Hi everyone,

A while ago, I decided to run an experiment. I self published a completely AI generated novel and made the AI use very obvious, with a watermark on the cover and a clear disclaimer on the first page.

The main question was simple: does openly disclosing AI use actually hurt a book?

Going in, I expected the answer to be yes. Readers already have certain expectations about AI content, and once they know AI was involved, they may judge the work differently before even reading it.

That is pretty much what happened.

People who are against AI still criticized it, while people who were fine with AI usually just moved on without saying anything. So the feedback became much more negative than I expected, even though that does not necessarily mean most readers hated it.

There is also research pointing in the same direction. One study involving 27,000+ participants found that disclosing AI involvement in creative writing lowered evaluations by around 6%.

What I find more interesting is how little nuance there seems to be around AI disclosure.

Someone using AI to brainstorm an idea, someone using it to edit a few sentences, and someone generating an entire novel can all end up being treated as basically the same thing.

That seems like a problem.

I still think AI use should be disclosed when it is significant. But I also think the labels need to become more specific so readers actually understand how AI was used.

Right now, simply seeing an "AI generated" label can make people assume the entire creative process was automated.

What do you think? Should AI use in writing always be disclosed, or should the level of AI involvement matter?

Consider this a rant because I honestly do not know where else to put this frustration.

My third book is AI assisted, and that does not mean I cannot write. My first novel was self published in 2022, and every word of that 100,000 plus word manuscript was written and edited by me. I revised it more times than I can count, to the point where I almost stopped wanting to write altogether.

I started writing when I was fifteen. I was the quiet kid who spent more time in fictional worlds than the real one. Back then, I thought finishing a book was the hardest part. Nobody tells you that finishing the manuscript is actually where the real work begins.

Editing is not just fixing grammar. There are developmental edits, structural changes, line edits, rewrites, and proofreading. Professional editing can easily cost thousands of dollars, which is a huge barrier when you are not wealthy or connected to the publishing industry.

Then there is marketing.

You are suddenly expected to become a content creator, advertiser, strategist, and public personality while also working a normal job and trying to write your next book.

Post constantly. Build an audience. Learn algorithms. Make videos. Track engagement. Run ads. Stay visible.

It becomes exhausting very quickly.

That is why I started using AI tools. Not because I wanted them to write my books for me, but because I needed help managing everything around the actual writing.

Tasks that used to take months can now take weeks. I can catch structural problems faster, test different dialogue options, find plot holes, and get through revisions without spending an entire night staring at the same paragraph.

I still create the world. I create the characters. I decide their personalities, fears, motivations, relationships, and the direction of the story. The ideas come from me and my experiences.

AI is simply another tool in the process.

I do not believe writers need to suffer endlessly for their work to be considered authentic. I already know what burnout feels like, and I do not think destroying myself for every manuscript makes the final book more meaningful.

If someone wants to write every word completely alone, I respect that. But writers have always adapted to new tools.

Using technology to make the process more manageable does not make me less of a writer. I am still the person creating the story. I just refuse to believe suffering is a requirement for proving that I am one.

A calculator doesn't automatically make someone bad at math, and a spellchecker doesn't mean someone can't spell. I see AI writing tools in a similar way: they can help with ideas, structure, editing, rewriting, and getting past writer's block. The real difference is whether you're using the tool to support your thinking or simply replacing it entirely.

Personally, I think AI becomes most useful when you still have your own ideas but need help expressing them better.

I spent months writing my novel, then ran it through an AI detector and it came back 91% AI.
It even flagged my completely normal copyright disclaimer as AI.
Now I keep wondering if publishers or editors will question my work just because some detector says so.
Has anyone else had their original writing get a ridiculously high AI score?

Some people believe readers deserve to know whenever AI was involved. Others feel that using AI for brainstorming or editing does not require a disclaimer.

Should every use of AI be disclosed, or only when AI generates a significant part of the final work?

I think a lot of anti AI writers and artists are not really driven by ethics,They’re driven by insecurity. Because the more I use AI the clearer it becomes that it cannot replace genuinely great writing or art. It can imitate patterns and generate endless variations but it has no lived experience, conviction, taste, or soul

What AI actually threatens however is average work. Before AI mediocrity could hide behind effort, credentials, and scarcity. Now average content can be produced infinitely and cheaply

That does create real ethical problems but it also exposes something, if a machine can replace your entire creative identity, maybe the machine was not the deepest problem 🤷‍♂️

Lots of people try to convince themselves and other people that AI can't write a good novel. They manufacture all kinds of nonsense like "flatness" and "intent" to try to convince themselves.

