AI Generation vs Writing

[Gary L]

1 hour ago, Jason Rimbaud said:

As I said, every author is going to have to figure out how to use this new technology for themselves. 

But I don't have to figure it out. I won't use it. There is no need. I write for my husband. I don't have to be good!   

I don't automatically believe all technology is useful. Some can be quite useful, some might curtail creativity because one could become reliant on it. It's all comparative. 

Though I am in the camp that if six companies in the world control AI, then whatever they are planning on doing with it, can't be good for the rest of us . 

This Anglo-Irish guy is 100% with you…. Even if you thought I was Canadian, which would be an honour…… 😂 

[Jason Rimbaud]

3 minutes ago, Gary L said:

This Anglo-Irish guy is 100% with you…. Even if you thought I was Canadian, which would be an honour…… 😂 

Well then, it would be an honor to have such a distinguished gentleman on my side, especially one who resides in Spain and may or may not be Canadian! 

🥰

[wildone]

I was at a meeting the other night, held by a couple of lawyers for our Condo Board due to recent provincial laws being changed. In the US I think it is the same as a HOA.

They were saying that people that are being fined $1000 or so for damages or other justifiable reason, are turning to AI to create 34 page legal briefss challenging the fine. The lawyers said boards have to decide if wiping out the $1000 fine is more sensible than paying a lawyer $2,000 - 4,000 to read over it and rip it apart and probably get another reply back from another AI legal brief. 

I am like others, I think that if a writer wants to use AI in their writing, then be honest. Then I can go in knowing that this has been polished, or completely written by AI. 

However, as Krista says, people might be drawn to it to seek attention. Not sure if admitting using AI would gain you the popularity that you might be seeking  

[Davide]

23 hours ago, Tomkin Watts said:

In business or academic writing, no. And yet, in fiction, beginning a sentence with "And" works.

Smooth use of "and" at the start of a sentence in a comment about using "and" at the start of a sentence. It exemplifies it well that it feels natural in a non-formal setting.

[Krista]

6 hours ago, CassieQ said:

I see The Terminator movies have taught you nothing.  

or Mass Effect, if you're into video gaming.. 😮 

[CassieQ]

I don't use AI for writing because I look at writing similar to working a muscle.  It gets stronger when you use it often.  I practiced my writing for years and consider myself to be a fairly strong writer.  If I take short cuts and use a computer program to write for me, I'm not using that muscle as often, and it will get weaker.  This might be a weird take, but that's how I feel.  I like to write,  I worked really hard at it, and I'm not letting AI take that away from me.  

[Tomkin Watts]

1 hour ago, CassieQ said:

I don't use AI for writing because I look at writing similar to working a muscle.  It gets stronger when you use it often.  I practiced my writing for years and consider myself to be a fairly strong writer.  If I take short cuts and use a computer program to write for me, I'm not using that muscle as often, and it will get weaker.  This might be a weird take, but that's how I feel.  I like to write,  I worked really hard at it, and I'm not letting AI take that away from me.  

I am with you there - 100%. I've waited 50 years to start seriously writing, and at my age am not about to let a stupid machine deaden my mind!

The brain is indeed like a muscle: i go to the gym and strengthen my muscles, then come home, work on a story and strengthen my mind. Use it or lose it, as people like to say.

[William King]

AI is already starting to impact medicine and its role will only grow, a good thing, because it is helping to save lives. The key word here is helping. AI can help with writing, editing, designing, plotting, whatever you ask it to do, but it can't replace an author, not really, because it doesn't have continuity. Like AI images with six fingers on a hand, AI stories will tend to be repetitive and disjointed. Still, like any tool it's there to be used and a skilful writer can take advantage of it, or not! 

[Topher Lydon]

56 minutes ago, William King said:

AI is already starting to impact medicine and its role will only grow, a good thing, because it is helping to save lives. The key word here is helping. AI can help with writing, editing, designing, plotting, whatever you ask it to do, but it can't replace an author, not really, because it doesn't have continuity. Like AI images with six fingers on a hand, AI stories will tend to be repetitive and disjointed. Still, like any tool it's there to be used and a skilful writer can take advantage of it, or not! 

