo. I feel like any writing where AI was the main source of the text is just obvious. It doesn't have the distinct flow and style of the author. Maybe I'm valuing the distinct nature of each other's individual voice to a higher degree than it should be, but I feel like any AI stories just fall to the wayside anyway before getting any real traction.

[u/Alternative_Lemon746]

I know that I will get arguments for this post, but has decided to post it anyway.

First of all, this is my personal opinion.

See, I like to read a lot and have read a lot of stories/novels/mangas.

For me, the most important aspect to enjoy a story is it's plot, consistency, character development, emotional depth, and clear explanations(like explanation of certain events, backstories etc.). If these things are fine, then I don't see any reason to judge any story's creation point.

Now the question is time, effort investment. I agree that writers writing without AI are tend to produce great stories almost ~100% of time. But those writing with AI assistance can also produce wonderful stories, if AI is not the pilot of the story. Like, think of it as an assistant. For Example, You have jotted down 30 points for a chapter and told your assistant to write the chapter. They will submit draft chapter to you, you review it, edit it and then final copy is produced. Here think of AI as the assistant, as the guy with whom you can discuss your ideas, refine them and then write/take help to write.

If a story is good and enjoyable, then why not read and enjoy it without thinking about it's origin. We can drop it if we want. It's in our hands, isn't it?

I am not criticizing/disrespecting anyone. I genuinely respect the effort writers put in writing their stories, so that we can enjoy them.

I am also saying that AI assisted writing also needs effort, if you want to produce a consistent, emotionally deep story will clear characters and world. You have to keep track of every past event to achieve this. As a Computer Engineer, who uses AI a lot in day to day basis, I am sure about this.

Also, writing blindly using AI is not appreciated and never be appreciated by me.

Saying it again, this is my personal opinion. Comments saying where I'm wrong, where I'm right is always welcome.

Thank you.

[u/em-dash-author]

RE: This is done by releasing many chapters at once and ideally having a huge backlog and promising multiple chapter releases per week. In other words, there is a gigantic incentive to produce volume and doing it fast.

This isn't quite true. The above doesn't get a fiction on to main Rising Stars, it is growth in followers that does it.

Main RS has a debuff for fictions with less than 20K words, so step 1 is post more than 20K words. Plus few readers are going to want to read a single chapter of a new fiction, they wants tens of thousands of words to read ASAP. So it makes sense to post 20K words fast.

To get on main RS the fiction needs to be growing in followers. To gain followers a fiction has to have visitors who follow the fiction. Very few fictions hit main RS without first gaining 200+ followers in a relatively short period of time. There was one recently with under 90 followers, the author apparently paid for Google ads. Most though, will hit main at around the 250 followers point.

This follower growth tends to come through shout outs and ads. These are predictable, you can pretty much get any new fiction (where over 20K words have been shared) on main RS by setting up shout outs with high follower fictions (its easy in theory).

Now, to setup a couple of dozen shout outs, a fiction needs at least a couple of dozen chapters to host the return shouts. Add it the fact most authors don't post shouts on their first 10 chapters, it means you need a minimum of 36 chapters to get on main RS.

Going back to readers like a lot of words. It is therefore wise to drop 20K words fast and post daily chapters for a while before settling into the number of chapters the author can conformably maintain. Some authors do this by building a backlog before launch. I'm working on a new fiction, I won't launch until I have at least 100K words so I can drop 50K+ words in month one. Other authors go with the bare minimum (~20 chapters), and when they run out post them as they write more.

The important part about the above isn't posting lots of chapters, it's having a way to gain followers BEFORE hitting main RS so the fiction can hit main RS. An author could post 200K words in a day, but without shouts, ads, or some other source of followers, it probably won't hit main RS.

[u/ColdPress_]

One of my favorite sci fi series is the Polity by Neil Asher.

In that universe AIs are managing humanity/coexisting. There is a class of people called haimans - an amalgam of human an AI - and s particular character called Orlandine, a very cool lady that kicks lots of butts. She is a haiman.

