"AI Syntax" puts me off from reading further. Is it just me?

[Pattable]

No doubt you've seen these phrases or something similar:

"It wasn't just X—it was Y."
"X—the kind of Y that Z."
"It was an X, a Y, a Z."
"And X? It was Y. Z."

etc, etc, ad nauseum.

There's nothing technically wrong with them, they're all gramatically solid, but I think I've formed an aversion due to seeing... I'll call it "AI syntax", regurgitated over and over. I don't want to beat a dead GPU, but I think it's really clear for most readers if something is written by AI. Now, I get it. You want to get your idea out there, you might be an inexperienced writer, and/or you're not fluent in English, but it just feels samey and soulless, and in turn, reflects to me a lack of effort if you leave it as is without giving it an ounce of human touch.

Apologies if someone actually writes like that, but I've never come across a story on SH written in this style that didn't have some sort of AI disclaimer. Even if you include such phrases and claim to not use AI, you can just tell whether that's true or not by the vibe. It's night and day between "AI assisted" and manual artistic prose. Maybe it's a sense picked up from all the AI fatigue?

I'll try to ignore my negative bias if the story's premise is exceedingly interesting, but the aversion doesn't really go away and my tolerance is much lower for dropping the story than if it was manually written with a janky flow or some minor errors here and there.

All in all, I'm just tired of AI stories. Can you tell? I've never done it, but it's gotten to the point where I've debated leaving a bad rating if the story feels like it's been straight copy and pasted from an LLM output.

I'll close off this rant with the question posed in the title. If I see these AI-sounding phrases, and the story's flow just screams AI, it just makes me not want to read anymore and want to leave a low rating. Is it just me? Am I being petty on the AI hate train?

 

[Envylope]

Nah, I get it. I stopped using em-dashes because of the AI bonanza.

 

[kosamsel]

I do understand this, but it also makes me a bit sad. Many AI models were trained on the voices of prominent tradpub authors, who certainly do use more experimental syntax than the average webnovelist. I grew up reading this way, and now I *write* this way, and I always imagine at least a portion of my readers wonder if I run my work through AI because I fuck with parentheticals heavy lmao

eta: I don't think getting funky with syntax is necessary for a strong authorial voice or anything, but I've enjoyed the work of a lot of authors who do as well, and it bums me out to think that people might be discouraged from writing that way because they're worried it will feel too plastic

 

[Alucard21]

No, once you recognize it, a lot of stories become impossible to read.

"It wasn't just X—it was Y." It is so annoying.

And em dashes, dear god, em dashes everywhere; if I see a work with a large amount of them, I immediately drop it. If you don't have the skill to write, then just learn.

I actively avoid using it because of this.

 

[Rezcore]

I look at it like this. If it's your story, write it yourself, but if there is a paragraph, at max, you can't seem to do, maybe ask ai for help, but mark that paragraph in your author's note as ai. Also, it's OK the sling your half-baked brainstorms into ai, but don't rely on it for stories.

 

[SternenklarenRitter]

I have noticed that AI is really bad at punctuation. I think a lot of authors, and thus the training data AI uses, have various writing tics about how they use certain punctuations and such. But AI can't apply any of it consistently, swapping randomly between various styles. From "okay" to "ok," swapping from doctor Name to DrName, and then sudden excessive use of "~", "!", "...", "!!!", ";" or even the unhinged mixed punctuation "~!.." which would never be used by a sober human.

 

[Pattable]

I grew up reading this way, and now I *write* this way, and I always imagine at least a portion of my readers wonder if I run my work through AI

I've perused your work, just the prologue and chapter 1. Hope you don't mind!

It really gave me a sense of nostalgia, a bit like those fantasy books I read when I was younger. That is to say, it didn't feel like AI at all, even with the em dashes and such. Quite the opposite! (Unless you're using some super advanced AI that makes it indistinguishable, then you got me )

Overall, I give it a glowing pass. I can see why there's so many 5 stars!

 

[kosamsel]

I've perused your work, just the prologue and chapter 1. Hope you don't mind!

It really gave me a sense of nostalgia, a bit like those fantasy books I read when I was younger. That is to say, it didn't feel like AI at all, even with the em dashes and such. Quite the opposite! (Unless you're using some super advanced AI that makes it indistinguishable, then you got me )

Overall, I give it a glowing pass. I can see why there's so many 5 stars!

AWWWWW THAT'S SO SWEET, THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!

 

[Bobple]

Nah, I get it. I stopped using em-dashes because of the AI bonanza.

I remember spending time trying to re-learn grammar rules. Em-dashes were one of the rules I wrote down and tried to implement more when appropriate (So going from never, to sometimes).

Me who is in hole most of the time, didn't know it had become a big AI sign until a good while later...

 

[Macha]

Those patterns existed long before AI like em-dashes. So what if a story has them? What are you going to do? Ban them? Look at this. The best story in this site published at 2019.

You didn't just here by car. You were dropped off at some rusty gate at the side of some city alleyway.

Not just X. Y.

You don't know why you're here during your first day at your new school. What you do know is that a random guy in some chauffeur uniform greeted you at that alleyway and offered you into a limo hidden right behind that gate.

Not X. Y.

You don't know who's that guy nor should you trust him. But then you have no idea where else to go, so you have nothing to do but to follow the damn chauffeur.

Not X. But not Y.

And many more in the chapter.

Is this AI? Nope. Unless the author somehow can use AI before it's released.

@BenJepheneT do you use AI? Of course not.

Those are called contrasting or parallel negation.

 

[Juia_Darkcrest]

I started to use grammarly recently.... and a few things like that are honestly bothering me... why the hell does it think every damn thing needs a hyphen.

That and after I edit, then toss it in grammarly to edit again, I need to stop looking at it for a bit before editing it one more time before posting it. That is because some of the changes it makes dont make any sense for the paragraphs.

