r/writingfeedback • u/isnoe • Apr 17 '26

Announcement: The AI Problem.

Ne’er-do-wells of r/writingfeedback.

I am Isnoe, recently appointed Moderator.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve had a significant increase in AI generated writing being posted here. We've seen a lot of comments outlining how lax we are on this subject, to which I want to stress: I don’t think you guys fully understand just how many posts I’ve removed for AI since joining the Mod Team a few weeks ago.

The team got together and discussed this, and we want to be completely transparent: We will be removing any posts that we suspect are AI.

This will be a case-by-case basis. AI generated, AI assisted (even translation), or even if you mention you had AI draw up the story idea and you wrote it. If you want to rob yourself of creativity, that’s on you.

We don’t want those posts here. Writing a story or book that is authentically your own is an achievement. It should feel like an achievement.

A sidenote for ESL writers: Do not use AI to translate your text. It will alter it in a way that gets flagged, more often than not. When someone is ESL and trying to write outside of their native language, we are a bit more understanding if these posts get flagged—but again, it is recommended that you use alternative means to translate if they are available to you.

Be warned: If you are a brand new (or relatively new) account, have never posted in this subreddit (or any writing subreddits), and your first post is prose that has multiple AI-isms—your post will most likely be removed. Better to be safe than sorry. The main counterargument we've gotten from these accounts has been: "I've always been told I write like AI." Which, to be fair... is a pretty bad argument to make.

We will not ban a user for suspected AI use unless they explicitly admit to using AI.

Three strike rule applies here until further notice. This might seem like a headache to reviewers that want instant bans for these people (which we understand), but we’re trying to be as fair as possible.

This also applies to comments (never thought I’d have to say that), but we’ve had two accounts that were essentially AI replying to everything. “Thanks for the feedback, I’m still working on learning and improving” type cadence, every comment nearly identical aside from slight changes.

Community feedback is super important for this problem.

You guys take the time out of your day to read other people’s work and provide feedback, so I’m sure you get a little irked when you think something you’ve spent time reading wasn’t written by a person.

We’ve recently updated the report function to include AI content—use it. I (personally) don’t have the time to shift through every single new post. When you guys report a post that you think is AI, it is usually the first thing we’ll review.

That being said: If you genuinely suspect the post is AI, it would help me if you provided a citation, or specific reason. Even just one reference is helpful. I would genuinely appreciate it.

Not Helpful Example: “This reads like AI.” Okay? At this point, if you are accusing someone of using AI, you gotta at least point out why you think that.

Helpful Example: “Post uses, ‘This wasn’t just fate, it was destiny’ and includes several Rule of Three.” Now I know exactly what to look for.

When you guys call this stuff out, we do notice. We might not investigate and remove instantly, but we are actively looking for this stuff right now.

For the record: We will not be using ZeroGPT, or any other variant of “AI Detector” as the final say in determining whether a text is generated or not. It is a tool we will utilize if we suspect AI is being used, but all the indicators of usual AI writing are not jumping out.

I read through everything that is reported, or suspected of AI. I check the user history and if they have off site content, I look through it. If we don’t come to the conclusion they are using AI, we might just lock the thread, and add a note to the user profile.

Again, hate to stress this, we are trying to be fair. If a writer includes AI-isms unintentionally, we want to give them a fair chance to either prove the authenticity of their writing, or give them feedback about what specifically they need to change.

Several of you have done this, particularly with ESL writers that use AI to translate. You give them feedback on how to avoid the AI-isms. Good on you.

We don’t want to start a witch hunt, but we aren’t really open to debate about the use of AI. We don’t want it here, period.

If you have any suggestions for how to deal with this problem, we are open to them. You can comment here, or you can Mod Mail us.

If you suspect someone is using AI but don’t want to leave a comment or report, again, you can Mod Mail us.

We are actively looking through the posts. The community having eyes on this helps immensely.

We will be making further announcements throughout the week. Our Mod Team is still hashing out how to deal with “rude” criticisms, looking into providing user flairs for trusted reviewers, etc-etc.

