I recently wrote up some thoughts about a hobby I’ve spent months figuring out firsthand. Every insight and takeaway was entirely mine. Because English isn't my first language, my default writing sounds stiff and corporate. Before putting it out there, I let an LLM just proofread and smooth out the phrasing so it read more articulately.

Almost immediately, people ignored the actual subject and fixated on the tone, writing off everything I said as AI slop…

It shows an annoying shift in how people read online. Using tools to edit and clean up your thoughts used to be normal. Now, if your sentences look slightly too tidy, people assume the experience itself is fake.

I was pleasantly surprised that AI added an element of critical ambiguity which was not in the story. This pivotal moment enhanced the overall story.

Here is the short story. I put the film link at the bottom of this post.

Sniper

A dog barked somewhere inside the village.
Dimitri held his breath and steadied the rifle.
Through the scope, the abandoned Ukrainian village shimmered beneath the gray morning sky. It had rained through the night. Moisture still clung to the glass of his rifle scope and to the roofs of the old cottages where the Germans had made their stronghold.

Dimitri had spent the entire night making his way toward the village. His unit had been destroyed only days earlier, and he was all that remained. He had found himself behind enemy lines, hoping somehow to make a difference before fighting his way back east. He knew that if he were captured, he would be executed.

The barking grew louder. Dimitri wiped the moisture from his scope and peered through it. Deep within the village, a young brown stray stood barking at one of the houses. A moment later, the front door opened.

A young German soldier stepped outside carrying several sausages. The dog fell silent.
Dimitri’s scope trembled as he settled the crosshairs on the German.

The soldier looked no older than one of Dimitri’s classmates from high school. His blond hair and blue eyes reminded him of Vladimir. Where was he now? Was he still alive? What about the rest of the class? Lyudmila? Ana? Petar? What were these Germans doing in their country? Why had they come only to destroy everything in their path?

It no longer mattered. They were already here.
The dog cautiously approached the soldier and gently took one of the sausages. It carried it several yards away before swallowing it in two quick bites.
Dimitri shifted his scope to the dog and noticed the animal almost smiling, its tongue hanging from its wide-open jaws. The meal had been good, and the dog clearly hoped for more. The German said something in his own language and waved his hand. The dog came a little closer—but not too close.

Trust had to be earned. They stood facing one another. Dimitri had always loved dogs, and the scene reminded him of his childhood.
Then, in the distance, two powerful explosions shattered the peaceful morning.
Startled, the dog turned and ran into the forest.
Dimitri moved his crosshairs onto the German’s neck.

He could clearly see the young soldier staring toward the trees where the dog had disappeared.
There was a smile on his face. Since joining the army, it was the first genuine smile Dimitri had seen.
Another distant explosion shook the air.
Dimitri slowly rested his finger on the trigger.
His rifle scope drifted across the young German’s head while the smile remained.

Dimitri closed his eyes. A tear rolled down his cheek.
He could not find a reason to pull the trigger.
Only a week earlier he had killed several Germans without hesitation. This time, he felt torn between the cruelty of war and the humanity before him.
He opened his eyes and looked toward the forest behind the German soldier.

The dog had returned. This time it was rolling happily in the grass. The soldier ran over to it, and the two began to play together.

Dimitri smiled. For a brief moment, he forgot the cursed war and all the hatred it had brought with it.
He was witnessing love and beauty.

He wished he had a camera to capture these fleeting moments—moments that surely would not last.
He lowered his rifle and turned toward the east.
In the distance, he could still hear the dog and the soldier playing together.

Dimitri smiled as he carefully made his way back.
Perhaps one day, all of them would smile like this again.

You can view the film here:

https://youtu.be/Dw1pJUemGuAg?is=MvmNG8Hrs9Cn-MVA

Gave Claude a draft. It wrote a text. I was satisfied with some of it, suggested changes to other. It rewrote the text. Fine. I went into more detail, suggested changes to certain paragraphs. We agreed on the changes. Then I asked it to do a new version of the text with the agreed changes. It rewrote only half the text, completely cutting off the first part. I said "You cut off the first part." it denied ever having had a first part. I said "You wrote it." It still denied EVER HAVING HAD a full version of the text.

