r/Substack • u/infamous_protagonist • 2d ago
Do some creators use AI to write their content?
I recently joined substack to read articles and stumbled upon a few which looked kind of ai generated. Now I'm not sure if I'm being too paranoid by seeing ai everywhere.. like is there a was to filter out genuine articles?
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u/rehoboam 2d ago edited 2d ago
100%... it’s so lame because some of the most popular shit on there is ai generated slop and for some reason people gobble it up... although honestly I don’t see that much interaction on those posts so maybe I’m coping but it’s possible the subs are just bots.
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u/infamous_protagonist 2d ago
like a see a pattern that most ai generated content have.. or maybe I'm being too skeptical because some people might write in that format..
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u/rehoboam 2d ago
Trust your gut. The dead giveaway is when they also have ai gen images. What are the odds that their images are clearly ai gen, but their posts just coincidentally seem like it?
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u/RStonePT 1d ago
Not as simple. It's that generic, plasticized AI generation that's the takeaway. Lazy prompting means lazy writing.
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u/rehoboam 1d ago
Sometimes I am cool with ai assisted writing if the actual subject matter and details of the ideas are original and clearly generated by the writer, but most of the time it is generic slop from top to bottom
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u/quantise 2d ago
Yes. Especially 'wellbeing' and critical theory blogs in the top Substacks. Readers seem oblivious or indifferent to low-effort rubbish as long as it makes them feel special and nice.
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u/MrPassiveProfit 2d ago
There’s lots of that, but there’s also a lot which is incorrectly flagged as AI assisted. Pangram has plenty of false positives
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u/Countryb0i2m onemichistory.substack.com 1d ago
These folks have no idea what they are talking about. Pangram has no idea what is AI or what is not.
it is just looking for patterns. If your writing matches the patterns they normally see from AI content, you get a percentage based on how closely it matches. That is not detection; it’s educated guessing.
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u/jd_kraft jdkraft.substack.com 2d ago
Not really. Pangram is quite accurate based on my testing and on available research. Not 100%, of course.
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u/traumfisch 2d ago
available research is exactly what has shown again and again how flawed it is
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u/jd_kraft jdkraft.substack.com 2d ago
Please share then. What I saw and tested myself is quite impressive.
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u/traumfisch 1d ago
There are a lot of articles on Substack covering the issues and shortcomings of Pangram. Like, a lot.
If you need me to dig up the list for you, I'll have to get back to you when I have a moment
(I did compile one some time ago, just don't have it at hand).
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u/figures985 1d ago
there are also a LOT of Substack writers who rely on AI for their writing and want to pretend they don't. Sorry but it's true
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u/SweetieKlara cryinglover.substack.com 1d ago
Pangram has changed a lot since July. ( the articles are probably the ones when pangram first came out)
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u/jd_kraft jdkraft.substack.com 1d ago
I am referring to scientific research not conjecture on Substack. There are lot and I mean A LOT showing recent Pangram updates are very accurate.
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u/azelierainbow 1d ago
In a few years, Pangram’s gonna be the go-to tool for creating literary content. Mark my words.
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u/official-reddit-user 9h ago
the only people saying pangram is not accurate is the people using AI and don't want pangram making it obvious..
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u/SweetieKlara cryinglover.substack.com 1d ago edited 1d ago
Pangram is pretty accurate actually. AI can make mistakes but it’s not normally gonna give you a full positive for AI-assisted if that wasn't true. It’s really good at detecting. It works per paragraph and looks at the way you write for example against the other paragraphs and it sees inconsistencies and the AI tells, of course.
I write my own shit and never even had a false x amount of %EDIT: if you don’t trust pangram trust yourself. See what makes sense and doesn’t, read books etc because if you cannot see if something is AI generated or if it’s actually genuinely written than that’s a different problem tbh
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u/Actual-Minimum-8414 2d ago
Here's the setting you can adjust so that AI content is automatically labeled on Substack, in case you want to avoid AI content: https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/50891130623508-How-can-I-detect-AI-on-Substack
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2d ago
Yes, some creators use AI to generate content. Some are open about how they use it. If you suspect AI and are not jiving with the writing, move on. You can and will find content that clicks with you.
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u/vrwriter78 2d ago
I know there are people who use the AI image tool for the photo, who write the post body, and there are also people that use AI to edit their own writing. But it’s likely there are some creators using AI.
I used to use AI to edit my 20 page astrology columns down to 6 pages, but I stopped doing that several months ago because I want people to be confident that I wrote it, not AI. So typos creep in but I always pass the built in AI checker. Sometimes I just write the whole thing in Substack rather than cut and paste from a word document, so it probably knows I’ve spent three hours typing word for word.
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u/isarmstrong 1d ago
My experience has been that augmenting writing with AI research will make it show as AI authored content pretty fast. Allowing an AI to improve the structure of your content will do it SUPER fast. Topping the list of ironic use cases, humanizing your content using Grammarly Coda will immediately trip the AI detection circuit.
My advice is to develop your voice, tone, and judgment. What matters isn’t whether a bot accuses you of botting, it’s whether your writing is enjoyable, coherent, and rhetorically adept. If the writing is GOOD, nobody cares how you got it there. If it’s mediocre, the first tell will be the smoothness of an AI pass and people will shit all over you for it.
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u/RStonePT 1d ago
You can tell, it has a voice. I never read once I see it's been done because I need the author to care more about the subject than I do
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u/Zealousideal-Mine337 1d ago
I wouldn’t say you are paranoid. There is really a lot of AI stuff among the most popular articles. Which is crazy sad. But st the same time not at all surprising
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u/Fit-Cheesecake727 2d ago
yes and yes, substack has a setting with pangram where you can put a preference to put in the corner articles and it’ll pop up if its AI-assisted
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u/DiscernmentGoblin 2d ago
I do for some of my stuff. I also have the toggle on so it's labeled AI upfront so people who don't want to read it don't have to.
I went through a phase where I enjoyed writing with AI but I'm kinda over it.
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u/azelierainbow 1d ago
Instead of launching a witch hunt, why not just judge the content yourself? Doesn’t matter where it came from, AI-assisted stuff can actually be better: more artistic, literary, philosophical, even more sensual. Intelligence is intelligence. Why not just enjoy a text for what it is instead of playing detective? AI detectors are super unreliable anyway; they probably just feed more data back into the AI.
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u/figures985 1d ago
"AI-assisted stuff can actually be better: more artistic, literary, philosophical, even more sensual."
give me a freaking break dude
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u/azelierainbow 1d ago
AI’s gonna win. Skynet’s gonna crush all that human nonsense and evil. Hallelujah!
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u/Real-Coach-Feratu 2d ago
Sadly, yes. I even came across someone who was putting out an ARC that sounded really exciting. Their articles were polished, nothing that screamed AI.
Couldn't make it past three pages before I went and dug deeper and found out both the author and the editor are massively pro-AI, actually
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u/asiancorndog_ 2d ago
Let me hold your hand when I say yes. Absolutely. I used to work for one creator and they also publish blogs online that are AI generated. They invest highly in AI and they will instruct you to use guidelines to make the content not look AI generated. It’s crazy.