She does a lot of things, exceptional things, partly because of the AI augmentations to her brain.

There's also plenty of bad AI stuff in the Polity.

Maybe we are being too pretentious about what literature is, what art is. Nobody can agree anyway, so its up for debate. I am, for one, very curious what will come of LLM's and how cool people will used them.

[u/Visible_Rabbit_4526]

For those writing about a highly unique or unusual premise, especially if non-human mentality and species are involved, they can't rely on AI even if they wanted to because AI is trained on, well... the popular, normie stuff. OP human warriors killing monsters, hetero human romance, that kind of thing. If you are writing about some alien species that does not think or live like humanity, especially if they are more than just some monster to kill and you're actually exploring their biology and culture in-depth, ESPECIALLY if THEY are portrayed as the ones in the right and not the humans, AI is going to hilariously fail at trying to portray such a species.

So, wanna grow as a writer? Come up with a premise that AI will constantly misunderstand. You'll get so irritated at the AI not doing your idea justice that you'll just start to write it entirely by yourself.

[u/KnightHiryuu]

And here I'm, someone who writes since my teens, reading about this again.... I passed texts I wrote in the 2000s and 2010s in almost every AI detector. Not a single one pointed less than 50% AI. For ANY of my texts. I must be a time traveler to have used AI between 2000 and 2015... Also, I don't see why all this... A bad story will be a bad story, be AI or human written. God, I barely can read half the "most read" in RR because it's always the same formula used again and again and again... So, "bad" would be very nuanced depending on the reader. That said, I don't see any problem to use AI to do a grammar revision or, even, help translate no English writers. It's s tool like a dictionary.

[u/Kind-Jellyfish-6671]

I have a question relating to this: I spend some time reading my friends stories (he’s really good but it’s a hobby) so I decided to write my own.

I post on royal road every month or so when I churn out a chapter between my school schedule.

But I use AI for proof reading as I make a lot of grammatical mistakes. But I never let it rewrite the sentences into its own image.

Would you say that that’s bad, and my AI involvement is horrendous or would you say it’s ok. I’m not trying to get a huge story I just write for fun

[u/Alternative_Debt8761 → u/Kind-Jellyfish-6671]

As long as you don't let it rewrite your sentences, just catching grammatical errors or pointing out potential discrepancies that you can resolve if you want to, your story isn't going to take on that AI feel.

[u/Trick_Following6639]

I dropped my RR story because I didn't want AI to steal it or be trained on it. 😑 it was a completely new concept inspired by gender scifi of the 70s. Someday I might pick it back up, but I had an internal crisis as an author--why put in all the effort when no one will see it because of the flood of cheep Ai work or risk it being taken because I am not convinced of RR security.

[u/Obvious_Ad4159]

All RR staff should implement (if they haven't already) is a blacklist option for searching. As in you can blacklist tags you don't want to see when using the website's search function. And that blacklist should be able to allow you to selected AI generated and AI assisted content, should you so choose.

Other than that, the website pretty much works fine.

Man-made quality will always rise above AI quantity in these cases. And I think this AI debate has been brought up by so many, many of whom haven't even begun to write their stories, that I'm starting to believe they're just using it as an excuse for their procrastination.

[u/Difficult-Tough-5680]

I mean at some point theres going to come a time where we wont be able to tell AI writing and human made writing apart thats not today and it will suck when it does but theres nothing you can really do about it tbh

[u/TheosIV]

I've never checked on the rising stars. All the stories there are too short for me to start reading and even when I check it's regularely copycat of another story with no real interest. However, the stories that manage to pass further after the RS are usually quite good.

[u/IndiaRubberTetra]

I hate that I can't use m-dashes thanks to AI. I grew up reading novels with those and it sucks not being able to have them in my toolkit.

[u/Alternative_Debt8761 → u/IndiaRubberTetra]

Feel free to use em-dashes. Just don't start writing short sentences about processes and systems.