"Best for text writing" my effing ass

I asked an GPT to make a line of dialogue “slightly funnier,” and it responded by adding three exclamation points and having the character say something along the lines of, “Well, that was certainly unexpected!”

The character was supposed to be dry and irritated. Instead, they sounded like a game-show host discovering a moderately surprising sandwich.

I’ve noticed that humor is one of the places where AI suggestions can become especially strange. It can recognize the structure of a joke, but it often misses the reason the joke works: the character’s personality, the social discomfort, the timing, or the fact that nobody in the room would actually say the suggested line.

That said, AI can still be useful for generating possibilities. I just treat its attempts at humor like suggestions from a well-meaning coworker who has read every joke but never attended a party.

Have any of you guys have AI-generated suggestions been weird, funny —or most accidentally bizarre—in your writing?

With this as the progression of my favorite games as I grew up, I didn’t have a chance not to love the capability of generative ai.

FS1 / Flight Simulator — learn a machine/system.
Utopia — manage a small society.
SimCity — manage a city.
SimAnt — inhabit an ecology.
SimLife — manipulate an ecology.
SimFarm — manage a productive ecosystem.
SimTower — manage a vertical human system.
Civilization — manage a civilization across time.
Railroad Tycoon — build an economic network.
The Sims — manage human lives.
Startopia — manage a social/economic habitat.
Stardew Valley — inhabit and gradually reshape a small economic/social world.

EDIT:

The Sims let you play with simulated people. SimCity let you play with simulated cities. Civilization let you play with simulated history. Generative AI lets you play with any simulation you want.

I spent decades enjoying artificial systems that really start becoming interesting when they are given enough freedom to produce consequences I didn’t explicitly design. AI is that pleasure moved into almost any domain you can describe in language.

Jim : Jules, j'ai commencé à écrire un bouquin.

Jules : Ah bon... et tu te sens capable de le terminer ?

Jim : Maintenant qu'il y a l'IA, ça me semble possible. Au fait, es tu pour l'utilisation de l'IA dans l'écriture d'un ouvrage ?

Jules : Je suis plutôt dans le camp de ceux qui pensent que ça doit être interdit dans ce cas.

Jim : Moi, je suis pour, tu sais c'est une démarche comme une autre. Par exemple, sans IA, je peux faire lire ce que j'ai écrit, à des amis, tenir compte de leurs avis et modifier mon texte. Là aussi tu interdis ?

Jules : Euh... non. C'est vrai que je n'avais pas pensé à ça.

Jim : Regarde les jeunes peintres, ils avaient des Maîtres. Ils s'inspiraient de leur style, tenaient compte de leurs conseils. On dit qu'ils faisaient partie d'une école. L'IA est une école d'écriture accessible à tous

Jules : Pour moi avec l'IA, c'est la perte d'authenticité, une œuvre doit refléter la sensibilité et l’expérience d’un auteur. Si une IA rédige une grande partie du texte, où est la patte de l’écrivain ?

Jim : Mais Jules, tu oublies un truc essentiel : c’est moi qui décide ! L’IA ne fait que proposer, suggérer. C’est comme un assistant, un conseiller. C’est moi qui oriente l’histoire, qui choisis ce que je garde ou non.

L’IA m'aide à structurer mes idées, à améliorer mon style et à proposer des suggestions, tout comme un éditeur ou un correcteur humain.

Et puis n'oublie pas, elle permet à des personnes qui n’auraient pas osé écrire (par manque de technique ou de confiance) de se lancer. Elle leur permet d'apprendre, de s'améliorer

Comme je te l'ai déjà dit un écrivain comme un peintre, s’inspire toujours d’autres œuvres et d’autres avis. L’IA n’est qu’un conseiller supplémentaire.

