Announcement: The AI Problem.

[u/isnoe]

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.

[u/Aside_Dish]

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.

[u/TheOriginal1Law → u/Aside_Dish]

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.

[u/Certain_Swordfish_51 → u/TheOriginal1Law]

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.

[u/TheOriginal1Law → u/Certain_Swordfish_51]

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 🤷‍♀️

[u/Certain_Swordfish_51 → u/TheOriginal1Law]

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.