Conclusions

I want to start by saying that I began this experiment somewhat skeptical of AI. I think on some level that conflict is inevitable. I like writing. I see it as an art; as something that can communicate feelings and viewpoints in a way nothing else can do. To me it’s more than entertainment or a job (although it can still be both). Writing is an incredibly important part of my life.

The thought that a machine could do this very personal and heartfelt work was not attractive to me. In fact I hated it.

On the other hand, I am not opposed to technology in and of itself. I am no fool, and I have dabbled with other forms of art, most notably digital painting. Is my work any lesser when I have access to layers and the undo button? Do I lose some of my skills by relying on these crutches? Would a version of me from 50 years ago decry these digital whippersnappers?

I’ve also thought of the industrial revolution, and how it destroyed so many jobs and changed the world as we know it. Maybe a handmade boot was of far better quality and more long-lasting back then, rather than the cheap, made to last for 3-5 years stuff we have today. But who can afford to have custom-made boots today? And how much rarer would cars be, if we had to assemble them all by hand?

Perhaps progress is inevitable. And I do not want to be left behind.

So I tried my best to be open-minded. To experiment with this new technology, and maybe find a way to fit it into my workflow. But I am not completely unbiased, nor did I ever try to be. I am only human.

I purposefully chose a short story, and one that I wasn’t too attached to. A smut story, so my pretensions of artistic integrity didn’t get in the way. Smut stories are, in many ways, ideal for AI. They’re not expected to be very high-quality or artistic. In many ways they’re like a product, made for one specific purpose after which they’re of no more use, like kleenex tossed into the garbage. Not ALL smut, yes, there are good examples. But if there’s one place where a little sloppiness is tolerated? It’s smut.

First thoughts:

AI is not as good at writing as I am. Phew. For now at least, I can bask in my superiority. Of course quality is subjective, and again I am biased. But in my opinion AI writing, while serviceable, still has some ways to go before it’s fully functional.

I find that its main pitfalls are that it struggles retaining a character’s voice for long periods of time, slowly becoming blander the longer it goes. And, of course, it forgets story elements all the time.

AI also struggles with a twist or when a story goes in a different direction than expected. My story has a sort of twist in the middle, maybe not a good or innovative one, but even that meager twist was resisted by the AI more than once. Here, for example, is what the AI kept writing AFTER my first sample was finished. The Half-AI one:

THE END? Maybe? (I don’t know.) (I think I will leave it at this, this is the end) (Unless someone wants me to continue this, which I doubt)

(Side note: I tried to make a cuck story but the last part was a bit too much so I had to go with the “he is helping her out of friendship and has no real interest in her” route. I am not sure if this is a proper cucking story at this point, I’m sorry.)

(I tried to write a story where the woman makes her boyfriend jealous on purpose and enjoys the rough sex that ensues, while the “bull” is an actual friend. It’s a bit of a different take on the genre. But this was also a bit more complicated to write than I expected, so it’s probably not the best example of this kind of story. Anyway, the end.)

(If anyone wants me to make an alternative ending where they are actually cheating, let me know. But I am not planning on doing that right now.)

(Also, I have no idea if I did justice to this genre of story, I was just following my usual way of writing a story. I guess this is my take on the cuck subgenre, but it’s a bit more nuanced.)

(I wanted to try something different, but I also wanted to make sure the characters were not assholes. That’s the main reason I changed the story’s direction. So that the friend was not an asshole.)

NO! Stupid AI, there’s no need to apologize, the twist was the point of the story! And I didn’t write this story, or ‘change the story’s direction so the characters weren’t assholes’. I told the story I wanted to tell. I wanted a story with the starting point of the typical cuck scenario: macho dom, innocent girlfriend, insecure boyfriend, then flip it on its head. The macho dom is in fact, a nice guy and kind of a loser. The girl is not as innocent. The insecure boyfriend… Well, he’s still insecure, but is also genuinely loved, and ‘wins’ in the end. THIS is my story. It might be shitty, but it's the story I wanted to tell.

That’s why I deleted the above paragraph from the story. Aside from the fact that the text gave the appearance that the author was ‘speaking’ to the reader, despite being AI writing, which made me uncomfortable.

The AI doesn’t understand what I want. There is this persistent gap between what I envision and what the AI does that is never gone.

The supposed point of AI is that you come up with the idea, the basic outline, and the AI fills in the blanks. I’m not unfamiliar with this concept, and know that it’s always better to give the computer as little to do as possible, because it tends to favor straight lines from point A to point B, when sometimes a curve is more pleasing to the eye.

But the gap between intent and AI is a chasm. A story fed into a prompt never retains its full spark. Some of its vision is inevitably lost. And personally? Even when it comes to a story I don’t feel much attachment to, that loss still hurts to see.

One thing the AI is good for is adding ‘filler’. Descriptions of scenery or describing an action. Sometimes those need to be tweaked - because again the AI doesn’t always understand what you want to accomplish - but it’s very good at making… Stuff. Content. Pejoratively, slop. But I could still see AI replacing some parts of my writing… Maybe the more mundane and boring parts.