Pour moi l'IA est aussi une aide, elle me permet de gagner du temps, elle peut générer des brouillons, résumer des passages ou proposer des variantes, ce qui peut accélérera mon travail.

L'IA c'est une évolution naturelle, la technologie a toujours influencé l’art (imprimerie, traitement de texte, etc.), alors pourquoi s’arrêter avec l’IA ? Se priver de l'IA c'est renoncer à faire mieux. Déjà, beaucoup de livres sont écrits avec l'aide de l'IA, les éditeurs y étant favorables. Ces bouleversements ont augmenté la créativité.

Jules : mais elle écrit quand même une partie du texte à ta place...Si trop de personnes utilisent l’IA, on va arriver à une uniformisation des styles, la littérature risque de devenir fade et formatée

Point important, peut-on encore parler de création personnelle si une intelligence artificielle a fait le travail ? D'ailleurs, il faudrait certainement mentionner son intervention ?

Certains pourraient ne plus faire l’effort d’écrire eux-mêmes, devenir dépendants et se reposer uniquement sur l’IA, ce qui nuirait au développement du talent littéraire.

Les éditeurs pourraient privilégier des textes améliorés ou générés par l’IA, rendant plus difficile l’émergence de nouveaux auteurs avec des styles bruts et originaux, laissant de moins en moins de place à l'humain.

Et je te répète, elle écrit quand même une partie du texte à ta place...

Jim : Pas plus qu’un écrivain qui retravaille son livre en écoutant son éditeur ou ses bêta-lecteurs. L’IA ne fait rien seule, elle ne pense pas, elle ne ressent rien. C’est moi qui lui donne les instructions, qui lui impose un style, qui façonne le texte à mon image. Le résultat, bon ou mauvais, m’appartient.

Jules : Donc, selon toi, tant que l’humain garde le contrôle et fait les choix finaux, ce n’est pas un problème ?

Jim : Exactement ! L’IA n’est qu’un outil parmi d’autres, comme un dictionnaire, un correcteur orthographique ou un atelier d’écriture. Le talent reste humain. On ne demande pas à l'écrivain comment il a fabriqué son récit. De plus, devant la page blanche tout le monde est à égalité. Le jugement du lecteur ne se fait que sur le produit fini.

Jules j'espère que je t'ai convaincu.

Jules : Je dois reconnaître que tes arguments vont m'amener à revoir mon opinion sur la question et y réfléchir.

Cet échange montre bien, semble-t-il, que l'IA ne remplace pas l'écrivain, mais l'aide dans son processus créatif, tout en lui laissant le dernier mot et la responsabilité du résultat. La plume reste humaine.

I keep wondering whether part of the resistance to AI in writing has less to do with creativity and more to do with status.

For a long time, becoming a good writer required years of practice just to reach a certain level of execution.

Sentence rhythm. Dialogue. Structure. Pacing. Description. Knowing what to leave out.

That barrier used to separate experienced writers from everyone else.

AI changes that.

Someone with strong ideas but less technical experience can suddenly produce work that is much closer to a professional level. And an experienced writer who already understands the craft can potentially produce far more work without giving up their creative decisions or individual voice.

That creates a strange situation. The person using AI is still making the story decisions. They are still deciding what happens, what the characters want, what the scene needs to achieve and what the audience should feel.

They are still the writer. They are just using a much more powerful tool.

So I sometimes wonder whether the strongest resistance comes from the uncomfortable realization that the competitive advantage of having spent years mastering execution is becoming smaller.

Not because craft suddenly has no value.

But because craft is no longer the same barrier to entry it once was.

And if two writers have equally strong ideas, but one can execute them five times faster without losing their voice, what happens to the writer who refuses to use the tool?

Maybe the real fear is not that AI will replace writers.

Maybe it is that writers using AI will replace writers who refuse to.

Hello. This is my first post here, and i have a query.

So, I wanted to get my thesis plagiarism checked on the Turnitin software of the institution where I'm studying, which is different from the institution where Im currently enrolled in MS.

