It is disjointed garbage and nonsense because it plaigarizes from hundreds of thousands of people, not only some of the most famous authors-- and it haphazardly slaps things together.
As I stated above…
I think we’ve discussed this issue at length in the previous discussion, but it’s not a given that any plagiarizing happened and it’s definitely not just slapping things together, stealing in this context is a moral stance, not a legal one, and thus cannot be taken as universal truth.

paganization
I’m sorry, but I find this typo really funny
That’s actually quite good for AI. It can be as bad as:
Prompt: 'Write a narrative scene of a battle between angels and devils'
The sky was a canvas torn asunder, streaks of crimson and gold bleeding into a chaotic masterpiece. Below, a battlefield of ethereal proportions unfolded. Angels, resplendent in blinding white, clashed with demons, cloaked in shadows as deep as the abyss.
Michael, the archangel, stood as a beacon of hope, his form a statue of divine might. His sword, a flame that kissed the heavens, hummed with celestial power. Opposite him, Lucifer, the fallen star, was a tempest of malice. His eyes, twin embers in the darkness, burned with a hatred as old as time.
Their clash was a symphony of destruction. Each swing of their weapons tore the fabric of reality, leaving behind fissures that hinted at the cosmic horrors beyond. The ground trembled beneath their feet, riven by tremors as powerful as earthquakes.
Around them, the battle raged. Angels, their voices like a chorus of wind chimes, fought with a ferocity born of purity. They wielded swords of light, their shields as impenetrable as faith. The demons, a grotesque horde, countered with shadows made tangible, claws that dripped with an unholy venom. Their howls were a cacophony of despair, a dirge for the souls they sought to claim.
A young angel, her wings still soft and new, found herself matched against a demon twice her size. Fear gripped her, but so too did a resolve as hard as diamond. With a cry that echoed like a silver trumpet, she charged, her sword a blur of light. The demon roared, its shadow hand reaching for her, but she was faster. Her blade found a gap in its defenses, and with a surge of divine power, she cleaved it in two.
The battlefield was a ballet of death and rebirth. Angels fell, only to rise again, their spirits unbroken. Demons were vanquished, but more poured forth from the abyss, an endless tide of darkness. And in the center of it all, Michael and Lucifer fought on, their battle a microcosm of the eternal war between light and shadow.
If nothing else, we have to admit that it’s so cringe to become unintentionally funny
And even that has some phrases I wouldn’t blink at in a noir novel…

If nothing else, we have to admit that it’s so cringe to become unintentionally funny
I may have read a fanfic or two just like that. (and long before AI has become a thing, so)

If nothing else, we have to admit that it’s so cringe to become unintentionally funny
Yep, that is something I agree with you completely on!

And even that has some phrases I wouldn’t blink at in a noir novel…
It’s a jumble of random things and awkward comparisons. I would be very worried if I found similar sentences in a novel, personally…

I may have read a fanfic or two just like that. (and long before AI has become a thing, so)
I’m sorry you had to read such awful fanfics. Luckily, there are better things out there to read.

I’m sorry you had to read such awful fanfics. Luckily, there are better things out there to read.
At the risk of sounding cheeky, it’s not exactly a surprise that AI-produced works can be awful. “90% of everything is crap” applies to what goes in the “plagiarization machine”, too. Garbage In, Garbage Out.

It’s a jumble of random things and awkward comparisons.
Some of which I could easily see as a result of an author writing occult detective stories trying to mimic Raymond Chandler, but maybe that’s just me…

“90% of everything is crap” applies to what goes in the “plagiarization machine”, too.
Not that you are wrong, but what makes it impossible to produce original narrative is its underlying structure. It relies on frameworks that it deems “human” and replicates them ad infinitum. Incidentally, since you mentioned it earlier, that’s also why so many ESL works are mistakenly flagged as being produced by AI—when you study ESL at school, you learn a specific style of writing, as well as of speaking. AI is just an extreme example of “learn it mechanically and put it into action,” if you prefer to put it that way.

OK, one thing of note, this concept that AI “plagiarizes” things is simply nonsense. AI puts together sentences from collection of individual words annotated with how often those words come adjacent to other words, and based on this frequency. If the AI writes
“That’s ridiculous,” she snorted.
It doesn’t do it because it’s lifting that sentence from some specific works, but (simplifying) because it has recorded that in hundreds/thousands works it has processed the verb “snorted” was very commonly used after dialogue.
I would agree with you if “That’s ridiculous,” she snorted were all AI ever produced. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and many AI generative machines have been shown to take entire, specific chunks from random works and unpredictably litter these throughout its generated text/art with greater frequency the more it has to create. Furthermore, the number of those creators who never gave permission for their work to be seeded to teach the AI is alarming regardless of whether said work has a noticeable imprint. Ethical discourse, legal framing and filters to catch that mess need to evolve before I’d be able to accept something created by AI without wary side eye.