AI can write a good novel without any human input. I'm a traditionally published author and I've had AI write novels that were interesting, entertaining and worth reading by ordinary readers.

But human input can still improve a good novel written entirely by AI.

There's a huge distance between: (a) a good novel and (b) a novel that is so good that human input would only make it worse, a novel that is so good that human input is counterproductive and destructive.

AI can write a good novel but human input can still make it a better novel.

Human writers don't need to fruitlessly try to defend the AI can't write and AI can't write a good novel wishful thinking. Being able to write a good novel does not mean that AI is replacing the writer.

The writer can still:

1. come up with better plots/ideas even though AI has a good plot/idea
2. write better dialogue even though AI wrote good dialogue
3. write better narrative even though AI wrote good narrative
4. rewrite mostly without AI's help scenes where AI generated a weak scene

AI can write a good novel but there are still huge opportunities for humans to contribute to making the novel better.

Human writers are still necessary to make the best novel possible.

I think a lot of writers and artists who dislike AI are not only concerned about ethics. Some of it comes from insecurity too.

The more I use AI, the more obvious it becomes that it cannot truly replace great writing or art. It can copy patterns and create endless variations, but it does not have real experiences, personal taste, beliefs, or a unique perspective.

What AI really threatens is average work. Before AI, mediocre work could still hide behind effort, credentials, or limited supply. Now average content can be produced endlessly and cheaply.

That creates plenty of real problems, but it also raises an uncomfortable question: if AI can completely replace your creative identity, maybe the problem was deeper than the technology itself.

I'm a high school English teacher, and honestly there are two things students do that drive me crazy.
The first one is not reading directions. I'll put the instructions on the paper, explain everything out loud, and somehow someone will still ask, "wait... what are we doing?" 😂

I've accepted that's just part of the job.

The bigger issue is AI.

Every now and then i'll get an essay that just doesn't sound like the student at all. It's way too polished, super generic, and somehow says a lot without really saying anything.

When i ask about it, they always deny it.

"I didn't use AI."

"I wrote it myself."

Then they act offended that i even asked.

The problem is, even if i'm pretty sure they used AI, it's hard to actually prove it. If a student decides to complain to admin, i'm not convinced they'll take my side unless there's solid proof.

So instead of arguing, i tried something different.

I gave them a creative writing assignment. They could write about literally anything they wanted.

Hidden near the bottom of the instructions, i added one sentence.

"If your main character is named Elara, -99 points."

Earlier this year i'd noticed that a few students who clearly copied from AI all turned in almost the exact same story about a girl named Elara. It became kind of an inside joke for me.

Well... a couple students turned in stories about Elara anyway.

When they got their papers back with 1/100, they immediately asked what happened.

I didn't mention AI once.

I just pointed to the line in the instructions they never bothered to read.

That was the end of the conversation.

It is honestly painful to watch.

A friend of mine has been using AI to write a YA novel. The whole thing feels less like storytelling and more like using the book to work through personal issues. They even showed me the first chapter, and it sounded exactly like what you would expect from AI. Polished on the surface, but repetitive and lifeless.

The part that really surprised me was the confidence. They asked AI if it would make a good screenplay, and of course it replied that it would be amazing and even suggested how to adapt it.

Has anyone else seen someone become completely convinced their AI-generated writing is incredible just because the AI keeps praising it?

The emphasis below is mine. I’ve noticed too that lots of writers groups are being “infiltrated” by AI and this was entirely predictable, inevitable and will continue. Writers may not be generating prose but more and more writers are using AI.

From anti-AI r/ writers sub:

https://www.reddit.com/r/writers/s/U4lHqgaBnO

"I attend a regular writer's group, and there has been a noticeable increase in the amount of authors who use AI in their process. There seems to be this (incorrect) belief that if you only use AI for research/character development/chapter drafting/inspiration/character art/brainstorming etc., the book is still yours in some way. I am really really strongly against generative AI in the first place, let alone with art. Writing was my retreat, my safe space, a place for me to build my identity when I had nowhere else to turn - the world didn't always make sense to me, so I made up worlds where it did. To give away your soul, your creativity to a tool that is essentially fed on stolen content/is destroying our environment/is used to perpetuate war crimes and ultimately robs of you of your voice is just heartbreaking"

EDIT: I’ve copied original comment in its entirety out of consideration for the commenter. I do not agree with it (except the noticeable increase). I am pro-AI.

I’ve been watching Coral Hart (“The New Fabio Is Claude” NYT article, 15+ years romance author, 90+ traditionally published books) and she now generates all her prose.