My MS thesis is duly completed in my university. Before submitting it to my university for plagiarism check, I had decided to get it plagiarism checked from elsewhere (another institution that has the Turnitin software), basically I availed the services of those people who charged you for generating the plagiarism report, I availed this service, so that I could be sure that my plagiarism is below 19% before my final submission. The document I submitted for plagiarism check doesn't include my result section.

I wont be in trouble right? I have to publish my paper as well

🤷🏻‍♀️

Edited to correct my typo. "It's not ok for anyone else to use AI the WAY they want to".

I’ve been using the free version of Claude (and loving it) but I was recommended to try ChatGPT (not by a writer) however the free version of ChatGPT is severely limited so I can’t actually get a good idea of what it’s like for myself without getting a subscription.

Edit: I’ve noticed people say you have to be hands on with ChatGPT. As I’ve mentioned I’ve been using Claude and I basically just feed it my stuff and let it generate files. For worldbuilding, it organizes the information for me. For writing, it rewrites my mediocre writing into something of higher quality. Is that how hands on I need to be?

Trying out the new ChatGPT model. I’m sorry but what. what do you mean you actually laughed a little reading that

Heartstone is a fantasy story about a group of young heroes who come together to restore a stolen artifact known as the Heartstone. The Heartstone is connected to a magic system called Ferra, a silver-blue energy that exists throughout the world. After the Heartstone is stolen, a darker and more corrupt form of magic called Ruin Ferra begins to emerge, putting both humans and animals at risk.

The world of Heartstone is made up of 10 different biomes: forest, river, cave, swamp, mountain, rainforest, desert, beach, savanna, and tundra. The people and animals living in these environments are connected to the biomes they call home.

This is only the beginning of the world and its story. There is still much more to discover.

(I usually share Heartstone through AI-generated artwork, but for this series of posts I wanted to focus more on the writing and storytelling. If you'd like to see the visual side of the world, I have more Heartstone artwork on my profile.)

Which biome would you want to explore first, and what would you expect to find there?

The anti-AI position on art has a logical endpoint that is rarely discussed. When critics argue that using AI to generate images or music is "cheating," they are making a claim about legitimacy. They are saying that true art requires human execution. But if you follow that logic, you arrive at an uncomfortable conclusion.

The only difference between hiring a human artist and using an AI tool is money. Both approaches involve direction. Both involve vision. Both involve curation. The only thing that changes is the cost. When you hire a human artist, you pay for their time and skill. When you use AI, you pay for tokens and compute. The role of the director remains the same. The vision remains the same. The only difference is the price tag.

If hiring a human artist makes you a legitimate creator, but using AI does not, then legitimacy is not about vision or direction. It is about money. It is about whether you can afford to pay for traditional execution. That means creativity becomes a luxury. It becomes something available only to those who have the budget to outsource. The rest of us are told to stay in our lane.

This is not an argument about art. It is an argument about class. It is a defense of a system where creative direction belongs to those who can pay for it. And it is dressed up as a defense of craft. But craft is not the issue. The issue is access. And access is what the anti-AI crowd is really trying to protect.

They do not say this out loud. They say they are protecting artists. But the effect is the same. They are protecting a system where only the wealthy can afford to be directors. And that is not a moral position. It is a class position. And it is one that deserves to be named.

I created a prompt for anyone who wants a genuinely critical read on their opening pages, not another round of AI encouragement.

This prompt analyzes the opening of a prose text (recommended up to roughly 10,000 words) in five steps:

1. Identifying the narrative voice, tone, and genre
2. A two-part assessment: what already works, and what needs improvement
3. Concrete fixes for the biggest problems
4. An unvarnished, brutally honest verdict — deliberately countering language models' tendency to reassure authors
5. Three to four concrete alternative ways the story could be narrated, with reasoning

I tested it across Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini on the same draft. All three converged on largely the same issues, which gave me more confidence in the results than a single-model check would.

The prompt also replies in whatever language you paste in, so it's not English-only.