Ahh the AI slop, it drives me nuts. As I said, I use it for editing, and feedback. It's all it is really good for. Fact checking a massive four book historical epic for example. HOWEVER it is not very good even there. I recently wrote the Battle of Tarsus (circa 1097) I know the flow of the battle, the history of it. Organized my notes, got my beat sheet and wrote. Sent it to my AI assistant... who I affectionately refer to as a drunk intern weilding a bottle of Vodka and about as much sense as a first year uni student with a red marker.... And the mess that ensued... It drew third crusade BS, 15th 16th century tactics... and I took one look at what it had "edited for consistency" cutting 5000 words down to 2000 words and getting 90% of it wrong.... and I was like : NO THANKS.

So yeah, if your lazy and don't mind slop, go nuts. Otherwise watch it like a hawk. Some days it is GREAT like invaluable for advice... others  it will tear your heart out, stomp on it, and hand it back like a fourth grader proud of it's art.

Also Saturdays and Sundays DO NOT touch AI on these days... seriously the performance dips into the utterly unusable. It claims that there is no "depreciation of performance due to load" on those days, there very much is. It's abysmal.

I save stuff and do it on week days at 4 am. I think as long as you use it your way, and it helps you (seriously my spelling is shocking I type too fast and my grammar slips so I need an editor that can keep up... and so if I can cut a corner there and get both instant feedback, clear editing, and a spell check that laughs at me... why not?) 

I am honest about this, and upfront. I'm more than capable of writing without it, two decades of writing backing that up. But if you see some of my early work you will know the pain of my chronic lack of editors  

[Kileoli]

1 hour ago, Topher Lydon said:

Also Saturdays and Sundays DO NOT touch AI on these days... seriously the performance dips into the utterly unusable. It claims that there is no "depreciation of performance due to load" on those days, there very much is. It's abysmal.

That explains the mathematical findings in my statistics which are not applicable to Earth.

[lawfulneutralmage]

On 4/11/2026 at 1:10 AM, Krista said:

[...] That we're losing creative people like dead skin cells for optimism and algorithms.

 

[...] So it displaces their entire function as a creative person.

Putting our "hobby" aside, you are hitting it exactly. We are at the beginning of a new industrial revolution. First, it was manual labour that was given to machines, now it is intelligent and creative labour. The effects on society will be groundshaking.

[CassieQ]

9 hours ago, William King said:

AI is already starting to impact medicine and its role will only grow, a good thing, because it is helping to save lives. 

How so?

[Ron]

Here is a free-to-read, and pertinent to the conversation, article that was in today's Boston Globe newspaper: AI is destroying good writing by Zoe Yu.

[Krista]

22 hours ago, William King said:

AI is already starting to impact medicine and its role will only grow, a good thing, because it is helping to save lives. The key word here is helping. AI can help with writing, editing, designing, plotting, whatever you ask it to do, but it can't replace an author, not really, because it doesn't have continuity. Like AI images with six fingers on a hand, AI stories will tend to be repetitive and disjointed. Still, like any tool it's there to be used and a skilful writer can take advantage of it, or not! 

Its role in medicine is rather limited, thankfully. An algorithm can help create a database and likelihood of a person developing cancer or auto-immune diseases, etc.

The rest of your statement is dangerously wrong, I'm afraid. AI can help plot, write, edit, character designing/character sheets, and you follow that up and say that it cannot replace the author? When an author is using it to do those things, even on a small scale they are replacing themselves. Those are all important techniques, tools, and functions of writing. To allow AI to touch any of that, even with the author giving it numerous prompts and ironing them out, it has taken away organic creativity. The difference is, some will not see it that way. Some will see that AI is simply a functioning tool to work alongside the writer. 

And it most definitely can replace an author. What AI does is adapt to what you're asking it to do. That's the entire draw to the advancement. Eventually you can make it understand exactly what you want. Like I said, I've already seen it done in the digital artist, coding, video game art, character development, and digital animation fields. One person through a series of prompts was able to eliminate what used to take entire development teams months to do. Was it a groundbreaking game? Not really, but that doesn't mean that with the adapting functionality that AI continuously can achieve, that we won't see it happen soon. What it cannot do is take ownership. If it eliminates 80% of the work, then who actually owns the end product though? If all you're doing is tweaking the prompt to fit a vision, who owns it? The organic person or the program that did the majority of the work? Your work is forever an algorithm, whether you think it is or not, doesn't matter. 

