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by MarkusQ 27 days ago
> Are readers generating fiction with AI models?

Why not? Journalists, lawyers and pundits of various stripes are already doing it. Why shouldn't readers?

3 comments

Because fiction is a different genere and historically at least AI was much worse at it.

The big differences:

- fiction tends to be longer, AI struggles with making a satisfying coherent plot structure after a certain length.

- fiction tends to be subtler. You want characters to have nuance, shades of grey, symbolism, etc. Not everything should be shouted in your face. This is the opposite of writing persusaive literature where you are trying to convince someone of something.

And also: there's no money in writing fiction.

There's money in copywriting, there's money in writing code, but long form creative writing? Almost an opposite of money.

Thus, very little incentive for AI labs to spend any effort on improving long form creative writing performance.

Most of tunes on this generation of AI systems are basic RLAF, and aimed at something like "punchy short form writing". The potential is largely unexplored.

I tried it once. Maybe 8-9 months back.I recall doing it soon after one travel, so that's why I can pinpoint it and this may be useful to figure which AI versions were available then.

The challenge is length and the context window. I had to own the plot since once it compacts, it has already lost the plot :)

I will give it pointers and tell where to go next. It will do it but either 1) stop after 3-4 paragraphs, or 2) write in a totally different direction than I expected. So I will nudge it to course correct, and it will do it. And then you keep iterating.

It was a good experiment for a couple of days. It saved me typing and it sometimes gave me lines of thinking that were interesting. But nothing that could be published.

But now that I think about it, I found a use case. If only GRRM could use its help :)

My point was, LLMs always generate fiction (bad fiction, but fiction nonetheless); what they generate is plausible, grammatical text that may have many points of congruence with the truth, but are not in any way constrained to do so. In short, fiction.

If they could reliably generate high quality non-fiction, that would be news.

"wrong" or "random" is not the same as "fiction"

"non-fiction" doesn't mean "correct".

Words can have multiple senses, and in context i agree with the person claiming you are using the word wrong, given the context.
I suspect that those other groups are largely not trying to generate fiction.
I didn't see the word "try" in the headline, did you?
Because nobody wants to read AI generated text?
No, nobody wants to read someone else's AI-generated text. Some people don't mind reading text generated to their own specifications.
This is quite an important point.
I think it's pretty clear from the discussed study that _someone_ wants to read that.
Tell that to the LLM RP crowd.
I think you lose that draw of interactivity when you’re essentially reading someone else’s RP, though.
You're not reading someone else's RP, though. Not with the applications that support this.

There are things like the character(s) you interact with, the initial setting, and some background information predefined, but the responses/evolution of the RP vary depending on things like the model used and the user's interactions.

It's somewhat like taking a D&D setting/scenario. Each group plays it differently.

Ah, the point I was trying to make was more akin to “why would I read your AI-generated story that you’ve posted as a static text/ebook trying to make a profit when I could do [essentially the scenario you described].”
As someone with extensive experience with this: no, you don't.

As much as it's nice to know another shares my interest (and will partake in it with me), I can't always get that.

When I can't get that, LLMs are not a worthless substitute, especially if what I actually want is just to play out a situation.

I want to act and then get back a description of reaction. LLMs can describe reaction, therefore I find value in them.

Like how in D&D you go to do whatever and the dungeon master tells you what happens in response. LLMs fit there for me.

They don't fill the void of social interaction or anything like that, but I don't strictly need that here.

Take a look at services like AI Dungeon to see the kind of thing I'm talking about.

It doesn't really replace social anything, but it's kind of like text adventure. It's plenty interactive enough.

To clarify, I meant that the draw of AI-written content would be exactly that interactivity - why read a story someone else has generated and posted in a static way when I could go and tailor one to my exact tastes instead. “No one wants to read AI generated texts” being appended with “that they haven’t gone and cooked up themselves”
I would wager that's not universally true either. Certainly, I've read stories that were AI-assisted and appreciated them, because not only are they content on their own, they give me ideas too. Inspiration, if you will. And then, yes, I can go right on to generate my own, too.

Like, "why not both?"

Also finding AI-generated content to similar tastes is a great way to potentially finding buddies. I've made a lot of friends from certain ventures

You do not represent everyone
Yeah, but i do, and i agree with the parent comment