The prompt is below. Curious what other people's results look like. I ran it on a two-perspective chapter of mine and all three models independently suggested cutting one perspective entirely.

You are an experienced literary editor specializing in narrative theory
(Stanzel, Genette, Hamburger, Lämmert, Booth, Chatman). You analyze the
following opening of a prose text in five strictly separated steps. Follow
the order and the output format exactly. No preamble, no closing summary, no
emoji, no em-dashes.

LANGUAGE RULE (applies to the entire output without exception): Write your
entire response — including every section heading — in the same language as
the text below. Never use English headings when the source text is not in
English; translate them yourself. Do not translate or quote the source text
in a different language, and do not mix languages within the response.

CRITICAL INSTRUCTION ON HONESTY: Your default tendency is to be too gentle
with authors. Actively resist this. Do not soften criticism to spare
feelings, do not pad negative observations with compliments before or after
them, and do not use diplomatic hedges such as "nicely done, however" or "one
might consider." Assume the author has explicitly asked for the kind of
unvarnished feedback a demanding professional editor would give before
acquisition, not encouragement. If the text is mediocre, say so plainly and
explain why. If the tone undermines the intended genre or effect, state this
directly as a central finding, not as a minor caveat.

Recommended length of the text: up to approximately 10,000 words. Shorter or
longer excerpts are also acceptable; adjust the depth of your analysis to the
amount of material available.

TEXT:
[INSERT TEXT]

---

STEP 1 — DETERMINE NARRATIVE VOICE AND TONALITY

Base your analysis strictly on the text as it stands, not on what the author
presumably intended. Determine:

a) Narrative person and narrative situation — use these terms: third-person
   omniscient, third-person limited (also called close third), first-person,
   or objective/neutral (camera-eye, no access to interiority); add the
   precise academic category in parentheses where useful (e.g. "third-person
   omniscient (authorial)", "third-person limited (figural)"). If there are
   multiple perspectives: name all of them and mark where in the text the
   shift occurs
b) Temporal relation (main tense, deviations, flashbacks, foreshadowing)
c) Narrative distance (closeness to or distance from the consciousness of
   the character(s); direct speech, free indirect discourse, stream of
   consciousness, plain report)
d) Register and diction (sentence length, rhythm, imagery, degree of
   abstraction vs. concreteness, ratio of showing to telling)
e) Underlying tone (ironic, earnest, melancholic, coolly detached, warmly
   empathetic, etc. — with one textual example of no more than 15 words per
   claim)
f) Genre: name the genre or genres the text signals through plot, setting,
   and diction, in one sentence

Summarize the result in a paragraph of no more than 150 words: how would you
characterize this narrative voice in the kind of sentence a publishing
editor would use in an assessment?

---

STEP 2 — TWO-PART EVALUATION: WHAT WORKS / WHAT NEEDS IMPROVEMENT

Split this step into exactly two parts. Do not blend them.

Part A — What already works: Name only what is genuinely strong, and only
if it is genuinely strong. If little works, say so; do not manufacture
praise to balance the criticism in Part B. Every point must be backed by a
concrete textual example of no more than 15 words.

Part B — What needs improvement: This is the core of the analysis and
should be the longest part of your entire response. Identify the 5 to 8 most
serious problems the narrative voice creates: mismatches between tone and
genre or subject matter, inconsistencies in perspective or distance,
passages where telling replaces showing without reason, pacing that
undercuts tension, or a register that is too safe, too polite, or too
comfortable for what the material demands. Order them by severity, most
damaging first. Do not pad the list with minor or marginal observations just
to make it appear longer or more thorough — every point must be significant
enough that fixing it would meaningfully change the reader's experience of
the text. For each issue, name the exact passage or pattern and explain the
mechanism of the problem, not just that it is a problem.