Like I said in my earlier post, we're already seeing these arguments being made. I personally will not stand next to someone that uses AI to do the majority of the work for them. Editing, sure. But the shit you listed above, no, I will not budge on that, sorry. It is an Author's job to create their character, their world, their plot, their story, etc. If you're in constant command of AI to do it for you, you've lost me and I'll not respect the work. 

I spent two decades fumbling to write what I have written. Anyone that has toiled for months to work out a character or story should open their eyes to the fact that AI isn't the answer to those issues. The moment it replaces your ability to function within your own creative world, you'll hopefully feel differently, but right now think about all of the digital artists, programmers, video game developers, computer animators, character artists, music technicians that are, I'd say, one to two years from being completely erased. Not just their jobs, but their creative respect within their fields.

 

Edited Monday at 03:15 AM by Krista

[William King]

13 hours ago, CassieQ said:

How so?

AI-powered tools are being used to diagnose cancers, identify anomalies in radiological scans, and review medical literature to help with treatment decisions. For example, when used in mammography screenings, AI systems can identify early signs of breast cancer with remarkable accuracy, often at a higher rate than human radiologists.

[Topher Lydon]

2 hours ago, Krista said:

Its role in medicine is rather limited, thankfully. An algorithm can help create a database and likelihood of a person developing cancer or auto-immune diseases, etc.

The rest of your statement is dangerously wrong, I'm afraid. AI can help plot, write, edit, character designing/character sheets, and you follow that up and say that it cannot replace the author? When an author is using it to do those things, even on a small scale they are replacing themselves. Those are all important techniques, tools, and functions of writing. To allow AI to touch any of that, even with the author giving it numerous prompts and ironing them out, it has taken away organic creativity. The difference is, some will not see it that way. Some will see that AI is simply a functioning tool to work alongside the writer. 

And it most definitely can replace an author. What AI does is adapt to what you're asking it to do. That's the entire draw to the advancement. Eventually you can make it understand exactly what you want. Like I said, I've already seen it done in the digital artist, coding, video game art, character development, and digital animation fields. One person through a series of prompts was able to eliminate what used to take entire development teams months to do. Was it a groundbreaking game? Not really, but that doesn't mean that with the adapting functionality that AI continuously can achieve, that we won't see it happen soon. What it cannot do is take ownership. If it eliminates 80% of the work, then who actually owns the end product though? If all you're doing is tweaking the prompt to fit a vision, who owns it? The organic person or the program that did the majority of the work? Your work is forever an algorithm, whether you think it is or not, doesn't matter. 

Like I said in my earlier post, we're already seeing these arguments being made. I personally will not stand next to someone that uses AI to do the majority of the work for them. Editing, sure. But the shit you listed above, no, I will not budge on that, sorry. It is an Author's job to create their character, their world, their plot, their story, etc. If you're in constant command of AI to do it for you, you've lost me and I'll not respect the work. 

I spent two decades fumbling to write what I have written. Anyone that has toiled for months to work out a character or story should open their eyes to the fact that AI isn't the answer to those issues. The moment it replaces your ability to function within your own creative world, you'll hopefully feel differently, but right now think about all of the digital artists, programmers, video game developers, computer animators, character artists, music technicians that are, I'd say, one to two years from being completely erased. Not just their jobs, but their creative respect within their fields.

 

While I disagree on AI capabilities being able to replace us, YET, I think you have largely hit the nail on the head.

As an editing too, feedback tool, and processing tool yes.

But to make characters, worlds... breathe life into a story... YIKES no. The characters are the best part, finding their voices, and exchanges, and ... no... I mean I've chatted to an AI, bounced ideas off of one... but it's a dead fish that emulates... trying to put that into a character is going to be horrible. 

Where's the spark that makes a character be real to a person.

I think Krista is spot on with this. It cannot, should not be used in this fashion. But, again, that is only my humble opinion.

