Well said. We should be celebrating the people who are finally finding the confidence and the means to tell stories they've carried for years, sometimes decades. Instead, we're handing them a scarlet letter and inviting others to join the witch hunt. These tools have given many people a way to organize the chaos in their minds and finally express ideas that have been waiting a lifetime to be told. I'd rather encourage that kind of creativity than shame it.
This. ❤️ I keep thinking about how many stories never got told because someone had the imagination but struggled with the mechanics of getting it onto the page. If a tool finally gives someone a bridge between the story in their head and the person waiting to read it, I’m not interested in policing the bridge. I want to read the story.
That’s basically my story. Between running a business, managing customers and employees, and trying to be present with my family, getting these stories out of my head and onto the page has been a real struggle. I’m still not where I want to be, but I’m 50,000 words closer than I was six months ago.
Anyone who thinks people who care about what they’re creating are just sitting in front of a screen, typing a couple of prompts, and hitting publish has no idea what they’re talking about. That kind of judgment isn’t insight, it’s just mean‑spirited noise from keyboard jockeys who criticize because they can.
This tracker (which doesn't even work) and the fact that they force you to opt in (and basically hide how to opt out) and forces you to RUN YOUR WORK THROUGH AI TO DISABLE IT (and then they harvest your work to train Pangram's AI) is such a dumpster fire I struggle to even process it.
YES. The irony of requiring AI to inspect my work for AI is almost performance art. 😂 But what bothers me most is the opt out problem. If I participate, I get a number. If I decline, that becomes its own statement. I didn’t ask to enter the courtroom at all, I just came here to publish stories.
At this point Substack needs an official soundtrack, a fog machine, and a disclaimer at the door that says, “Welcome writers. Please select your faction before proceeding.” 😂
I'll admit it. The story currently being published to my podcast was in my head for a dozen years, stuck on Chapter 1 until AI helped me get over the writer's block. I know *what* I wanted to say but not *how* to say it. I'm proud of Centrellus and it pisses me off that someone can use AI to determine how much AI I used. AI didn't have the dream that sparked this book. AI didn't imagine the two Worlds and the cosmic connection between these two worlds and Earth. AI didn't think up the ruthless antagonist or all the protagonists, along with their backstories. AI just helped me along the way. The story is 100% mine. And now, I'm going to have to fight the urge to press the button myself to see what their tool thinks about my writing and how much of it was created with AI. I'm new to Substack, and I'll probably stick around because it has a lot of advantages over similar platforms, and I've tried them all (trust me). If there was a better way for me, a dirt poor writer, to get my stories in front of people, I'd be doing it. So, Substack has me by the balls. So, yeah, I'm sticking around--under protest--for now.
THIS is exactly what I mean. AI didn’t carry that story in your head for twelve years. It didn’t imagine those worlds or care whether they ever reached another human being. It helped you get past the place where you were stuck. The story existed because YOU existed first. I’m glad Centrellus finally got out of your head and into the world.
Yes you hit the note perfectly. I often use the same terminology of “ getting it out of my head” Everyone has a story to tell and a song to sing. Now the tools are available that can make that happen. The gates are opening to all.
I just read this entire thing out loud and it sounded like everything I say and so much more. The burden of proof lies in the reader's soul. Whether it was touched or not. Whether it made them feel. I've never read a Stephen King book and thought, "Is Richard Bachman the real writer of all of these books??? Stephen King is a fraud!"
Thank you, as always, for putting such deliberative thought on this topic.
I want readers disappearing into the story. And if they come back changed, even a little, the story did its job. Thank you for reading this one so deeply Chris.
To be clear: none of these tools can detect whether AI was used, only indicate a probability that AI may have been used in some way (nor can it detect whether it was written or edited or none of the above).
There is not (as far as I am aware) a SynthID for the written word.
Exactly. And I think that distinction matters enormously. We’re giving people a probability and watching them treat it like evidence. Once that percentage gets screenshotted and passed around, all the uncertainty conveniently disappears. That’s where this gets dangerous.