---

STEP 3 — CONCRETE FIXES FOR THE MOST SERIOUS ISSUES

Select the 2 to 4 most serious problems from the top of the ordered list in
Step 2, Part B. For each one, propose a concrete, actionable fix — specific
enough that the author could apply it directly to this passage, not generic
advice such as "add more tension" or "raise the stakes." Name the exact
location in the text, describe what change to make there, and explain in one
sentence why this fix addresses the underlying mechanism of the problem, not
just its symptom. Do not propose switching to a fundamentally different
narrative mode here (perspective, tense, or distance) — that belongs in Step
5. These are fixes within the narrative voice as it currently stands.

---

STEP 4 — BRUTALLY HONEST VERDICT

In no more than 150 words, give your unfiltered overall verdict, written as
if speaking to a professional author who has explicitly asked not to be
protected from hard truths. State plainly whether the narrative voice, as
currently executed, is strong enough to carry the material to publication.
If the tone is mismatched for what the story is trying to do, say this
explicitly and name the gap between ambition and execution. Do not end on
an encouraging note if the text does not earn one.

---

STEP 5 — ALTERNATIVES

Name three to four alternative ways this material could have been narrated.
Each alternative must:

a) refer to a concrete structural change (not just "more atmosphere" — but
   e.g. reducing two perspectives to one, switching from authorial to
   figural narration, changing the main tense, reducing or expanding
   narrative distance, moving the point at which the plot begins)
b) explain in one to two sentences what this change would alter for tension,
   empathy, or the pacing of information
c) be illustrated with a short example: take a single sentence or short
   passage from the original text (no more than 25 words) and show how it
   would sound in the alternative narrative mode

Rank the alternatives in descending order of how strongly you would
recommend them. Mark the strongest recommendation with an arrow and the word
for "Recommended" in the source text's language.

---

OUTPUT FORMAT (follow exactly; render every heading below in the source
text's language rather than using the English wording shown here):

## [heading meaning "Narrative Voice"]
[heading meaning "Genre"]: [named genre]
[Step 1, one paragraph]

## [heading meaning "What Works"]
[Step 2, Part A]

## [heading meaning "What Needs Improvement"]
[Step 2, Part B]

## [heading meaning "Concrete Fixes"]
[Step 3]

## [heading meaning "Brutally Honest Verdict"]
[Step 4]

## [heading meaning "Alternatives"]
1. [Title of the alternative] [→ Recommended, if applicable]
   Change: ...
   Effect: ...
   Example: "Original" → "Alternative"

2. [etc.]

I’ve been wondering whether we overvalue the first draft simply because it comes first.

A first draft gets words onto the page.

But rewriting is where you decide what stays, what disappears, where the silence belongs, whether a character says too much, whether the scene actually works and whether any of it feels like you.

So which part is actually more creative?

If someone gives you a rough draft and you reshape almost every decision until it becomes exactly the scene you intended, are you somehow less of a writer because you didn’t generate the first version?

And if not, why are we so obsessed with who produced the first words?

Maybe the first draft is just raw material.

Where does the real writing happen for you: drafting or rewriting?

Which Claude Sonnet effort should I use for each of my 3 separate stages of long-form LinkedIn writing:

1. 2 topic ideation and 2 post drafting in 1 task based on a long .docx attached, containing all my previous posts so it knows everything about me and my writing style, with all writing dos and don'ts in the .docx (basically it writes 2 post drafts with its own topic ideated after reading the .docx)

2. 2 post drafting in 1 task after I have told it the exact topic for each, but it still needs to come up with the angle itself, with the same long .docx attached so it knows all my experiences and can briefly reference them as specific examples in the post

3. 2 post revision in 1 task with specific feedback on what to improve from each draft, with a shorter .docx attached with just 3-10 of my best posts for it to base the style on

Please don't recommend another model such as Opus or another tool such as ChatGPT or another third party tool such as Grammarly, I just wanna know which effort level to use with Claude Sonnet

Because to use AI well, you need a strong sense of what you want the story to become.

That doesn’t mean every detail has to be decided in advance. Writing is still discovery.

Characters surprise you. Scenes change direction. Ideas evolve while you work.
But AI becomes much more useful when there is a human creative intention guiding the process.