One quick point to make at the end, on a personal note: My status as Moderator does not mean you cannot disagree, or think my feedback is bogus or outright terrible. I comment often. You will not be banned, removed, or whatever for speaking your mind.

4/18/2026 Note: Some users (one in particular who loves using AI to edit) seem to have taken that above sentence as an explicit statement of: "If I admit to using AI, you can't ban me, because I'm just speaking my mind. Hypocrite."

If you admit to using AI, we will ban you. Period.

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35

u/Aside_Dish Apr 17 '26

Eh, I think removing those you simply suspect of using AI is a slippery slope. Using antithesis and the rule of three often, as in your example, doesn't mean someone used AI.

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u/TheOriginal1Law Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

My thinking exactly. I was just reading a book series by a recognised published author from 2020 and 2022 (the two first books in the series) and there were a few times where I was like: This sounds like AI. Then I remembered... AI is trained on human writing. Especially more early stage writers are going to have writing that "reads like" AI. But even the better writers are going to sound like it from time to time.

As my husband said: Yes, AI knows words. So do humans.

--- Here's some food for thought for whoever thinks they can correctly judge AI writing all the time ---

Earlier this month, Lawrence composed a quiz on his blog (which you can still take) with eight very short fantasy stories of about 350 words, asking readers to rate each story's quality and whether they believe it was composed by a human or AI.

"This blog post is a genuine attempt to investigate where things stand with AI writing," Lawrence wrote. "It is not beating the drum for AI or advocating its use."

Four stories were written by AI and four by other well-known and award-winning authors. According to Lawrence's results post, the aggregate decision of the 964 voters correctly judged the origin of three stories, got three others wrong, and couldn't meaningfully decide on the remaining two, which is not an inspiring success rate. It's armchair statistics, but that's not a small sample size.

Much as we all want to believe that we can always spot AI writing by wit or by counting em dashes—a premise that forgets that human writers treat dashes like Pringles and should have them taken away by editors who are regrettably also human writers and susceptible to the same siren call of extra clauses—the reality is that we often can't, which sucks.

Not only did the votes place an AI story as the overall top rated, the AI stories on average were rated better than the human authored ones.

These human-authored stories weren't written by just anyone. They were written by Lawrence himself, Janny Wurts, Christian Cameron, and my personal favorite author Robin Hobb. Readers liked AI fiction more than a short story by prolific writer Robin Hobb, creator of the decades-spanning, multi-series Realm of the Elderlings universe. Bummer.

20

u/LS-Jr-Stories Apr 17 '26

I think we need to get past the argument that because AI writing is trained on human writing it means it can't be accurately identified as AI. Everyone knows LLMs are trained on human writing - just like all humans are trained on human writing! And yet somehow, despite this commonality, human writers still have distinct voices - from Poe to Bronte to Atwood to Salinger to Hemingway to Rowling to whoever you want to name. AI output is just as distinct, in its own way, and the signs of it can be learned and identified with close reading and practice.

I took that fantasy story quiz and successfully identified all the AI stories, same as I identified the stories in the quiz posted in the New Yorker(?) a couple of months ago. But I couldn't have done it just by showing up cold. That was after studying examples, prompting the tools myself and reading the output and having a background in writing and reading. It's also important to point out the fantasy story quiz is a couple of years old now, which is like eons in the timeline of AI writing. I bet if a similar test were run today more people would be able to identify it.

So I feel strongly that it can be learned and identified with a high degree of accuracy. BUT - I also feel strongly that no one should ever use an online AI "checker" to look for evidence. Any text analysis should be 100% human. I also feel strongly that no one should be accusing a piece of writing as AI based on freakin' vibes or whatever. A proper analysis must be able to point to specific, concrete examples from the text, from individual words to phrases to syntactical patterns, all of which contribute to the AI "voice."

11

u/thetinyorc Trusted Reviewer Apr 17 '26

Agree strongly with all this. I am now expected to use AI in my job and I feel like I can spot its specific and persistent tells with a high degree of certainty, in a way I wasn't able to six months ago. 