This means more to me than any percentage a scanner could ever spit out. ❤️ If the stories move you, then they’re doing exactly what I wrote them to do. And yes, I’m staying. The Archive isn’t going anywhere.
I have yet to see the scan button, but I think the hypocrisy is hysterical. People who are anti-AI are using AI to feel superior to others they think use AI. It's ridiculous. I wrote a totally snarky "how I made this statement" but it's too snarky to put on my posts.
YES. 😂 The irony of using AI to hunt down AI is apparently lost somewhere in the proceedings. Also, I’m gonna need to see this “too snarky” statement because you have absolutely come to the wrong Archive if you think there’s a snark limit here. 😂 we rate snark on a scale from one to ten 😍
"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." — Carl Sagan
I did not invent the writing system we use — these lovely letters and punctuation marks. Nor did I create the rules of grammar or spelling. I did not take graphemes and morphemes and smoosh them together to create the words that you read here. I did not invent the genre of this piece or its conventions. There is a lot going on in “my” writing that I cannot claim as “my” creation. Nearly all of it existed before I was born.
I also didn’t create computers or Substack or the WWW. I didn’t lay the fiber that allows me to connect to the Internet, nor do I have anything to do with electricity, which you have to admit is pretty important. I don’t code software either. Heck, Niamh Celeste is not even my real name.
If we’re being entirely honest, 99.9% of anything you read with my name attached was not created by me. I just borrowed some existing stuff and used it to move words around like puzzle pieces until I liked how they were arranged, and then I put my name on it.
I like to keep things like this in perspective instead of running around acting like I created the universe. Enjoy your apple pie, but don’t tell me you made it from scratch.
THIS was the dangerously snarky statement?! 😂 This isn’t snarky, it’s an argument, and a damn good one. The apple pie analogy lands perfectly. We’ve apparently confused authorship with being required to personally invent language, electricity and the internet before breakfast. I’m glad you posted it.
After a long career of writing reports, proposals, and project budgeting paperwork before AI was available, I retired (hurray!!) and when the itch to write returned (eventually) I write a few short stories before wading into writing an epic fantasy novel (returning to my reading roots).
Since AI is becoming common, I decided to use AI for editing at first and then for brainstorming... comparing ideas for viability & impact mainly.
Part of my reason for writing is (oddly enough) to rebuild my passion and attention span in order to be able to enjoy reading again. Screens have more or less destroyed my focus; it's only fitting to use a screen to rebuild!
Do I can if an author uses AI? Only if it takes away from my pleasure in reading. So far, I've rarely found that to be the case. Where I did, it was mainly because the material was either completely AI generated or at least seemed to be as the material had the EQ of a hormone addled teenager.
Exactly. If it enhances the process without diminishing the experience, I simply don’t care what tools were involved. The story still has to work. That’s the test for me. ❤️
I have questions about this. I have proof my writing is not AI. I can even present it. But what if someone does a scan and then claims it is AI generated? Will anyone even look at my proof?
And that’s exactly the problem. Once a scanner produces a number, suddenly the writer is expected to defend themselves against it. You shouldn’t have to present evidence proving you wrote your own work. That’s the culture of suspicion I’m worried this creates.
Yes. The button is not a reading tool. It is suspicion with a user interface.
A reader who has been moved does not ask for a forensic workflow audit. She has already received the work. The kitchen went dark. The dogs waited. The sentence crossed the room.
That is the measure.
The scanner arrives later, wearing a little badge, hoping to convert resentment into evidence.
Mr. Boogs inspected the button and sat beside the paragraph instead.
Suspicion with a user interface is exactly it. We’ve somehow taken the most human exchange imaginable, one person telling a story and another person feeling something and inserted a little forensic checkpoint between them. I’d much rather sit beside the paragraph with Mr. Boogs. The paragraph knows what it did. 😂
"Nobody ever asked my camera who made the photograph." That single analogy cuts right through the entire debate. You nailed the core issue: the only metric that has ever mattered in storytelling is whether a piece of work actually reaches out and connects with a human being in the dark. Turning art into a forensic audit workshop misses the entire point of why we read and write in the first place.