Not just “may,” they are. I’ve read about numerous strikes in the news: actors, musicians and voice actors are being taken advantage of constantly by companies that think it’s better to bottom-feed via AI than to pay the people for their work, or even to credit them (in the instance of a big-name video game development company recently, they aren’t wanting to credit the actors and actresses whose voices and likenesses have been fed to AI.)
I hope you’re right and that it will end up dying down very quickly. I’m not so sure, given human nature and how corporations always want to screw people over in the name of making a quick buck, so yeah, I’m pretty pessimistic about the whole thing. But if luck is on our side at all, it might hopefully crash and burn as people turn to the next big shiny thing. As always though, I am very much a firm believer in the phrase “things will get worse, before they get worse.”
Let me elaborate on why I’m optimistic because it didn’t have much to do with the high-powered corporate side of the equation which has always been grim–it’s because we are here, having this very conversation. If art belonged only to “The Man” then I’d be more sullen, to say the least. But it does not. I know that it is difficult to turn art into an honest to god career without big businesses; one might say the odds are decidedly not in our favor, lol. However, we are in a unique period of artistic history where more than ever, the gates are starting to be wrestled open for individuals to direct their own careers mostly if not entirely free of these companies’ supervision. I don’t think this can be understated or taken away, much to the chagrin of people who lament steadily losing sole rights over the only key to the only gate.
I’m not saying it’s no threat at all to anyone, per se. Just that there have been what appeared to be bigger, badder threats before and these too did pass. Whether or not we resolve the AI conversation, I simply do not see a future coming to be which would be so heinous that we cannot carry forward in an adapted fashion. That and the fact that we already have to deal with a flooded, often impenetrable market, AI as is being the least likely to present real competition from where I’m standing. Even if every fourth book is one day written by AI which has theoretically progressed to the point it doesn’t read as soulless and nonsensical (which I strongly doubt the likelihood of), nothing is stopping readers from consuming four books, no?
There are two schools of thought here. One views content creation purely as a market and does not mind whatever capitalizes on it as long as it is indeed capitalizing. And the other views content creation as intrinsically valuable and therefore meaningless if outsourced. These can be merged or separate to varying degrees but I believe both will continue to grind onwards.
While I haven’t commented much here, the last few days, I have been reading, and I have some notes.
Even though I’m definitely more in the anti-AI camp, there are arguments and assumptions on both sides that I have some problems with.
(This post was intended to be a lot shorter and simpler, and less personal, but it seriously ran away from me. I did not intend it to turn into a damn essay)
The problem with 'laziness'
First of all, there has been some statements that have bordered heavily on ableism. I don’t think anyone was actually being actively ableist, of course, just maybe some perspectives haven’t been considered.
I do absolutely believe that there are (many) people out there, who just want to use genAI to create stuff to sell, with minimum effort. 100%, no doubt at all.
But assuming that everyone using genAI is just lazy, and doesn’t like writing, is way too black/white.
I used genAI for multiple years, for personal (non-shared, non-commercial) entertainment. For a while I considered using it as a help for my ‘professional’ writing as well, back before there was much talk at all about the text side of things, and before I understood the problems.
This was not because I was ‘too lazy to put in the effort’ or because I don’t like writing.
I love writing. I have been making stories and worlds, and writing fiction since I was a child. Unfortunately, it is also really hard for me to write.
I don’t mean that it is technically difficult (it is), or that it’s hard because english isn’t my first language (it is), or that it’s frustrating that I’m not at a professional level yet (I’m not, and it is).
I mean that I am legally disabled, and (for me) that comes with pretty serious executive dysfunctions, that (for me) can make the process of putting my thoughts into words (both spoken and written) extremely taxing and difficult. On a level that is worse than what I’m sure everyone here experiences from time to time.
It has been a serious issue my whole life, and it’s the main reason I was never able to finish any education, despite always doing well in school otherwise.
And using gen-AI, the way that I was using it, helped with that. And some of the improvements have lasted even after I stopped using it. Especially being faster at typing, which really helps, because I think (and talk) very fast, and my fingers being unable to keep up, and breaking the flow, is actually a serious problem for me.
(I couldn’t have written this post before then, and not only because my mental health was worse)
Am I saying that everyone who uses gen-AI are doing it for the same reasons I did?
No. Definitely not.
But I don’t like seeing people call others ‘lazy’. That term is far too often used to dismiss other people’s real struggles, and shame them for not being able to do what others can.
I understand the argument that people aren’t entitled to have their ideas turned into reality, being it stories or pictures. But I hope people here, who I am sure are very familiar with the experience of having stories and ideas stuck in their minds and screaming to be released, can have some empathy and compassion with how frustrating and almost painful that can be.
I also don’t think the way I, personally, was using gen-AI was inherently bad, or un-creative, or low-effort. If there weren’t problems with theft, energy-consumption, and copyrights, I would say that using AI as a tool in that way, would be fair.
At least to some level.
I do have some serious reservations, that I will go into further down.
My own experiences with AI generated text
Back when this whole gen-AI thing was still fairly new, and the pictures you could generate were still hilariously bad, I watched a videos from some of my favorite youtubers playing around with AI dungeon.
It seemed fun, so I tried it, and it didn’t take much to get me hooked.
I was in a bad place mentally, not working, and I had been having trouble finding enough interesting free online content to entertain me for hours every day, since I didn’t have energy for more than just lying with my laptop.