[Kileoli]

17 minutes ago, William King said:

AI-powered tools are being used to diagnose cancers, identify anomalies in radiological scans, and review medical literature to help with treatment decisions. For example, when used in mammography screenings, AI systems can identify early signs of breast cancer with remarkable accuracy, often at a higher rate than human radiologists.

Thing is I use AI a lot at work and also generally a lot of machine learning stuff. I don't deny that it's getting better and it's helping scientists in many fields to push things forward a lot faster than before but I agree with Christopher. It lacks the human part, the emotions and deciding based on feelings.

9 minutes ago, Topher Lydon said:

While I disagree on AI capabilities being able to replace us,

Even in a complicated machine design or mining equipment it is important to consider the human aspect, in medicine gets more dramatic and it's the same in writing. It keeps on pushing things in stupid loops making things more repetitive than they are. I mean life can be boring but if my life was as boring as what AI tries to show, I would have committed suicide out of boredom.

[William King]

4 minutes ago, Kileoli said:

It keeps on pushing things in stupid loops making things more repetitive than they are.

That's a good point, but it depends what you are asking it to do. If you are asking AI to recognise anomalies in an MIR scan it can do this faster and more accurately, with more precision than human eyes. If you are asking it to write something it will gather and distill available material and the result is likely repetitive. Possibly leaving AI to write a work of fiction might eventually result in one book, the one and only story, which would indeed be boring! Then again, what if you ask it not to distill, but invent, would it be capable?

[Jeff Burton]

I use AI for planning and formatting my thoughts into the notes I end up using later. Usually it’s just a conversation, because sometimes the only way to get an idea out of my head is to talk about it.

New stuff usually takes a few days and several different conversations because I take the time to think about stuff more, to me it’s like a step process, because I’m the one that fine tunes the plot, I’m the one that has to work out the arcs into something I’m willing to type, for me it’s a useful tool in that way.

Ive tested many different AI models and my conclusion is it isn’t there yet at least for what I’m trying to accomplish with my words.  Details tend to get lost, it forgets what it’s actually doing and the work you end up with is a general mess that would take too long to complete.

But it’s been a while since I’ve tried it.

The other thing I use it for is to critique passages, I’ve been working to refine “the author voice” I’ve been trying to fine tune, it generally offers suggestions, and sometimes surprises me by telling me to try it again with a different motivation behind it because it says I can do better, like wtf? 

I get that a lot of people don’t want to use it at all but when you’ve got a mind like mine that often cascades into a confusing waterfall of ideas, I can tell it my raw thoughts and it helps me build it into a character sheet or a chapter map for an arc, it helps do the things I’m not good at on the back end because I just wanna write, not format notes.

So I guess in short I just use it as a planning tool, and it helps me work crap out when I get stuck on something, and that’s about all I really need out of it.

[Topher Lydon]

2 hours ago, Jeff Burton said:

I use AI for planning and formatting my thoughts into the notes I end up using later. Usually it’s just a conversation, because sometimes the only way to get an idea out of my head is to talk about it.

New stuff usually takes a few days and several different conversations because I take the time to think about stuff more, to me it’s like a step process, because I’m the one that fine tunes the plot, I’m the one that has to work out the arcs into something I’m willing to type, for me it’s a useful tool in that way.

Ive tested many different AI models and my conclusion is it isn’t there yet at least for what I’m trying to accomplish with my words.  Details tend to get lost, it forgets what it’s actually doing and the work you end up with is a general mess that would take too long to complete.

But it’s been a while since I’ve tried it.

The other thing I use it for is to critique passages, I’ve been working to refine “the author voice” I’ve been trying to fine tune, it generally offers suggestions, and sometimes surprises me by telling me to try it again with a different motivation behind it because it says I can do better, like wtf? 

I get that a lot of people don’t want to use it at all but when you’ve got a mind like mine that often cascades into a confusing waterfall of ideas, I can tell it my raw thoughts and it helps me build it into a character sheet or a chapter map for an arc, it helps do the things I’m not good at on the back end because I just wanna write, not format notes.

So I guess in short I just use it as a planning tool, and it helps me work crap out when I get stuck on something, and that’s about all I really need out of it.

This is it in a nutshell. Exactly how it needs to be used.