Exactly. Forensic audit is such a perfect way to put it. I don’t want to investigate art, I want to experience it. Did it make me laugh, ache, stay up too late, think about it the next day? That’s the metric I care about. Thank you for getting exactly what I was trying to say
I always appreciate your perspective on this issue. It’s one that means a lot to me. If anyone’s interested, I have a take on it too. But this post really nailed it. Thank you for sharing, Warden.
Well said. We should be celebrating the people who are finally finding the confidence and the means to tell stories they've carried for years, sometimes decades. Instead, we're handing them a scarlet letter and inviting others to join the witch hunt. These tools have given many people a way to organize the chaos in their minds and finally express ideas that have been waiting a lifetime to be told. I'd rather encourage that kind of creativity than shame it.
This. ❤️ I keep thinking about how many stories never got told because someone had the imagination but struggled with the mechanics of getting it onto the page. If a tool finally gives someone a bridge between the story in their head and the person waiting to read it, I’m not interested in policing the bridge. I want to read the story.
Yes. Exactly. AI in all its forms has democratized creativity by reducing the gatekeepers of money, advanced education and free time.
That’s basically my story. Between running a business, managing customers and employees, and trying to be present with my family, getting these stories out of my head and onto the page has been a real struggle. I’m still not where I want to be, but I’m 50,000 words closer than I was six months ago.
Anyone who thinks people who care about what they’re creating are just sitting in front of a screen, typing a couple of prompts, and hitting publish has no idea what they’re talking about. That kind of judgment isn’t insight, it’s just mean‑spirited noise from keyboard jockeys who criticize because they can.
Awesome post.
This tracker (which doesn't even work) and the fact that they force you to opt in (and basically hide how to opt out) and forces you to RUN YOUR WORK THROUGH AI TO DISABLE IT (and then they harvest your work to train Pangram's AI) is such a dumpster fire I struggle to even process it.
YES. The irony of requiring AI to inspect my work for AI is almost performance art. 😂 But what bothers me most is the opt out problem. If I participate, I get a number. If I decline, that becomes its own statement. I didn’t ask to enter the courtroom at all, I just came here to publish stories.
And if you do want to decline, then you have to run your content through the AI and let them harvest it just to turn it off.
I saw today you can turn that off under privacy settings.
I'll check today when I get home. Yesterday, you had to run it through the AI.
If Substack had a theme song it would be Killing Strangers by Marilyn Manson.
At this point Substack needs an official soundtrack, a fog machine, and a disclaimer at the door that says, “Welcome writers. Please select your faction before proceeding.” 😂
Nicely written. I have never asked myself how a story was written before. I just read a few pages and my brain let me know if it was for me or not.
Exactly. The story either grabs you or it doesn’t. That’s always been enough for me.
I'll admit it. The story currently being published to my podcast was in my head for a dozen years, stuck on Chapter 1 until AI helped me get over the writer's block. I know *what* I wanted to say but not *how* to say it. I'm proud of Centrellus and it pisses me off that someone can use AI to determine how much AI I used. AI didn't have the dream that sparked this book. AI didn't imagine the two Worlds and the cosmic connection between these two worlds and Earth. AI didn't think up the ruthless antagonist or all the protagonists, along with their backstories. AI just helped me along the way. The story is 100% mine. And now, I'm going to have to fight the urge to press the button myself to see what their tool thinks about my writing and how much of it was created with AI. I'm new to Substack, and I'll probably stick around because it has a lot of advantages over similar platforms, and I've tried them all (trust me). If there was a better way for me, a dirt poor writer, to get my stories in front of people, I'd be doing it. So, Substack has me by the balls. So, yeah, I'm sticking around--under protest--for now.