As AI dungeon got better, I started subscribing, to get access to the really good models, that weren’t as frustrating to use as the free ones. And I kept that subscription for years , because I was using AI dungeon almost every single day, for entertainment. It 100% became an addiction.
If you don’t know AI dungeon, it is not exactly like chatGPT or an AI chatbot.
It functions almost like an AI ‘dungeon master’, where you write what you do or say, and then the AI generates a paragraph about what happens.
But it also has a ‘story’ function, where it will continue from what you write as if it was a book. You can do edits, both to your own parts and the generated parts, and you can make it retry a result until it’s to your liking.
And it doesn’t generate a full story idea, or a whole page, at a time. I think the largest sections it can generate at a time is around 100 words, but I usually put the option to around 40-60.
Though you can of course just hit the continue button repeatedly, though the quality will quickly become worse and worse, with no human input.
Most of all, it feels a lot like writing a text-roleplay fanfiction with an online friend, except there’s no worries that the AI will judge you for what you write.
For a long time, I just used it for entertainment, half-writing, half-generating long, unpolished stories, mostly going along with whatever the AI generated, so I always had something low-effort to do.
Then, as time passed and the AI got better, I got more… controlling (brain can’t summon up a better term for it, at the moment) in the process, more using the AI to craft a story that followed specifically what I wanted. I would get a lot more ideas, more inspiration, and do much more editing of the AI’s outputs, to get it to the exact shape I wanted. Often I would delete the generated outputs, and write most of the sections myself, only really using the AI to help when I got stuck on a word and phrasing, or for semi-brainstorming, or to just generate something when I got stuck on how to move from one scene to the next.
There was a lot of frustrations too, of course. The AI doesn’t understand what you are doing, or where you are going with your story, or anything like that.
But, I was able to write hundreds of words every day, because the flow of getting a response somehow helped my brain not getting stuck, even if I then deleted most if not all of that response. And I started thinking that perhaps my old dream of writing could actually become reality. With a whole lot of steering and editing, maybe I could use gen-AI as a tool to help me get the stories out of my head, get those damn first drafts written!
That was always where I had the big troubles, in getting the first draft done. Editing is a much easier process for me, and I always intended to do a lot of editing afterwards, for pacing, and coherency, and consistency, and just generally making it all better, and more me.
I dropped the idea again when all the talk of the problems with gen-AI started to spread, and I got the information I needed to understand the problems with the current state of AI.
For a while I kept using AI dungeon for entertainment, though not nearly as much as I used to, and then it reached a point where I couldn’t justify using it any more, and I decided to stop.
Only to find that it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be.
I am not joking, or being hyperbolic, when I say that using genAI is addicting. It has taken a while to get out of the habit, and I expect I will still have times when I feel really bad, where I will still return to using the free version of AI dungeon to distract my brain and give it that instant gratification.
But I’m trying my best, and I certainly won’t be using it to write anything that will be shared anywhere.
I write all of this with a serious fear that it will make people here (some who I really respect and like) angry at me, or distrust me, or make people think that I don’t do my own writing.
But I also believe it is important that we are willing to be open and honest with our experiences with this topic, if we want the discussion to be constructive, and to foster greater understanding.
The Good, the Bad, and why I cannot recommend using AI for your writing
Can AI be truly helpful, and a support for your writing journey?
Yes, I truly think it can, because I feel that it did so for me.
At the very least, it helped me through a very difficult period, and helped me have hope that I could actually follow this dream again.
It does not come without serious pitfalls, through, and it took getting some distance from it, for me to really understand to what extend.
AI is not going to improve your writing skills any more than just doing the same amount of reading and writing will otherwise. Less, actually, in a lot of ways.
In the eternal quest to get the AI to give me the output I wanted, I learned to target my writing for specifically that. Which usually involved simplifying my writing. Cleverness, wordplay, and complex writing was counter-productive, because it was harder for the AI to ‘understand’.
So while I was certainly writing more , I was not writing better .
The AI also won’t teach you pacing, or story-beats, or narrative voice, or incorporating themes, or realistic dialogue, or how to make your writing engaging and entertaining for your readers. Or any other more ‘high-level’ writing skills.
Nor does it work with such things in consideration, when it generates its outputs for you, meaning that you will have to do extensive, high-level editing afterwards, to make the resulting story any good. You will also be frustrated trying to keep it in line, and following your plot.
There is so much more to writing, to story-telling, than just putting words onto paper or screen.
What AI can do, is help you get unstuck.
But even there, you have to be careful that it doesn’t become a crutch, and ends up limiting you instead.
Every time I get stuck now, I feel the strong temptation to just get an AI to help, instead of applying my own mind to do some creative problem-solving. It is jarring, and frustrating to have to fight against that temptation, when you are already having a problem.
It has gotten better, and I feel that doing the Halloween Jam is seriously helping. It’s easier not to give in, when there’s a firm rule against it.
As I said earlier, using genAI is also genuinely addictive, the same way that loot-boxes and such is, and I think people should seriously consider whether they truly want to expose their brains to the effects of low-level, low-stakes gambling on a regular basis.
All of that said, I do truly believe that AI could evolve into a really useful tool for writers.
Including tools that could be considered disability aids, for people like me, and others.
The vast majority of novels, and IF, die in the process of creating the first draft. So if genAI can evolve into an ethically sound tool , that can help more writers complete that crucial first step, I think that would be a great thing.