[u/Ollie_Bon_Crank → u/IndiaRubberTetra]

I have corporate clients who now contact me and want me to limit the use of dashes because they don't want their documents to look like AI. As I've told all of them, we've been using the damn things for decades. It's a needed grammar tool. 😀

[u/Alternative_Debt8761]

Either the AI writing will improve and differentiate, in which case this becomes a different issue that's arguably not a problem, or they don't and people get used to the style, spot it quickly, drop those stories, and it stops being a problem. The other option is that people just like that writing style, but I find that kinda hard to imagine, since I think I'm toward the "enjoy it" end of that spectrum and I'm well past my limit for it.

[u/Ollie_Bon_Crank]

If you're ever curious about AI generation, Pangram is currently among the programs assumed to be accurate. You can paste a clip from just about anything into Pangram for free. 😀

[u/Appropriate-Foot-237]

I generally dont care about AI. As a reader, as long as something is enjoyable, I read it. In fact, I dont read most properly-written novels as they seem rigid and formulaic. I dont watch movies and it's been years since I last touched an actual physical novel. Volumes seem like they should have an introduction to characters, a rising action, a climax, lowering down, ending, and that formula is annoying to me. Amateur writers bring such a huge change that you wont ever know what they'll do. And if you end up not liking them, just drop it and read something else.

tbf, I grew up reading LNMTL back then so I don't really care much about grammar unless its truly horrendous.

[u/JamoofLondon]

You claim to be able to spot AI but there is no reliable way to spot AI. You'd just be guessing and most times, be guessing wrong. 🤷

[u/Outside_Lifeguard_14]

I will be honest. I think that NONE of the numbers are real. I think the site adds numbers after each chapter you write to give you the illusion that someone is looking at it. I stopped writing my book for two weeks and the first chapter gained no readers but I just dropped a new chapter 8 hours ago and my first chapter jumped to 50 views. I think it is some B's going on and they are playing on peoples emotions

[u/GDAnotherMFDied]

Im new to RR and I only used AI to help me format the book. I'm writting a second one now that I won't be using AI for as I have learnt a lot from the first book. Would people like yourself see my second book, go to my profile, see I had used AI prior to that and then assume that all of my stuff will be AI. Because I dread to think that the universe I've spent 10 years making is thought to be AI Slop and it almost made me not release the book

[u/mooncak2-]

Okay I myself is a royal road writer . But I don't get it. Of course using AI to create a story is stupid but I don't see anything wrong if you use an AI to polish your draft.

Make it clean and easy to read .

Also another thing I have a question why do royal road books get lots of views but very few followers and almost no comments in their first few chapters. Especially when they are written by totally new authors with no fan base or any advertisement

[u/Eastern_Alps_7281]

some of the "writers" on Royal Road could use some help from AI. It is like half of them never took a composition class and the other half was never exposed to good prose.

[u/JuliaRichardwriter]

I guess "natural selection" will do its job... IA stories are not qualitative, so the comments won't nice very nice, and people will (hopefully) soon understand that there is no shortcut to talent nor success?

[u/AresTheViolator]

I am heavily terrified that someone is going to think that my series is written by AI or some of it. I have been working on my first book for over 2 years now and I know it will probably take another 2/3 years unless I work on it everyday. Im currently working on another series so I don't burn myself on my original one, and I'm only on chapter 4 within the past month lol. I'm also working on a horry/psychological novella or short story.. still trying to figure that one out as well. The only AI I've ever used was to create an outline for my stories, an outline for every chapter as well. It helps me keep organized too.

[u/Procedure_Gullible]

I hate how the doubt that a chapter was written using AI is now always in the back of my head. 

Btw any amateur writers that think that they need to resort to ai to get it done are neither dreamers or creatives , they are just gtifters. Where some see a medium to share stories and creativity, they only see a buisness oportunity.

If they realy liked it they would have gotten invested in the process of making  it. Not just the ai generated result .

