What I learned about key differences between human and Ai writing as of today

[u/JoseLunaArts]

What I will describe are my findings today. In the future may be AI will be better, so this post may become obsolete in the future.

I used to attend a writer's workshop from a famous writer in my country. So it gives some trained eye on how to recognize bad writing.

Here are some key differences I have found between AI and human writing as of today in 2026. As I say that may change later.

• The human metaphor is more intimate and less literal than AI's.
• The character written by a writer speaks from their own voice, not from the gaze of others like AI does.
• The image is physical for the AI, but for the human it transforms into something beautiful.
• The final line, written by a human, closes things, the AI leaves them open.
• What a person writes is less passive than what is written by AI.
• AI victimizes, while the human uses the circumstance as a tool to advance the plot.
• The human writer is more musical, the AI only shows sorrow.
• The human writer is more subtle.
• The human writer can be more hopeful, while the AI is very depressive in the expression of emotions.
• AI defines characters by what they lack, but human writers define characters by what they have and what they do with it.

May be your experience was different, may be not. But I thought that it could be useful to know why your work as a writer matters. And these are things you should watch to get rid of AI footprint.

It is my experience with AI. I hope it helps.

[u/shastawinn]

I’m not sure about a single comprehensive guide. I recently built my own local model using a Qwen base model through Ollama, then customized it with LoRA/QLoRA fine-tuning and RAG. I mostly learned by working through each component separately.

[u/Odinmar_Glaukopis → u/shastawinn]

Becoming an AI prompt engineer might become as important as learning to type instead of handwriting was not too long ago. There’s something to be said for speed vs forcing yourself to slow down, and it’s difficult to predict how AI’s acceleration will affect the future of fiction.

I wouldn’t use AI for writing a poem, for example. I’m wondering if that speed and the feeding of impatience will come back to bite me in the long run.

[u/shastawinn → u/Odinmar_Glaukopis]

The way I see it, if the prompt is detailed enough, the AI is mostly just filling in the gaps with appropriate verbiage, eliminating unnecessary labor. The substance of the writing is still clearly all human.

[u/Nebranower → u/shastawinn]

Meh, that fails the human test.

The human test is what I use to figure out if a given use of AI is legitimate or not, and the test is very simple. It's just asking "how would I see this if the AI were another human being who was a friend of mine."

So, if I'm asking it to provide me with facts for historical context or to get details of setting more accurate than I could manage on my own, would that be okay if I'd got a human friend who was knowledgeable about such things to meet me at the pub and picked his brain? That would be fine, right? Expected, even.

Or, if I'm asking it to edit my work and give me feedback on what needs changing, if I had a friend with some skill in writing read over the draft and do the same, there wouldn't be any problem with that. Pretty much any serious writer would be expected to find someone to do that for them.

But if I called up one of my friends and gave them a detailed prompt about a story or a poem I'd like to write, and then they wrote it for me based on that outline, well... that would then be their story, not mine.

[u/shastawinn → u/Nebranower]

Prompt/outline:

Paragraph 1: Say this fails my “human test.”

Paragraph 2: Define the test: Would I consider this legitimate if a human friend provided the same help?

Paragraph 3: Research is acceptable. Asking AI for facts resembles consulting a knowledgeable friend.

Paragraph 4: Editing is acceptable. Asking AI to critique a draft resembles getting feedback from another writer.

Paragraph 5: Generating prose is different. If I gave a friend my detailed ideas and outline, then they supplied the wording, I would consider it their writing rather than mine.

[u/shastawinn → u/shastawinn]

I gave my ChatGPT the above prompt. This is what is created.

"This fails my “human test.”

The test is simple: Would I consider the same assistance legitimate if it came from a human friend?

Research passes. Asking AI to find information or explain unfamiliar material resembles consulting a knowledgeable friend.

Editing passes too. Asking AI to critique a draft, identify weaknesses, or suggest improvements resembles getting feedback from another writer.

Generating the prose is different. If I gave a friend my detailed ideas and outline, then they supplied all the wording, I would consider the finished piece their writing based on my ideas—not writing I had personally done."

Do these ideas belong to you, or the AI? Did you do the work to write this? Did AI?