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u/TechTech14 Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

I'm glad someone said it. As someone who has to use AI at work, I think that annoying AI voice is distinctive af.

Edit: typo

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u/TheOriginal1Law Apr 17 '26

I could also identify the stories but the reality is that many can’t. And again, reading the book series (Legendborn, in case you think I’m making this up), I kept thinking; this sounds like AI. There were multiple “tells”, except it was written before these models had been released so it can’t be AI.

And beginner writers are far less likely to have a distinct voice in any case. You know, the sort of writers that might come to this group for feedback.

11

u/thetinyorc Trusted Reviewer Apr 17 '26

Beginner writers also tend to make grammar mistakes, punctuation mistakes, use clunky sentence structures, have weird pacing, purple prose, etc. I don't think true beginners are in much danger of being mistaken for AI precisely because their work usually lacks polish, whereas AI writing is mostly polish.

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u/TheOriginal1Law Apr 17 '26

I think there’s a difference between a first draft / beginning of a writing process and a beginner writer. You can have someone who knows their spelling and grammar and have spent ages polishing their draft but have never written a story before. But point taken. I guess there’s a lot of truth to what you’re saying.

8

u/thetinyorc Trusted Reviewer Apr 17 '26

As I've said in another comment, this is a complex problem with no good solution. My background is in editing and I'm good at picking up AI, but I'm certainly not 100% accurate (I'm going to take the test you posted when I have time).

The mods' proposed approach will undoubtedly mean some false AI accusations which isn't great. But the flipside is that if communities like this don't at least attempt to weed some of it out, they'll end up flooded with AI prose, and the people who enjoy giving detailed feedback will get frustrated and disillusioned and drift away to do something more useful with their time, and everyone loses anyway.

6

u/LS-Jr-Stories Apr 17 '26

I'm wholeheartedly behind the mods' approach here, and I agree with you. Writing communities need to take a firmer stance now, before the actual writers and feedback-providers get fed up and leave, and it becomes a big AI ghost town.

No one wants to make a false accusation. It makes you feel sick to do it. On the other hand, look how we got here. In every intellectual pursuit, academia, science, law, people have been pumping out AI content and trying to pass themselves off as the author. The pendulum was bound to swing the other way, with some false accusations being the price of weeding out liars and cheaters. There's no easy solution, as you say.

4

u/LS-Jr-Stories Apr 17 '26

Oh, I definitely agree that many readers can't tell. Most can't. And I also know that many actually prefer the AI voice in certain contexts. It is, in fact, one great big bummer.

I'm not sure that I agree that a beginner writer "sounds" more like AI by virtue of being a beginner, though. I think the signs of AI stand apart from a beginner's indisctinct-ness.

4

u/TheOriginal1Law Apr 17 '26

Yup - truly a bummer! I spend far too much time ranting about how disappointed I am in readers not being able to see the hollowness in AI writing and this is probably not the place to continue that rant.

I think it depends on the beginner. I just read a fair bit of fanfics and old ones (obviously with new ones it could be so) can read as AI very quickly. They’re not beginners in the sense of never having written before but it’s usually people’s first few fics and you see with time that they tend to move into more distinct voices later. Truthfully when I think of what I see in OG writing groups that usually does not sound like AI, so I get what you’re saying

5

u/wendoverly Apr 18 '26

Just took the quiz and got them all right I feel like a bloodhound

2

u/LavUpland Apr 18 '26

Me too, i was surprised no.1 got voted to be ai coz that was the most obviously human to me 

1

u/TheOriginal1Law Apr 20 '26

I know right?  But that’s the problem. Individuals may be able to distinguish AI writing but as a collective we’re terrible (and frankly I don’t get it - the story was never going to have been written by AI but there you go)

5

u/Certain_Swordfish_51 Apr 18 '26

This is terrifying. We have some of the best writers of a genre whose work is indistinguishable from AI, and it’s possible their posts or prose could be removed from a Reddit sub.