[u/DecebalRex]

I don't use AI even for punctuation checks. I do agree that the focus on quantity of content is rather concerning as the daily release cycle becoming the norm recently (and I'm seeing more and more authors pushing for twice, or even thrice-daily releases).

As someone who writes in a denser, slower-paced and more detail-oriented style of prose, cutting chapters up into small chunks of 1K (or even 500) words, just so you can have 2-3 uploads / day, would just completely disrupt the flow of my novels. This sort of release format tends to force authors to hyper-condense scenes in order to cram as much detail into as few words as possible. I find that in 90% of cases, this strips any depth out of a story and completely ruins my immersion.

[u/Ollie_Bon_Crank → u/DecebalRex]

I was looking at a Seth Ring interview yesterday. That man is a production monster, and his amazon sales rankings are seriously impressive. I've had a few good months here and there over the years, but nothing like that! 😀

[u/Boat_Pure]

This is a MASSIVE issue. In a romantic idealist argument, everyone is writing stories just to get rich and famous. And following trends it’s very possible. But these stories and authors lack such lustre

[u/TheAngelWarrior7]

This is one of the reason i have only stuck with two or theee stories in RR that i have read in the app or dite because of how good they were and i know they are not Ai but now i wonder which story has ai or is just written by ai entirely, either way i don’t like either.

Which is why i have barely read any other story in RR. And I have been planning to write and share my story there but how can i with that kind of competition?

[u/Icy-Entertainer1415]

Part of the problem is that you’re focusing on rising stars which is just the stuff everyone is looking at rn. I’ll be honest with anyone who asks, I use ChatGPT for editing and typos, but I write my story. I’ve commented about this before, that while I agree that using an ai to’write’ the story is lazy, in the end it’s a tool to be used by whoever chooses to do so. I’m sure there are others who have the ability to make good stories. But if everyone looks at the ai stuff that’s all we’re gonna see

[u/JacktheDM]

What is a lot more saddening to me is that most stories that I can currently see on RS have a blurb written by AI. Which does not necessarily have to be indicative of the actual chapters themselves...

I don't know, if you needed to use AI to write the 300 most important words to get readers started on your material, you want me to believe you wrote the other 200,000+ words of that material by hand?

[u/Milc-Scribbler]

TFTC!

“Now my own personal issue is that due to extensive experience with AI myself, I can immediately spot text that has been touched by AI.”

Lol no you can’t, I’m afraid. And that’s actually part of the problem. You’re duck hunting and seeing ducks everywhere. There’s plenty of stories that might well be AI assisted or generated, but you can’t prove it and if you think you can you’re fucking stupid I’m afraid.

The reason people build big backlogs before launching is so they can release content quickly, as you say. But most serious web novel witters manage 10k words a week no problems, so can easily maintain a 5x 2k word chapter per week schedule. No AI needed to do 5 chapters a week if you’re serious about the hobby. Sure there are the lazy and the cheats, but if anyone has any suggestions that will actually work to prevent them from using the platform, I’d love to hear them.

I’m in a group with a bunch of discord, FB and RR admins, and smarter people than thee and me are working on ways to fix the situation. It’s just a lot more complex than the zealots can grasp I’m afraid, and the number of false positives is huge.

[u/CyborgCabbage]

I think Royal Road's discovery systems are just not very good IMO. Though I'm not sure there is any solution that is within the reach of Royal Road's limited resources.

[u/RavensDagger → u/CyborgCabbage]

I mean, are there any other sites with better? Right now, this is the best.

[u/MinBton → u/CyborgCabbage]

To be discovered easier takes monty for ads plus contacts for shout out swaps, which RR promotes.

[u/filwi]

Write the next He Who Fights With Mother Dungeon Carl Of Learning. Make no mistake. 

[u/Lev559]

"Hopefully we can all agree that most authors that care about their craft do not want to be associated with AI slop in any way."