/sigh

Edit

And dont get me started on the semicolons

 

[kosamsel]

I remember spending time trying to re-learn grammar rules. Em-dashes were one of the rules I wrote down and tried to implement more when appropriate (So going from never, to sometimes).

Me who is in hole most of the time, didn't know it had become a big AI sign until a good while later...

I KNOWWWW!!! The first time I saw someone mention the em-dash thing I was very surprisedpikachuface.jpeg

I cut my teeth on a lot of Tumblr Golden Era fanfics growing up and you didn’t DARE upload a fic in the 2010s without at least one pretentious and kind of pointless parenthetical

 

[AliceMoonvale]

Oh god, this is why I have so much anxiety and edit my chapters so often. I naturally use em dashes and certain AI-like syntaxes occasionally. I try to reduce the amount I use to maybe a handful per chapter. I run everything through Grammarly for my little grammar mistakes and even programs like the Hemingway Editor, cause I'm afraid something will look or sound weird. lol I swear, every time I look back at a chapter, I find something to fix.

 

[Akkizakura]

It's not that hard to know if a story is AI or not. If a story has:

A generic title and synopsis
A yellowish AI cover from ChatGPT
Overuse of em-dashes
An Indian author or plot

It’s probably AI.

Ask @Agentt and @StoneInky

We discussed it often. The Indians like their AI novels a lot. MC is a priest and his name is Pandit. Like, really?

 

[Pattable]

Those patterns existed long before AI like em-dashes. So what if a story has them? What are you going to do? Ban them? Look at this. The best story in this site published at 2019.

I enjoyed that first chapter, it was very vivid. @BenJepheneT's and @kosamsel's works are great examples that writing in a polished manner doesn't automatically mean it's AI. Obviously by the date it was written in the former's case.

To be clear, I'm not disparging the abstract use of the phrases or forms I originally quoted, as long as it's done deliberately like what these authors have shown, and not sprinkled haphazardly like in the "AI way" we've come to know. However I'm disappointed by many stories nowadays (from what I've judged, but I'm no authority) treating this aforementioned "AI assistance" as the final product.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

The problem isn't USING these patterns, its OVER-using. Used reasonably, you'll only see them if you look for them. AI does not understand "reasonable" - I've actually found it useful for padding word count because it sometimes points out stuff I either forgot to write or hadn't thought of and which fits in. But if I let it do more than that, it would just generate crap because it needs that steering hand, that firm editor, to keep it on track.

I actually find myself laughing at some of the blatant AI translations out there - one story used "at that very moment" or a very close comment at LEAST once per print page. My wife and I both laughed at it after a while (though she did stop listening to that one with me after a while because it got too distracting for me - one of those "secret trillionaire" stories).
Same with "It was none other than..." which creeps into "My Vampire System" about a third as often as "at that very moment" did in the other one. See it as a punchline and not a weakness of the writer and it can be a bit more fun.

 

[Leti]

AI does not understand "reasonable"

AI does not understand anything. It's just a fancy text prediction program.

Beyond the Rules: Why AI Doesn’t Follow Instructions

It Follows Coherence: The Story You’re Telling, Not the Commands You Write Most people think AI language models follow rules. They don’t.

www.linkedin.com

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I have noticed that AI is really bad at punctuation. I think a lot of authors, and thus the training data AI uses, have various writing tics about how they use certain punctuations and such. But AI can't apply any of it consistently, swapping randomly between various styles. From "okay" to "ok," swapping from doctor Name to DrName, and then sudden excessive use of "~", "!", "...", "!!!", ";" or even the unhinged mixed punctuation "~!.." which would never be used by a sober human.

Well, if AI is being used as a READER it sees
"Doctor X"
"Dr. X"
and "DrX" as distinct things.
The first one is a name. THe second is the end of one sentence and the start of the next (with a pause between them.. which gets kind of funny after a while).
The last one ... will confuse it. Sometimes it will read it as "Doctor X" and sometimes "Dricks"
Took me about two seconds to realize what an AI reader was talking about when he referred to a "crowd of paranormal investigators and a few pizz" - the author had written "PIs" and it took that literally.

 

[Macha]

I enjoyed that first chapter, it was very vivid. @BenJepheneT's and @kosamsel's works are great examples that writing in a polished manner doesn't automatically mean it's AI. Obviously by the date it was written in the former's case.

To be clear, I'm not disparging the abstract use of the phrases or forms I originally quoted, as long as it's done deliberately like what these authors have shown, and not sprinkled haphazardly like in the "AI way" we've come to know. However I'm disappointed by many stories nowadays (from what I've judged, but I'm no authority) treating this aforementioned "AI assistance" as the final product.

You can usually tell if someone is an actual author or not by how passionate they are with their works. It's written in the way how they narrate.

People treating "AI assistance" as the final product have no distinct author's voice, tone or writing style. Most of the time, they are just people who want a quick easy way to get fame and money by claiming to be doing something they don't.

Look at the author's profile. Do they have Patreon? Do they post more than one chapters everyday while having so many ongoing stories? Congratulations. You just found someone doing illegal AI translations or AI slops.

Try to report them. It's against the site rules.

 

[Arkus86]

I'll close off this rant with the question posed in the title. If I see these AI-sounding phrases, and the story's flow just screams AI, it just makes me not want to read anymore and want to leave a low rating. Is it just me? Am I being petty on the AI hate train?

It's not just you, and you're not. To me, AI output often has this soulless artificial feeling to it. Not sure how to best describe it, as if it's too clean, and too impersonal.
You will also know that while AI can do a passable job for something short, without close oversight it struggles with continuity and sooner or later it will go off rails, including mixing up the characters and changing their characteristics, forgetting past events...