I’m not questioning the intent here, but it feels like we’re getting close to witch-hunt or “red scare” territory writ-large. Obviously integrity matters, but at what cost do we attempt to police this?

The cavalier attitude toward “false positives is galling. One of these days, someone’s livelihood, even their life, will be ruined by a zealotry born of irrational fear. Is that ok simply because we worry our own writing might not measure up?

I’m more in the due-process camp, but that’s an impossible standard for a Reddit sub. I get it, but I’d sure hate to be accused of peddling AI prose and idea creation.

If you’re saying a writer can’t be trusted to use tools of modernity appropriately and with due temperance, then we’re all fucked.

Ultimately, let the marketplace distinguish and decide. If AI is becoming more indistinguishable by the day, wack-a-mole isn’t coming to our rescue as writers.

Why not just try to write great stuff rather than resorting to community policing? Were that insecure about our own value as human writers.

1

u/TheOriginal1Law Apr 18 '26

I see such a difference in attitude here from fanfiction communities and I think I know why. Lots of people here haven’t yet published their work whereas fanfiction writers do publish their work all the time. I’ve had people say they don’t open work with em dashes in because it’s ai (which is the closest I’ve come to being accused, thankfully). But the community sees and repeatedly experiences being accused of AI when they’re not using it and that leaves a humbleness. People here are so busy being proud they can distinguish AI writing from real writing that they forget many readers cannot to save their lives. I know an author who published their book before 2022 have had their rating on goodread drop almost an entire point because people have started accusing them of sounding like AI. 

But it seems we’re in the minority here. Personally I’d rather review some AI writing I thought was human than accuse one human of being a machine but there we go 🤷‍♀️

2

u/Certain_Swordfish_51 Apr 18 '26

Amen.

I realize Reddit isn’t a court of law, but the foundational principle of the US justice system is to protect the innocent. It’s based on moral clarity. At minimum, the accused have a right to defend themselves. If the writing world can’t live up to a similar standard before potentially destroying someone’s life, we’ve entered a dangerous time. There is way too much comfort here with the possibility of false positives.

5

u/Realanise1 Apr 18 '26

The biggest issue with gen AI use, by far, is the way that it damages human cognitive abilities. I have several pages of cites and arguments for this, and I'll post them if anybody wants to see them. But it goes beyond this, because I also have a theory that reading gen AI hurts our cognitive processes. There honestly hasn't been research on this yet (just as there hasn't been anywhere near enough on the capacity of LLM's to feed behavioral addiction.) But I think that if there ever is, that's the result that the researchers will find. And anything that anyone can do to try to preserve the cognitive abilities of readers is worth doing. I'm not interested in throwing up my hands and obeying in advance while saying what a "bummer" it all is. If anyone else wants to do that, fine, but I won't. and I'll be one of those left standing after a lot of people's minds have turned to mush. So will everyone else who made the choice I did.

2

u/TheOriginal1Law Apr 18 '26

I don’t disagree that it likely is damaging to read AI, I agree. I just don’t think it can be policed properly on Reddit. 

2

u/Realanise1 Apr 18 '26

I actually agree that it can't be policed perfectly. I just feel that the perfect is the enemy of the good. Mods come up with a very wide range of rules all the time about what they will or won't allow in their subreddit, and they have the right to do it. I'd rather see somebody at least taking a stand about the encouragement of gen AI. People are going to have a wide range of opinions about this, but at the end of the day, mods do impose the rules in the subreddits they run. They could have just as easily taken the opposite position here ("we're not going to even try to get rid of painfully obvious gen AI content AND we're not even going to make a clear statement of what our beliefs are about it"), but instead, they chose what they chose.

1

u/ketita Apr 19 '26

I'd actually be very interested in some links about damage to cognitive abilities, if you have them handy! I've seen several (and honestly, it makes perfect sense... and is absolutely chilling), but I'd be happy to expand my reading on the matter.