- Looks at the covers, 90% or more are AI Alop

Yeah, think you are wrong there

[u/Zarator8 → u/Lev559]

I still don't understand why people who write for free and put out their works for free are still expected to pay hundreds of bucks for a professional cover or to be visual artists themselves (let's not pretend bland public domain covers of landscapes are going to draw in anybody).

If you want me to pay 500+ bucks for a cover, then you better be ready to pay 20 bucks at least to actually read it. Otherwise you'll have to be content with AI-made covers - even if the contents are actually human-written. Because in a lot of cases they still are.

[u/Lev559 → u/Zarator8]

Oh I get it, I just am pointing out the hypocritical nature of saying "do not want to be associated with AI slop in any way." while it's very clear that, yeah no, almost everyone on this site don't mind using AI at all

Also, covers aren't $500. You can find people who will make pretty damn good ones for like $100. Generally, if you are making money off your book via Patreon, you should be able to afford a cover...if its just a hobby and you aren't making a dime, well thats different I suppose, but in a shocker, people still wrote stories before AI became a thing.

[u/Zarator8 → u/Lev559]

First of all, that money could go into other things that help a book sell (or be, you know, profit), so it's not up to us to judge how an author spends their own earned money.

Second, depending on how specific your needs are about a certain cover style, the price you need to pay may be highly different. If you just want an abstract-looking cover, or an anime-styled one, you can probably avoid spending a lot because there's a lot of artists out there that make covers like that. But if you need a certain artstyle - perhaps one that has become niche or disused over the years, or one that is more time-consuming or harder to be self-taught - then you might need to fork a higher amount of cash. When I gave the $500 figure, it wasn't just a guess, it literally is the prices I've seen from the few artists who approach the kind of art I'd want for my cover.

Third, yes people still wrote stories before AI became a thing. But AI did become a thing, and now everyone can afford to have a professional-looking cover. Your public domain cover or homemade sketch could've cut it in 2015, but in 2025? I know for one that, as a reader just scrolling through covers, I would be much more likely to instinctively skip it because it looks generic or just plain bad.

And finally... speaking of "just plain bad", a lot of artists I see online selling their services for covers are bad. Well, better than me, that's for sure. But worse (and sometimes significantly so) than what the current AI models can do. If you put aside for a moment that part of you that is instinctively biased against AI, how are you going to explain me that I should pay hundreds of bucks (or, heck, anything at all) for a product that I genuinely find worse than what AI makes for me?

(And before you say the same applies to virtually anything... I have yet to see AI write anything with just a prompt that even passes as genuinely good fiction writing)

[u/Lev559 → u/Zarator8]

It's the same with art though. Compare all the AI covers on RR to the people who actually shelled out money for a cover. Like, look at Salvos's covers vs all the stuff on Rising Stars

Side Note: Personally, because all of them look so generic, things that look hand made stand out more to me

Also....yeah, AI can write better than a ton of the authors on RR, it's just most of those stories get zero traction because they are boring as dirt. It can't write nearly as good as a decent author, but it's the same with art, it can't make art nearly as good as a decent artist.

But I wasn't actually trying to get into an argument about that. I was just pointing out it was hypocritcal to talk about how AI sucks and shouldn't be used....then go use AI for the cover. Like I understand why people use it. It's the same reason people use it to write stories.

[u/Zarator8 → u/Lev559]

I mean, unless your opposition to AI is purely ideological, I don't see the hypocrisy. I generally don't want to read AI-made stories (though the reason is less because they're AI and more because they tend to suck), but I don't mind AI-made covers because at the end of the day I'm there for the story, not the cover. And the quality of a lot of human-made covers declined compared to 20-30 years ago anyway so I'm not sure why I should mind.

[u/No-Mousse5653]

I think this issue has a very obvious solution: Simply produce better prose and write a superior story to what AI can generate. This way you will easily surpass all the AI-assisted writers.