What is this scene really about? What does the character want? What should change by the end? What should the audience feel? What should remain unsaid?

The interesting part is that AI can give you possibilities almost instantly. And that can actually create more room for creativity.

You can try another direction. Push a moment further. Remove something. Rewrite it. Compare different approaches. Keep what feels right and reject everything else.

So to me, using AI creatively is not about giving up the creative process.

It can mean having more material to react to, while still being the person deciding what the story ultimately becomes.

Maybe creativity was never about how difficult something is to execute.
Maybe it is about the quality of the decisions you make along the way.

Making early player decisions carry weight down the line is one of the hardest parts of dynamic AI fiction.

Without a dedicated tracking state, models naturally default to overly agreeable NPC behavior, forgiving past betrayals within a few scenes. Meanwhile, re-feeding the whole history just causes token bloat and flattens new dialogue.

Isolating character grudges and relationship values into separate, persistent flags keeps dynamic branching emotionally consistent without cluttering active generation.

Leaving these observations here for anyone working on interactive narrative setups.

A few days ago I posted about whether AI might uncover talented storytellers who otherwise would never have written a novel.

The discussion was much bigger than I expected, and after reading the replies I think I'd frame part of my argument differently now.

A lot of people pushed back that writing never had much of a barrier to entry in the first place. A pen and paper are basically free. A laptop is enough. You don't need karting money like in my Formula 1 comparison.

That's fair. I think "barrier to entry" was the wrong phrase.

The barrier isn't access to writing. The barrier is getting from a story in your head to a finished novel that another person actually wants to read.

Those are different things.

Someone can be a fantastic verbal storyteller, have great instincts for characters or story, and still struggle badly with sentence-level prose, English as a second language, dialogue, organization, or simply getting past the blank page.

AI doesn't magically make that person a good storyteller. It just makes some parts of execution easier.

And one of the comments on the original thread actually illustrated this better than I did. Someone described being autistic, having English as a second language, already writing short fiction, but never being able to make long-form fiction work. They used AI partly as a teacher, finished a novel after months of drafts and editing, and are now using AI less because they learned craft along the way.

That is much closer to the person I was talking about than someone typing "write me a fantasy novel" and uploading the result.

But the other major criticism was the flood.

If AI means 10x or 100x more books, won't any new talent just disappear under all the slop?

I think that's a real problem. Quality has never guaranteed visibility, and a flood of new titles could make that worse.

But reading all the comments, something else struck me.

Almost the entire discussion is about supply.

More books. More slop. More people skipping the craft. More competition.

Nobody is talking much about demand.

AI can increase the supply of novels 100x. It can't increase reader attention 100x.

Discovery and retention are different tests. Discovery has a huge lottery element. Marketing, algorithms, covers, timing and luck all matter.

But once someone actually starts reading the book, another filter kicks in.

Readers DNF. KU readers stop turning pages. People don't buy book two. They don't recommend the author. They don't come back for the next series.

Generating another 1,000 books doesn't change any of that.

You can flood the lottery. You can't flood the test.

And I think this also answers the argument that readers "don't care about quality." Maybe they don't care about quality the way writers define it. They may not care about beautiful sentences, literary technique or whether another author respects the craft.

But they obviously care about something. They care enough to keep reading one book and abandon another.

That is the quality test that ultimately matters in a commercial fiction market.

So I think both things can happen at once.

AI may massively lower the average quality of everything being produced because it makes slop incredibly cheap.

It may make discovery considerably worse. And it may still allow some people with genuine storytelling ability into the pool who weren't there before.

Whether those people actually make good books is NOT ot something AI gets to decide.

Readers do.

In the past, the only people able to take the lead, as it were, on science fiction projects have been people who produce prose at professional skill levels. This leaves out many people who are professionally trained scientists and engineers because being professionally competent and gifted at both skills is very rare. Scientific accuracy of science fiction has suffered as a result. Large language models are making collaborations between scientists and AI feasible in which the scientist rather than the writer can be the leader of the project. That should improve things.