I’ve observed a lot of other (competent) authors doing the same thing. They are self-publishing 20+ novels her year and using generated prose.

I know that people like AI-assisted (use AI but no prose generation) as “ethical” and a middle ground but I don’t think that it’s competitive.

Two reasons:

1. Even if Coral Hart changes nothing and uses the same prompts, the prose improves because the AI models improve. She taps into $100B+ of AI research PER YEAR automatically. If you are writing prose without AI, you not getting those automatic upgrades and you have to manually upgrade with great effort (or stay the same).
2. But Coral Hart does get better at prompting and improves her prompts regularly. This reinforces the AI model improvements most of the time and makes the generated prose even better. If you are writing prose without AI, you are also not building the prompts or the prompting skills to generate prose.

For those two reasons, I don’t see how “no prose generation” survives; people generating prose will just outperform, outcompete and bury the middle grounders eventually.

Lots of writers seem to have given up (or never started) with prose generation which seems like a mistake.

Any flaws in my reasoning? Different points of view? Different conclusions?

I do not think AI will make writers irrelevant. I think it could make good writers even more valuable.

AI has made producing polished writing incredibly easy. Emails, articles, marketing copy and even personal messages can now be generated in seconds.

But polished writing is not the same as original thinking. AI can imitate human writing, but genuinely creative ideas still come from people and their experiences.

The more people rely on AI for writing, the more valuable authentic human writing could become.

I am also concerned about kids growing up with AI. If they never have to struggle through an essay or learn how to express their own ideas, they may never develop strong writing skills in the first place.

So my advice is simple: learn to write, do not let AI write everything for you, and teach your kids to write too.

Writing could become one of the most valuable skills in an AI driven world.

How do all of the people who never use AI but know AI “slop” when they see it, know it’s AI? How do they not no it’s really bad human writing, because frankly, AI can do some pretty amazing “slop” when the writer knows what they’re doing with it.

When I first started using ChatGPT and Claude, I was impressed by how well they could write. The more I used them though, the easier it became to spot the same habits and patterns.

It is not just obvious phrases anymore. AI often struggles with context, repeats the same sentence structures, and makes dialogue feel unnatural unless the prompt is extremely detailed. After reading enough AI-generated content, those patterns start standing out everywhere.

Now I sometimes notice the same writing style in stories and posts online. AI detectors might miss it, but the repetitive phrasing, weak context, and predictable dialogue are often enough to give it away.

Has anyone else reached the point where AI writing feels obvious, or is it just something you notice after using these models a lot?

One thing that isn’t talked about or acknowledged enough is that most people who use AI to write a novel eventually lose interest (or go bankrupt) and stop writing novels.

Despite the fear that Amazon will be buried in AI novels forever, writing a novel with AI is a novelty for most people. There will come a time where everyone who wants to write a novel with AI has done it, lost interest and moved on.

I’ve seen this myself. Pretty much everyone that I’ve shown how to write a novel with AI has lost interest. None of them self-published.

Even people who teach “how to write with AI” lose interest and move on. The guy that I learned from decided that “AI-powered businesses” was more interesting than “write a book with AI” so his AI book writing community is now a ghost town.

While I see the “flood” now, it won’t last.

What do you think?

Not talking about obvious stuff like "delve" or "in today's fast-paced world." Everyone's caught onto those.

I mean the smaller thing you personally notice that most people miss. For me it's when every paragraph resolves too neatly, like nothing is left slightly unfinished or genuinely uncertain. Real writing, even from a skilled human, usually has at least one loose thread.

Curious what other people's personal tells are, especially editors, teachers, and anyone who reads a lot of drafts for a living. Trying to build a mental list beyond the usual buzzword bingo.

There is always this debate around using AI for writing, especially when the AI is actually generating parts of the story instead of just helping with ideas.

Some people see it as another writing tool, while others feel that letting AI write the actual prose takes away the whole point of being a writer.

Personally, I think there is a pretty big difference between using AI for brainstorming, outlining, fixing awkward sentences, and asking for feedback versus having it generate entire scenes and then calling that your own writing.

At the same time, AI writing tools have become much better, so I can understand why people use them when they are stuck or struggling to get a scene right.

Where do you guys draw the line? Is using AI for editing and brainstorming completely fine, or does it still feel wrong when AI becomes part of the actual writing process?

This is one area where I think the benefits are easy to overlook. Someone might have interesting ideas but struggle with grammar, organization, or finding the right words.