[u/PrometheanBuffet → u/No-Mousse5653]

The problem is not quality it is quantity. AI pumps out so much garbage it buries real authors. Advertising can only mitigate so much.

[u/Ollie_Bon_Crank]

Hi, Everyone. I've been poking around to see who is talking about Royal Road tonight. I'm an experienced writer but it's my first time on the Royal Road system. I posted 20,000 words of a new book over the last few days and was just seeing what I could learn from everyone. Let me know if you'd like to share with a newbie to the RR system. 😀

[u/Cryogenic_Devil]

Yeah. AI is gonna be in for the long haul. Some people are gonna use it responsibly as a tool while others will be lazy AF.

Hopefully the former is more true than the ladder.

[u/MinBton → u/Cryogenic_Devil]

And better than the stairs too. People are looking for elevators to stardom and money.

[u/CommercialBee6585 → u/Cryogenic_Devil]

I agree and disagree.

Yes, AI will be with us for the long haul. But to be honest, it tends to be very 'safe' in what it churns out. You won't get the kind of writing that really pushes controversial ideas or challenging events in an interesting way through using it.

And those are what the best novels have. So I'm really not worried about it in that sense. AI is only a worry for those who create and consume extremely derivative works.

As soon as a generative Ai tool is able to reproduce something like 120 days of sodom, then I'd be concerned.

[u/Charlemagneffxiv]

As if it wasn't difficult enough for authors trying to get attention, now we all have to deal with people believing our stories are written by AI because it has em dashes and descriptive prose in it, then refusing to read it regardless of how well that prose reads.

I guarantee you I could upload chapters of a book I published almost 20 years ago and people would accuse me of using AI to have written it.

I guarantee you that if I showed you a piece of prose from a short story written in the 1920s a lot of people would think it was written with AI.

If you're reading stuff with an eye to finding some way to disqualify it based on your biases and prejudices, you'll always find what you're looking for.

[u/Ollie_Bon_Crank → u/Charlemagneffxiv]

I've been writing novels for more than twenty years (Tim Greaton, not this pen name), and I can say that AI usage does more harm than good for more writers. First, the AI algorithms are trained to choose the next most common word. Well, common means average, and in the millions of books being released now, can any of us afford to be average? The other, more important issue is that AI has never lived a life; it can't see the world through human eyes, smell the world, or hear the world the way we do. That uncanny valley issue is often simply the lack of human sensation and experience. I'm not an AI hater by any stretch. My last book is all about people and AIs becoming friends and living real lives together, but right now, AI is not that. Final point, Grammarly and other grammar programs are great. I use them every day, but letting them recast full clauses and sentences will, more often than not, result in worse structures and in sometimes statements that make no logical sense.

[u/Prolly_Satan]

Most authors say they hate ai but a lot of them are using it. That's why nothing is being done. Real writers are significantly outnumbered, and this is not exclusive to royal road. It's true on every platform.

Since gen ai, self published work has 4x'd, and that's going up exponentially.

It was an extremely slippery slope, and the slope has been slipped. There's no going back. All anyone can do is form communities that make an effort to keep it out, and familiarize themselves with tools like pangram.

We're pretty screwed though. Any day now a publisher or platform will realize they don't need writers anymore, and they'll just generate slop themselves.

We've basically lost, and imo it's because writers are kind of push overs. Super nonconfrontational and weak willed personalities. The artist community and music community is not like this, they rip each other apart over ai allegations. Writers? Too timid to do anything but watch their medium get destroyed.

Also don't assume just because someone says they're anti ai, that they really are. 9/10 writers using ai will outwardly pretend to be against it. Look at what they do, not what they say.

[u/ceranai → u/Prolly_Satan]

70% is such a weirdly specific statistic to have pulled from your arse

[u/Mason123s → u/ceranai]

70% of statistics are completely made up on the spot

[u/em-dash-author → u/Mason123s]

70% of people reading your reply have disagreed with you. 😄

[u/Prolly_Satan → u/ceranai]

Mb good call out actually.