Quick question, I know that Halls of Sorcery got taken down recently for AI inclusion, but has anyone here read it before and actually enjoyed what was written dowm?
And on a side note, how exactly does CoG detech AI generated text and things of that likeness?
I played through the demo but I didn’t really enjoy some aspects of the writing or the pacing, so I didn’t buy.
I’ve been trying to recall details, as I sort of forgot about it until it was taken down. Best I can remember now is scratching my head at some of the decisions the creator made.
The very first scene between the MC and their father struck me as odd; while this entire sequence flowed in a way one would expect, it offered nothing remarkable about the MC’s relationship to their father, nor did it provide much (any?) impression of the setting outside of “fantasy.” So my question, barely a few pages into the game was “why was this scene here at all?” If the father had no problem with their child going off to magic school, why not skip the child asking/telling him about it and jump straight to the magic school? The impression I was left with when I decided I’d seen enough was that it was fine, if not floaty and maybe a little generic, which could certainly happen organically. I didn’t really hold on to much else, though.
I did not suspect that this contained AI-generated text. CoG and HG don’t allow this in the games they publish and it’s hardly my first reaction to reading work that I don’t care for.
I don’t think anyone but the creator knows how much is in the final product, so I think it’s unwise to speculate that anything we deem worthy of critique here is a hallmark of AI-generation. But I did want to provide what I recall of my initial impression of the work.
In this case, I believe the author themself confessed to having used AI for art/writing.
Did the narrative feel rigid or was the overall plot just dull? Like could you tell it was written by an ai, did you ever get that sense while reading it?
Damn, well atleast he admitted to it opposited to them finding out. Do they not do check for ai text before publishing or anything to that effect?
The wording of the announcement says he “confirmed the use of AI when asked directly” so it seems they did find out first.
I’m trying to find out more about their process on detecting ai generated text. I know a lot of the current software is prone to give false positives, so it’s not 100% accurate (which nothing really is) but I don’t see them using a software like that to proof read projects before publication.
I’m going to read it on dashingdon and see if the writing was so blatantly robotic that it was oblivious it wasn’t written by a human under closer inspection.
I recommend caution in looking for evidence in this direct manner: there are a lot of reasons writing might not read in a way that you expect. There was already a whole discussion in the post announcing that the game was pulled regarding actual humans being criticized for “sounding” like AI. There’s also been some discussion on this thread over the course of the past week regarding how easy/difficult detecting AI-generated text is. If you haven’t read through any of these previous discussions on either thread, you might find it worthwhile.
Re the game: critique it as you would anything else, as best you can at this point, and try to avoid the confirmation bias.
That’s sound advice, I’ll take it to heart🙏
I played it through twice before it got taken down, due to the time differences, most of CoG would have been asleep I think. Put it this way: if I had bought it on Steam I would have refunded and given it a negative review. The plot had merit, but the writing style was bad. Pronouns changing suddenly, no follow through on some events, suddenly amorous, actions and conversations disjointed, those weren’t errors because English was not the author’s first language, nor were they editing errors, though an editor should have picked them up. It was simply a very bad effort at a game, and not a good advertisement for AI. Generally someone working in a second language will at least attempt to have a decent conversation even if the grammar is poor, and that did not happen.
But then even spell-checkers cannot pick up the difference in meaning between pore and pour, found in a book, and that can make a great difference to the meaning of a sentence!
Alright, Grammarly time! I had time to go in and check further. I have Grammarly Pro, not Grammarly business, so I am not sure what is in the latter.
The thing with Grammarly that I love is how specific you can make your setup in what you want it to check for. For example, here are some examples what I want help with, and what I don’t. I am not sharing everything, because there is a LOT. This is baseline Grammarly, which has been there since I started using it years and years ago.
As you can see, I tend to turn off most of the things I feel interfere with my writing style since I do creative writing, and don’t have to worry about drafting an official document or something. The “rewrite a sentence for clarity” in particular can really mute down my language and make it very bland compared to how I normally write. Clarity, I never knew her.
The thing with Grammarly which has me going side-eyed is a separate setting which I have never turned on and never used. Interestingly enough this setting is NOT under the “Writing” tab, where all normal grammar/help settings are, but under general settings. I do like that, as it drives home the point that this is NOT writing, nor does it “hide” among the more normal grammar settings.
I have not used it, and will never use it. And the fact that it’s there, even off in its separate setting, makes me feel dirty. However, I have not yet found as a usable grammar checker (no Word is not it), that doesn’t seem to dabble in AI. Microsoft does too, all the companies do. It’s horrible, but it’s very hard to avoid.
Another comment about Grammarly. I would say I follow about half of the suggestions it makes. For me, the greatest use for it is that it flags something as possibly iffy, and I can read the sentence and decide if it is really there I want to place my commas or whatever. Sometimes I am like “sorry Grammarly, you are wrong here, and your suggestion sucks,” at other times it helps me find sloppy errors and confusion. It really isn’t something I can trust implicitly, it is more like having a proofreader in a box to flag things I might need to look at.
Im should create a new wip thats completely ai generated to see if it can create a quality story. Ill even say so in the title. Just as an experiment.
You should definitely give it a try, it might open up some people’s mind about ai generated work in general. Hell, even I might give it a try myself.
Oh, it is far from this simple. If your friend writes a novel based on your cool idea, then whether they’re fully the author is up to debate – people go to literal lawsuits over the authorship of stories based off ideas of others. It’s the major reason why professional developers and writers avoid reading unsolicited submissions like a plague.