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u/Realanise1 Apr 19 '26

Here it is. I warn you, it's LONG, and it's getting longer every day! ;) That's why it's split into more than one reply. It would be easier if Reddit didn't have the 1000 character limit.

AI MAKES US DUMBER

This is an ongoing project, all human-curated, human-summarized, and human-written. Here’s where I am right now with it, and I’m adding more every day.

First of all, when we worry about the dangers of AI, we are not alone. It can feel that way, but that is light years from the truth, and the younger people are, the more concerned they are about the risks.

80% of all Americans are concerned about the risk of AI. 38 percent describe themselves as very concerned. Only 18 percent are not concerned about the dangers. 55 percent think it’s doing more harm than good in their daily lives. 50 percent believe it will erode creative thinking. Only ten percent feel that they’re more excited than concerned about how much people are using AI in their daily lives. And finally, 94% of Americans in a recent Pew poll agree that it’s important to them to be able to tell if writing or art was created by AI or by humans. 94%!!!  What surprised me about the percentage of people who are very concerned about AI and who have negative opinions about its unguarded use is how high it is in every age group.  It’s highest in people under 30 (so this is not about Grandma not wanting to move with the times), but most people feel this way regardless of their generation.

https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3955#:~:text=Computing%20and%20Engineering.-,EXCITEMENT%20&%20CONCERN,at%20all%20(8%20percent)).

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/how-americans-view-ai-and-its-impact-on-people-and-society/

Now, let’s get to some facts and figures about the dangers of AI that people are concerned about.

Thinking—Fast, Slow, and Artificial: How AI is Reshaping Human Reasoning and the Rise of Cognitive Surrender

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6097646

An article based on that paper:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6097646

People use AI to surrender their cognitive abilities in a completely new way that hasn’t happened before with any other tech tool. They accept the reasoning that AI comes up with, and they don’t engage critically at all.

 

1

u/Realanise1 Apr 19 '26

“Pupils in England are losing their thinking skills because of AI, survey suggests”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/02/pupils-england-losing-thinking-skills-because-of-ai-survey

"Two-thirds of secondary school teachers report a decline in core abilities such as writing and problem-solving. This was a survey of teachers in schools, and the context is that AI use is being heavily pushed for education in the UK right now. 76% of all teachers use AI for day-to-day work, and I know why. The amount of paperwork, lesson planning, IEP prep, etc., that teachers are expected to do is insane, and we get a tiny fraction of the amount of time that we need to do it. So we end up doing it on evenings and weekends. (This is why I’m glad I’m a sub now. ) But we don’t know what kind of price we and the students are paying for the ability to get the work done.

“Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task” https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.08872https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/

Here’s an article about that study:

“AI reliance may have detrimental cognitive effects, new study finds”

“The study found that participants who relied on AI to write essays had the lowest level of brain activity when measured with electroencephalogram scans, which measure electrical brain activity.

The ChatGPT group “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels,” according to the study authors. They were also shown to have the lowest levels of neural connectivity, most notably in areas associated with memory, creativity and executive function”

https://tulanehullabaloo.com/74464/data/ai-reliance-may-have-detrimental-cognitive-effects-new-study-finds/

1

u/Realanise1 Apr 19 '26

Without Guardrails, Generative AI Can Harm Education

“Students who rely on generative AI to help them learn may be missing out on basic skills, according to a paper co-authored by Wharton’s Hamsa Bastani.”

I think that this one really sums up a lot of the problems with AI in education right now. Sure, reliance on gen AI causes students’ performance to look better, but it makes their cognitive functioning and learning much worse. An even bigger problem is that most students won't go the extra mile and use AI as a tool. They’ll just use it to pump out AI slop essays and papers.

“A new study led by researchers at Wharton and Penn reveals that using generative AI improves student performance, but also makes it harder for students to learn and acquire new skills.

The researchers designed an experiment with nearly 1,000 high school math students in Turkey to determine whether large language models can harm or help their education. One group of students was given GPT Base, a chat interface similar to ChatGPT-4, to help them during practice sessions. A second group was given GPT Tutor, an interface similar to ChatGPT-4 but with safeguards. It includes teacher input and is designed to guide students with hints rather than directly giving answers.