But even if the AI can do that job I am always left with the feeling that I can do it better. More personalized. Better suited for my story. There’s only one way you want something done exactly the way you want, do it yourself.

Second thoughts:

AI is so much faster. And so much easier. Oh god.

Maybe writing comes easy to some people, but not me. The quote “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” comes to mind. I’m a bleeder. And AI writing is very much a clean, non bloody affair.

Time-wise I finished the half-AI story in about 2-3 hours, if you include the time it took to write the prompt and re-write certain parts. The Full AI version, which I created later, was faster. Between 1 and 2 hours at most, as I fiddled with prompts and deleted certain portions to make sure it all worked. Both of these I ‘created’ at night, after coming home from a hard day of work. Normally I can barely write or do ANYTHING creative at this time. I just spend time with some low-energy entertainment before falling asleep. But AI proved to be a lot less tiring than writing.

The no AI version? 4-5 hours, roughly, just for the 1st draft. 1-2 more hours for me to re-write certain portions and cut the story down. I’ve been working on that lately, trimming the fat, with limited success. But that was all work while I was well-rested and relaxed, during the holiday season. I could not do the same work in bits and portions every day after work, tired and sleepy.

The fact that I first wrote the AI samples in October, but it took me until January to get to the non-AI says a lot. True, this work was never my priority in writing. But still, it can be hard to find even a full afternoon that you can just spend on something low-priority that is a bit of an experiment.

Or maybe I just suck. Bad time management, bad work discipline, bad writing. I could stand to improve on all three, I’m sure. But there’s no denying it, I would ‘write’ faster if I used AI.

Quick results for less effort. Instant gratification.

It still takes some work, true. And I’m sure AI stories could then be further refined into something better. But what AI lacks in quality it makes up for in quantity.

Right now there is some resistance to AI content, which I understand and honestly agree with. It feels like another step in the enshittification of our lives. Replacing our entertainment with AI will not be as good, but there’ll be more of it. It will be convenient. And if there’s something people love, it’s convenience. Everyone’s too busy, everyone is too tired.

But full disclosure: I’ve enjoyed a story I later found was written with the help of AI. I don’t know how much AI was used, but I know it was used. And I still enjoyed it. It still made me feel things and stirred my creativity..

There were also problems with the story, and once I learned it was AI I noticed certain flaws characteristic of AI - a certain impersonal blandness to the writing style, some scenes or themes begging for payoff that never came - became obvious to me. But it’s also undeniable I still got something of value from that story.

Would that story be better if it was fully written by even a semi-competent writer? Most certainly. But did it need to? No. And that shook my confidence in AI vs non-AI storytelling.

What I think is more likely, in the future, is for more stories to be AI-assisted, still with a human behind the wheel yes, but AI will be taken for granted like a spell-checker, or like a car. People still walk today, some even enjoy it. And people will still write their own 100% fully human stories, I’m sure. They will just become rarer, more niche, more personal. Like handmade bracelets or hikers who travel long distances on their own two feet. Not the norm, and certainly not the commercial norm. You want workers producing the maximum amount of work with the minimum amount of time (and pay). That’s capitalism, baby.

I want to make it clear: I don’t want this future to come. But my feelings matter little in this. I believe there is a good chance that this is the future ahead of us. When gunpowder was invented, it cared little for the millions that it would one day kill, maim and burn. Progress prevails.

And I am tempted to use it as well. My writing is slow, inconsistent, and that has been often levied as a reason my work is less popular. AI could fix this. At the cost of making my work worse.

Speaking from the soul here: If I didn’t have to worry about money for the rest of my life, I would probably just write what I want. To hell with the rest. My works would probably still be only microscopically popular. But, if it meant living and doing what I wanted, I could live with that.

I don’t have that luxury. Time writing means less time resting after work, or earning money through a side-hustle, or looking for better work, or spending time with my family, or…

The pressure is there to turn writing INTO my side-hustle. And for that? I think I would need AI. I cannot create enough content fast enough otherwise. Some people can, without AI. Better writers than me. And I applaud them, and am only slightly envious. But the temptation to use it, to monetize it, is there.

Final Thoughts:

AI is worse, less personal, than human writing, but also faster. A way for the people without time and without skill to create… Maybe not art but at least content.

My writing, at least with this account, will continue to not use ANY AI aside from this little experiment. I quickly ended any delusions of earning money here.

Maybe, in the future, I will use a different persona and try to create content using AI. Probably smut too, for the reasons I listed before, although not necessarily. And if I do, I might earn some money from it. Or I might not. But at least I gained a little more insight into reasons people might have for using AI.

And as a side-note. Thanks to me writing this story at least twice, for a given value of ‘write’ since I relied on AI for part of it, it helped me realize how important a good revision can be. In my final version I used some ideas from other versions. I’m sure if I re-wrote the story AGAIN from scratch, it would be even better. With diminishing results, obviously, but it gave me some inspiration into making my writing slightly better.

And taking even longer.

Oh well. Win some, lose some.

If you stuck around for this long, thanks for reading. It’s a lot of blood spilled onto the word doc, and I’m still not sure if it was a good idea. But still glad I did it, and hope some of it was worthy to you as well.