To make things even more muddled, there’s also the matter of outsourcing work, ghostwriting. Generally, it is fully legal practice (outside of academics) and something that doesn’t even get acknowledged/discussed most of the time. Have another human(s) write parts of your book and no one bats an eye, or rarely even bring it up as possibility. But if a program does it? Oh, no.
Yup, but then that’s one of the very reasons for making an automated solution: it’s an investment so then you can save the costs of having to pay someone to do the work. You’re right that it can be viewed as a “moral step down” but i don’t think bemoaning it is going to do anything to stop the perpetual race to the bottom (and beyond what’s at any given point considered the bottom)
I fear that it won’t do much because it’s, ultimately, attacking just a symptom while the underlying cause remains intact – so long as our dominant economic model remains incentivizing short-term growth above everything else (a side effect of stock-based financing where the value growth is the only real source of profit) the race to the bottom (in chase of cost-cutting) will keep in the earnest. The slop will just keep getting re-packaged and/or put in your next “revolutionary food” without bothering to inform anyone.
Well, a human got paid for doing that work, and indeed, paid to have someone else take the credit for it. It’s work for hire, just like any other work. And yes, people often do bring it up, bat an eye, and have a laugh about it. We had a bit of a scandal with a famous crime author in sweden about that a while back.
I see using AI as being as creative as commissioning a work from someone, except in this case, nobody gets paid, the environment gets hurt, and people get their content stolen. It’s a step down from dropshippers who buy cheap stuff manufactured in china and try to pass it off as their own handmade craft items on Etsy.
I see it as my moral obligation to bemoan the hell out of it! I refuse to let the world get further enshittificated without at the very least voicing my opinion about it. I am not going to go gently into that good night, and the race to the bottom is not an inevitable conclusion. AI is already becoming a turnoff more than a curiosity for many, big tech can do their best to try to make us eat their slop, but we really don’t have to.
I think a part that made the debate a bit more aggressive than needed was the lack of a reestablished baseline for what barrier one side considers more A.I than human. Which can lead to an issue where one person thinks someone is against any form of A.I assistance. Including simple grammar checks or clarity reviews, I.E full usage only as a Tool. Versus more generative uses like creating paragraphs or writing out details you don’t want to write.
I for example. Biased as I may be. View that a mix of the two can help a writer make an overall better book. Through improving their grammar and using A.I as a second eye to look over your work and ask if it is clear. Or say, ask them to describe the character to see if they describe them in the way you want to have them be described. While naturally this can be done with friends or family. Not everyone has easy access to those. And not everyone feels confident in asking, especially if the book in question has themes or genre that are not easily discussed. So A.I acts as a judgement free easy supervision to bounce ideas off of and get relatively sane ideas. And also helps in that you dont also worry about the person you are asking being unable to properly formulate their thoughts in a way you can use.
But generally id still advise being cautious and with good oversight on what the A.I does. As it will still sometimes try to rewrite when you merely want a clarity review and it can sometimes mislead you. A good idea is to also always ask it why it chose to do something in terms of punctuation or why a revised sentence it provides is more clear. Since it will happily explain it and you can therefore over time use A.I less as you learn what tends to be your common mistakes.
Now using A.I to actually generate paragraphs is both to me. Asinine. And a waste of time. Since it will never really at this stage be coherent enough, you are not really writing that scene. And youll inevitably have to spend a good period of time adjusting, regenerating and revising what the A.I wrote so it fits seemlessly that itd have been faster, more efficient and safer just asking it for ideas and then writing out yourself with occasional aid by A.I. Like say if you want an idea for how an army might cross a river, (baring in mind that the A.I can and will be wrong at times and this is no substitute for actual research.)
In a nutshell. My general litmus test is simply. If A.I was only used to oversee, bounce ideas off of and occasionally provide ideas for description. Like say asking it how it’d describe a boat and building off of that. Not copying it word for word.. That to me is no different than asking a friend who is eternally willing to help. If a bit unwilling to criticise.
But to have it generate paragraphs or scenes that you plop in and move on like its nothing. That to me is more A.I than human and thus should at minimum be clearly marked as including A.I written work. Since at that point it is not your writing. It is A.Is work for that section.
Use it like a tool. Not like a get out of jail free card. Your work will be better that way.
It wasn’t bad till you start seeing that the plot points go nowhere, they randomly start and have no end, they’re never mentioned again and you’re let like “uh wtf am I even reading, this makes no sense, why is the mc doing this random thing, where did it come from?”.
There’s also the issue that friends and family one may ask aren’t necessarily any better equipped to do the proofreading, than the author. In fact, often their ability in that regard can be even worse.
It gets even tricker when it’s not just writing but interactive fiction, with all that entails.
Random shower thought: I just don’t understand why it has to come down to “lol, you have to keep up with the times, you’re totally gonna fall behind and become irrelevant while we, AI users, are gonna prosper in your place”.
Like… Why the gloating?
Are you not at this forum because you enjoy the work of the writers here? Why, then, are you so happy to tell them they’ll be irrelevant? You like the content they put out, yet you’re so mad they’re getting attention because of it you want to grind them into dirt and rise above them?
Literally why.
I can understand them. I feel frustrated many times seeing everyone advance, everyone being better than me no matter how much I working on improving myself. Being always the run of the litter.
Many see this an injustice towards them so Ai will Even the field and will give them the fame and publication they really want.
It is easy enough ending in that spiral of bad thoughts and envy.
I use stubborness to keep going on and improving the hard way and I love writing even if I am bad and it is hard