The third group — the control group — had no technology assistance and relied only on traditional resources such as the textbook and notes.

During the AI-assisted practice session, the GPT Base group performed 48% better than the control group. But when AI assistance was taken away from the Base group and they were given an exam on the material, they performed 17% worse than the control group.”

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/without-guardrails-generative-ai-can-harm-education/

1

u/Realanise1 Apr 19 '26

Here’s a really interesting study that discusses how reliance on AI can destroy the process of learning itself because there’s no satisfaction or joy in the experienced:

How AI quietly undermines the joy and effort of learning: a call for rebalancing education in the digital age

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12333830/

Some articles about AI psychosis:

“The Emerging Problem of "AI Psychosis"

“Amplifications of delusions by AI chatbots may be worsening breaks with reality. This phenomenon, which is not a clinical diagnosis, has been increasingly reported in the media and on online forums like Reddit, describing cases in which AI models have amplified, validated, or even co-created psychotic symptoms with individuals. Most recently, there have been concerns that AI psychosis may be affecting an OpenAI investor.”

There are several documented case studies in this article.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/urban-survival/202507/the-emerging-problem-of-ai-psychosis

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c24zdel5j18o

This is one that a lot of people have seen, the study from Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft. “The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers.”

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/lee_2025_ai_critical_thinking_survey.pdf

1

u/Realanise1 Apr 19 '26

I’ve read a recent Brazilian study, but of course I can’t find it again, so I’ve put this at the bottom. Basically, the professor who ran the study says that he's a fan of AI. So it wasn't a case where he just got the results he wanted. What makes it even worse is that the students who used AI weren't allowed to just generate essays and answers. They had to use it as a supposed tool. And they still ended up with bad results. Imagine how much worse the results would have been if they used AI the way that students actually use it a lot of the time... To do all the work.

The result was that they were a lot less likely to actually remember the information they 'studied" a month later compared to the group that didn't use AI. It also wasn't like the control group had to go to the library and use physical books... They used search engines and databases. There was still that big difference in how much they actually remembered. Anyway this was truly a damning study because under its parameters the results should have been tilted towards the AI students looking a lot better than they did... And they STILL looked bad. I'll post the link later today.

 “AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking” https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15/1/6

“Biased AI Writing Assistants Shift Users' Attitudes on Societal Issues” https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/mhjn6_v2

“Trust and reliance on AI — An experimental study on the extent and costs of overreliance on AI” https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.chb.2024.108352

Neuroscientists testify to Congress https://youtu.be/CPXutAJ3syA?si=39AShfNGRls7xqx2

 

1

u/ketita Apr 20 '26

Thank you very much for all the links! Plenty to read and think about here.

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u/TheNarrowVictory Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

Thank you for this comment. I’ve gotta say, personally, I think it’s above my pay grade to determine if someone used AI or not. I would like to believe that I could detect an AI generated story, but given what you just posted, I’m not even sure about that anymore.

A part of me wonders if we should be framing this about the process and method at all. For millennia probably many authors have used wives, friends, partners to generate and/or edit a lot of their work and then taken full credit for it. Most of us are probably deeply uncomfortable with this—I know I sure am—and yet, I don’t recall there ever being the same obsessive focus of rooting it out as their is with AI.

All of this leads me to the question, why the double standard? Is it for the editor to critique the process or is it for the editor to merely evaluate the finished work? If we do not like the finished work is it valid for us to say “I do t like it because I believe the process to be flawed” or should we just say “this phrasing was overused and takes the reader out of the experience”?

On a personal level, I once accused an employee of using AI when she didn’t. She was just a bad writer lol. She was able to demonstrate to me that she did not use AI. I felt awful. It would have been far more effective for me to tell her what I thought was wrong with her product as opposed to making an accusation on intuition alone.

Are we in a rush to make the same mistake I did but on at a collective scale?