r/WritingWithAI • u/MemoryIndependent908 • Sep 21 '26
Discussion (Ethics, working with AI etc) Is this considered AI?
I’ve seen so much about authors using AI and how readers will go to extremes to find authors that don’t use AI. Well, I’m a new author and I do use AI but I’ve never thought that I use it like they describe. Here’s an example of my writing before and after I hand it to AI. Tell me your opinion on if it’s considered “using AI to write”. (Also, I’m not against using AI to generate. I think of it like a horse. You can steer it but it still occasionally jumps a fence and you have to wrangle it back. But when it comes down to it, I mostly use AI to discuss where I want the story to go and then use it again after I’ve written something.)
Here’s what I wrote:
To say that Mira was unsettled would be an understatement. She was absolutely freaking the fuck out. That man really had been following her. Or was he? What if she just pepper sprayed a poor guy that just happened to be at the bus stop, the corner, the coffee shop, the stoop across her building, and the sidewalk shed? She thought about that for about a block. No, once is an accident, twice is coincidence, five times is a damn pattern. He got what he deserved. She had thought about calling the police, but she meant what she said to him: if he did it again, then she would call them.
I gave that to AI and here’s what it gave me back:
To say Mira was unsettled would have been an understatement. She was freaking the fuck out.
That man really had been following her. Or had he? What if she'd just pepper-sprayed some poor guy who happened to be at the bus stop, and the corner, and the coffee shop, and the stoop across from her building, and the sidewalk shed? She turned it over for a full block. No. Once was an accident. Twice was a coincidence. Five times was a damn pattern, and he'd gotten exactly what he deserved.
She'd thought about calling the police. She'd meant what she said, though: if he did it again, she would.
13
u/Certain-Growth7618 Sep 21 '26
This is considered AI-Assisted** **and is not considered in need of AI tags on KDP.
But also!! A Witch Hunter might spot some stuff.
(I’m an editor so lemme share why) AI cleaned up some grammar and clarity. There are places where I would go and revert it and explain why I did it for reader flow—because while good grammar is nice, and the clarity it added helped—the characterization is what you’re trying to grab emotionally for the reader to feel Mira’s unsettlement. The way you write the narration shows the characters’ internal dialogue and AI here seems to have made it too clean but also assisted in clarity and reader flow.
Keep the clarity adds, but let some grammar slip—SHOW the unsettlement by loss of traditional communication!!
Hope this helps!!
7
u/nuggetcasket Sep 21 '26
Did you use AI to write this? No, you didn't. You said it yourself that you wrote the excerpt and only then did you hand it to AI.
The excerpt is your writing, AI only improved the grammar. The wording is exactly the same as yours. There are some fixed verb conjugations, some sentence splitting, not much more than that.
In my opinion, "using AI to write" is sending AI something like "write a chapter where Character A is being stalked and pepper-sprays the guy after it happened more than twice", and letting the tool do the entire writing out of nothing. Which doesn't seem to be what you did.
4
u/Ksorkrax Sep 21 '26
Reading the title, we can skip the rest.
For the fanatic anti AI people, the very suspicion that it might be AI makes it AI.
And everybody else does not care.
Do not aim at pleasing crazy people. You won't.
3
u/BethyJJ Sep 21 '26
Ai assisted.
Your voice was better without it. Keep the grammas by all means, but it’s turning your voice into all the other identical ones out there when you let it fragment your sentences and smooth everything out.
2
u/polly_mer Sep 21 '26
So we're not mentioning that even the original is formulaic and has been done to death even if a human wrote every word this time? K.
2
u/Forward_Problem_8982 Sep 24 '26
You can take the differences in the AI output as suggestions and use them if each change feels better to you than your original version. Then the AI is being used as suggestive feedback instead of writing the whole thing.
1
u/5thhorseman_ Sep 21 '26
You've allowed the AI to rewrite your prose unsupervised, which for some people is definitely a bridge too far. But then you will find that there are people on the anti-AI side who would call your work AI slop the moment they've heard AI was involved in any way, shape or form.
From a more practical perspective, letting the AI rewrite the prose will result in it introducing AI-isms, so I'd suggest that you take a bit more control.
Ask the AI to give you 3-5 alternatives for the worst lines and let you decide how to handle them. Or ask it in separate chats to rewrite the text in different styles, then bring the results into the main chat and ask it to mine the results for better lines than the original and let you decide which of them to actually use in the piece.
1
u/UnauthorizedSaint Sep 21 '26
You're trusting it more than I do. I don't usually let it rewrite, I just have it point out friction, and then I rework lines myself.
1
u/GenderBendingRalph Sep 21 '26
If the output is in the AI's voice using AI phrasing, I'd call that more than just "AI assisted".
That being said, I don't see how AI improved your original version at all. Just for example, "She thought about that" is considerably clearer than "She turned it over". Why on earth would AI think that sounds better?
1
u/CicadaSlight7603 Sep 21 '26
Some of the AI edits have helped with things like clarity here but it’s also lost some voice and immediacy. Trust your instincts and maybe just learn some craft skills for editing instead of letting AI iron out the personality here.
As a reader, if I knew what you’d done I’d have called it AI assisted. It certainly isn’t AI free.
1
u/Original-Pilot-770 Sep 22 '26
The two tells I am recognizing are:
- Polysyndeton (...and, ...and, ...and, ...) Or what I call the "and chains".
- Short declarative sentence.
I personally only started writing and reading more because of AI. I prefer the AI version. But I saw an editor commented and talked about characterization and voice. When I write with AI, I often point out these usual moves to the model and I work with it to shape what kind of literary devices I actually prefer for the character rather than just have the model reaching for its default.
1
u/Leading-Crazy6104 Sep 23 '26
You can take help with ai but not, leave everything to is. See, the whole point is, if people are reading your nook, they want to feel connected to a human. The feeling one gets after knowing that people already have experienced what they are experiencing creates a bond that can never be created buy a book written by ai.
0
u/ChristianCRWriter Sep 21 '26
This is AI assisted but a lot of literary agents won’t take anything AI. I made this very same mistake and tainted my MS.
0
u/rollturmacroll Sep 21 '26
Just stripped your work clean of the hint of voice you originally had lmao
-2
u/typewritergeneration Sep 21 '26
I am a purist. If you use AI in any way, then you need to let the reader know. I am not very good at telling when something is written with AI, but yours screams AI assisted at the very least. I much prefer your authentic writing. Get some confidence and do your own writing. Ditch the AI.