though the quality will quickly become worse and worse, with no human input
That’s what I call it “getting stuck in a horror loop” because it tends to end up just repeating the same thing ad infinitum
Thank you so much for sharing this, it is genuinely illuminating, and I am not judging you at all!
I am seconding appreciating you for sharing. I can relate also to the “maybe I can do this after all” feeling that AI can give you. I didn’t feel this way about the writing itself, but coding. Coding is just…it’s a lot for me in ways that aren’t the same for others. Paying a programmer is absolutely something I would do if I had money like that but I don’t. I was strongly considering using AI to help alleviate some of the burden of coding for a while prior to my stance on AI developing, some technical difficulties and realizing it’s against CoG’s rules anyway. Now I’m just lamenting the lack of Choicescript courses due to its status as a niche category. I don’t think I at any point had malicious, duplicitous intentions either.

I think there’s some guides floating around somewhere?
They’re from after I started learning, so I haven’t actually read them myself.
I do still want to make my own free, beginner-friendly, choicescript course, some day. Because some of my fondest memories from this forum is semi-mentoring new authors in how to code their games.
Oh, there are most definitely guides. I just do better with this sort of thing when I have a physical teacher here with me or at least virtually to have a conversation with. Amongst other missing components that would be available if I could simply sign up for a course at my University. I’d be very interested in what you’re describing as a goal. But I’ll leave the rest of those thoughts for another thread perhaps, so I don’t derail the conversation.
An interesting anecdote(?) I forgot to add, is that being frustrated with the AI not giving you the output you want (and thereby making you realise exactly what it is you wanted to write) has often been more helpful than the AI itself.
@malinryden thank you, that matters a lot to hear.

Now I’m just lamenting the lack of Choicescript courses due to its status as a niche category.
I think there’s some guides floating around somewhere?
They’re from after I started learning, so I haven’t actually read them myself.
I do still want to make my own free, beginner-friendly, choicescript course, some day. Because some of my fondest memories from this forum is semi-mentoring new authors in how to code their games.

An interesting anecdote(?) I forgot to add, is that being frustrated with the AI not giving you the output you want (and thereby making you realise exactly what it is you wanted to write) has often been more helpful than the AI itself.
For me, the most useful thing is being hit by random ideas (I don’t personally see being inspired by a random sentence from AI that different from being inspired by a random sentence from a newspaper) and pretty images for moodboards (I think better with pretty things than with ugly things).

Im should create a new wip thats completely ai generated to see if it can create a quality story

You should definitely give it a try, it might open up some people’s mind about ai generated work in general.
Kevin Gold (author of Choice of Robots) did an experiment with AI-generated IF last year. I think my favorite part was the dogs who met at the dog park and became friends and exchanged phone numbers so they could stay in touch.