I talked with someone who works in book publishing, and they mentioned they get a lot of AI slop these days. I asked how they know what's human-written, and they said that there's one thing that will reveal AI slop without error, and that's the author not knowing their own creation.
A real author can talk about their story for hours. They love to elaborate every character, every twist, every detail. Because those existed in their head long before they ever made it to the paper. They were loved before they were written.
AI slop wasn't. It was just vomited into existence.
Someone who generates their story with AI will never bond with their story the way real writers do. That's why they may not know what to say when they're asked why did the character do this, or even remember the scene in the first place. It's something they read, not something they wrote. And to a writer, those are not the same.
There's a unique bond between the creator and the creation. If your writing doesn't come of you, you'll always lack that.
I keep hearing soon we won't be able to tell. And perhaps, in a superficial sense, that's true. But there is a difference. It's not em dashes or repeated words. It's whether the story was made by someone who loves it and cares about it.
If the writer's eyes light up when asked why did the character do that? and they start their very own Ted Talk about that specific scene...
then it's real.
Edit: I did NOT expect this post to get this much attention. I'm truly sorry I made some people feel I'm doubting their genuinity as writers. This was not the point of this post; actually it was the opposite. My words aren't flawless, either; sometimes they come out wrong. I despise "AI witchunts" (if you read my earlier posts about this matter, you know). I tried to say, your love for your art is what makes it yours. No matter how you show it. I believe art is a connection between souls; a machine can't replicate that. It felt nice to hear that professionals in the industry (at least this one person) still search for that in what they choose to publish, too. That's why I wanted to share.
Edit 2. Please be kind in the comments. We're artists and writers, so passionate people, but we're on the same side here. Lift each other up. ❤️
Edit 3. (the last one, I promise) I'm restricting the comments for now to let this conversation cool down a bit. Once more; I did NOT mean, nor did the person I spoke with, that you need to remember every detail of every story or it's AI. This post is not about detecting AI. It's about love and passion injected to art by those who create it. With "not knowing their own story" I didn't mean having a perfectly crafted marketing speech about it. I meant just... knowing it. Loving it. In any way that feels natural to us. That's how I feel about my stories, anyway.