[Topher Lydon]

someone ran an AI analysis of two separate chapters of my work. Apparently a piece I wrote in 2016 is 30% AI (I take that as a compliment as it was commenting on my descriptions and usage of scene breaks (I use a --- instead of a*** just a habit because three --- and an enter makes a line in Word, my word processor of choice.) HA! go figure, bad habits the machines have learned bad habits!!! I feel somewhat amused... until I was talking to an AI recently concerning a writing flow point and it quoted one of my old books back at me... The Falcon Banner specifically. It proceeded to point out my style was consistent with that authour on GA and that it was trained on "publically" available work, and when questioned it stated GA specifically.

I was a little unsettled by this, and the AI (Gemini) became VERY evasive. So something to be aware of, I guess. Though it's good to know my writing is consistent over the past 20 years to the point where I can be pin point identified by one of these machines.

[Kileoli]

2 hours ago, Jeff Burton said:

I guess in short I just use it as a planning tool, and it helps me work crap out when I get stuck on something

That totally explains where the stories get stuck...and no smut stories 🙃

As a prompt tip: try with lots of sensual stimulation and fade to black scenes. 

It gets so implicit with " it's against the rules to Sams hand stayed on Jack's waist, their breath deepening, heart pounding, and then they drink coffee together enjoying the blue,orange,gray raining sky....."

That's why I gave up forcing AI to give me erotica material.... I just write the smut scenes myself since personally I'm not capable of coming if someone touches my waist and breathes faster .... What kind of data the AI uses is beyond my imagination or it's relying on yaoi written by girls with little imagination of what really happens when the blood is in the other head.

I go haunt my data with AI models....

[Topher Lydon]

3 minutes ago, Kileoli said:

That totally explains where the stories get stuck...and no smut stories 🙃

As a prompt tip: try with lots of sensual stimulation and fade to black scenes. 

It gets so implicit with " it's against the rules to Sams hand stayed on Jack's waist, their breath deepening, heart pounding, and then they drink coffee together enjoying the blue,orange,gray raining sky....."

That's why I gave up forcing AI to give me erotica material.... I just write the smut scenes myself since personally I'm not capable of coming if someone touches my waist and breathes faster .... What kind of data the AI uses is beyond my imagination or it's relying on yaoi written by girls with little imagination of what really happens when the blood is in the other head.

I go haunt my data with AI models....

OMG that is better than MOST of my sex scenes ROTFLOL i am terrible at them, far too prudish. 

He flexed and rubbed the back of his partner's hand. "There Sex complete!"

Marc looked down, and back up again and sighed. "I'm stuck in a romance novel written by Angsty Teenage Japanese girls... why is there a bunch of pixel squares over my junk!"

Tom looked back just as grumpy, "Least you get that, me I have to haul around this big black Bar with the word Censored everywhere!!!!"

[Kileoli]

14 minutes ago, Topher Lydon said:

He flexed and rubbed the back of his partner's hand

If life was that easy....then the case of blue balls would be as foreign as aliens having coffee while reviewing my papers and accepting them in springernature.

And now I can't look at my stuff without seeing them in pixels ( at least it's very high resolution) with zooming option.... you're a genius, you also solved the size problem, now it's just a matter of zooming.

 

[Jeff Burton]

1 hour ago, Topher Lydon said:

This is it in a nutshell. Exactly how it needs to be used.

It's a tool, like a hammer or a wrench. It's not supposed to do the work for you but help you do it better, faster.  At least that's my view on it.

1 hour ago, Topher Lydon said:

OMG that is better than MOST of my sex scenes ROTFLOL i am terrible at them, far too prudish. 

He flexed and rubbed the back of his partner's hand. "There Sex complete!"

Marc looked down, and back up again and sighed. "I'm stuck in a romance novel written by Angsty Teenage Japanese girls... why is there a bunch of pixel squares over my junk!"

Tom looked back just as grumpy, "Least you get that, me I have to haul around this big black Bar with the word Censored everywhere!!!!"

lmfao.  That's literally how I see my sex scenes too.  Even my characters are like "Bro, we don't want to be a part of this, people don't need to read our business. Fade to black you pervert."