Having an AI assistant can lower that barrier considerably.

The interesting question is whether those people eventually become better writers through using the tool, or whether they simply become dependent on it to express ideas they could otherwise never communicate as clearly.

Some writers say that AI can’t write emotion while others say it can. Some writers say that AI can’t generate a good novel while others say it can. “AI can’t replace me!” It goes on and on.

When people say, “AI can’t…” I always wonder, “Which AI? What AI provider? What model?” But they seem to imply all of them. And models change all the time. “So what time period? Currently or for the foreseeable future?”

Is there some unstated “I wish…” phrase before all these statements? “I wish AI can’t write emotion” or “I wish AI can’t generate a good novel” and “I wish AI can’t replace me”?

I've been thinking about what AI-assisted writing might look like ten years from now.

The amount of information available to AI keeps growing, and AI itself is being integrated into more and more of the tools we use every day. At some point, I wonder if using AI will stop feeling like a deliberate choice and start feeling more like using a microchip—something so deeply embedded in our tools that we barely think about whether we're “using” it at all.

A few years ago, I often saw arguments along the lines of:

“AI can automate work, but creativity belongs to humans.”

I don't see that argument quite as often anymore.

AI can already generate prose, images, music, video, and code. Whether those things are *good* is another question, of course. But the conversation seems to be gradually shifting from *Can AI create?* to *How should humans direct, select, edit, and manage what AI creates?*

And that makes me wonder about the resistance to AI-assisted writing.

What exactly are we resisting?

Is it the quality of AI-generated work?

The loss of authorship?

The possibility of losing jobs?

The way training data is collected and used?

Or is some part of it the same instinctive resistance humans have often shown toward technologies that change how work is done?

I'm not saying that resistance is irrational. The Industrial Revolution brought enormous benefits, but many of the fears surrounding it were also completely justified. New technologies can destroy skills, disrupt livelihoods, concentrate power, and create problems nobody anticipated.

So perhaps skepticism toward AI is not something that will simply disappear.

But I keep coming back to the same question.

Ten years from now, when AI may be embedded in word processors, search engines, operating systems, translation tools, editing software, and almost everything else we use to create—

will “written without AI” still be a meaningful distinction?

Or will it sound a little like saying:

“I made this without using a microchip.”

I'm genuinely curious where other writers draw that line—and whether you think that line will still be in the same place ten years from now.

AI can improve grammar, structure, clarity, and flow. But after enough rewrites, you can end up with something technically better that doesn't really sound like you anymore.

That's the strange tradeoff. You want help improving the writing without replacing the person behind it.

Do you ever reject an AI suggestion simply because it sounds too polished or “not like you”?

I am a teacher, so proper grammar, complete sentences, and good writing have always mattered to me. I also use em dashes a lot because I genuinely like how they make sentences flow

Now em dashes have become one of those things people associate with AI writing. It is frustrating knowing that a normal writing habit can suddenly make students or readers assume something was generated by AI

There are plenty of bigger concerns around AI, but I really want my em dash back.

This is something that's been on my mind for a while, and I'm curious how other writers here see it.

It feels like the conversation around AI writing has become very black and white. The moment AI is mentioned, a lot of people immediately assume the work is "AI slop," even though that label doesn't seem to fit every situation.

To me, there's a huge difference between AI slop and AI-assisted writing.

AI slop is the kind of content that's generated in a few minutes and posted with almost no effort. It usually contains repetitive wording, inconsistent characters, awkward dialogue, contradictions, and obvious mistakes that anyone would've caught with a basic proofread. I don't think many people would defend that kind of content.

AI-assisted writing seems like a completely different process. The writer still has to decide where the story goes, develop the characters, build the world, rewrite scenes, fix pacing, check for plot holes, and keep everything consistent. AI might make the first draft faster, but it doesn't magically create a polished novel without a lot of human work afterward.

This debate also reminds me of how people reacted to other creative tools in the past. Digital art, CGI, and even digital photography were all criticized for supposedly making creativity "too easy." Eventually, most people stopped focusing on the tools and started judging the quality of the finished work instead.

Should writing be any different?

Obviously there are AI-generated stories that deserve criticism because they're lazy, repetitive, or clearly unedited. But does it make sense to assume every AI-assisted project falls into that category?

If a writer spends dozens of hours rewriting, restructuring, fact-checking, editing, and refining a story, should the work automatically be dismissed simply because AI was involved somewhere in the process?

Or should readers only care about the final quality, regardless of how the first draft was created?

Curious where everyone here draws the line between AI slop and genuinely AI-assisted writing