THIS is exactly what I mean. AI didn’t carry that story in your head for twelve years. It didn’t imagine those worlds or care whether they ever reached another human being. It helped you get past the place where you were stuck. The story existed because YOU existed first. I’m glad Centrellus finally got out of your head and into the world.
Yes you hit the note perfectly. I often use the same terminology of “ getting it out of my head” Everyone has a story to tell and a song to sing. Now the tools are available that can make that happen. The gates are opening to all.
I just wrote an article about this, but yours... says so much more. I'm going to restack it!
Feel free to post a link to your article here in the comments.
I just read this entire thing out loud and it sounded like everything I say and so much more. The burden of proof lies in the reader's soul. Whether it was touched or not. Whether it made them feel. I've never read a Stephen King book and thought, "Is Richard Bachman the real writer of all of these books??? Stephen King is a fraud!"
Thank you, as always, for putting such deliberative thought on this topic.
I want readers disappearing into the story. And if they come back changed, even a little, the story did its job. Thank you for reading this one so deeply Chris.
To be clear: none of these tools can detect whether AI was used, only indicate a probability that AI may have been used in some way (nor can it detect whether it was written or edited or none of the above).
There is not (as far as I am aware) a SynthID for the written word.
Exactly. And I think that distinction matters enormously. We’re giving people a probability and watching them treat it like evidence. Once that percentage gets screenshotted and passed around, all the uncertainty conveniently disappears. That’s where this gets dangerous.
I love your stories Elle. I don’t care the process, they move me. I’m glad you’re staying.
This means more to me than any percentage a scanner could ever spit out. ❤️ If the stories move you, then they’re doing exactly what I wrote them to do. And yes, I’m staying. The Archive isn’t going anywhere.
I have yet to see the scan button, but I think the hypocrisy is hysterical. People who are anti-AI are using AI to feel superior to others they think use AI. It's ridiculous. I wrote a totally snarky "how I made this statement" but it's too snarky to put on my posts.
YES. 😂 The irony of using AI to hunt down AI is apparently lost somewhere in the proceedings. Also, I’m gonna need to see this “too snarky” statement because you have absolutely come to the wrong Archive if you think there’s a snark limit here. 😂 we rate snark on a scale from one to ten 😍
Here we go. I hope I earn a high score:
"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." — Carl Sagan
I did not invent the writing system we use — these lovely letters and punctuation marks. Nor did I create the rules of grammar or spelling. I did not take graphemes and morphemes and smoosh them together to create the words that you read here. I did not invent the genre of this piece or its conventions. There is a lot going on in “my” writing that I cannot claim as “my” creation. Nearly all of it existed before I was born.
I also didn’t create computers or Substack or the WWW. I didn’t lay the fiber that allows me to connect to the Internet, nor do I have anything to do with electricity, which you have to admit is pretty important. I don’t code software either. Heck, Niamh Celeste is not even my real name.
If we’re being entirely honest, 99.9% of anything you read with my name attached was not created by me. I just borrowed some existing stuff and used it to move words around like puzzle pieces until I liked how they were arranged, and then I put my name on it.
I like to keep things like this in perspective instead of running around acting like I created the universe. Enjoy your apple pie, but don’t tell me you made it from scratch.
THIS was the dangerously snarky statement?! 😂 This isn’t snarky, it’s an argument, and a damn good one. The apple pie analogy lands perfectly. We’ve apparently confused authorship with being required to personally invent language, electricity and the internet before breakfast. I’m glad you posted it.
excellent! post that with pride, it's awesome.
Thank you!
Bravo and well said.
After a long career of writing reports, proposals, and project budgeting paperwork before AI was available, I retired (hurray!!) and when the itch to write returned (eventually) I write a few short stories before wading into writing an epic fantasy novel (returning to my reading roots).
Since AI is becoming common, I decided to use AI for editing at first and then for brainstorming... comparing ideas for viability & impact mainly.
Part of my reason for writing is (oddly enough) to rebuild my passion and attention span in order to be able to enjoy reading again. Screens have more or less destroyed my focus; it's only fitting to use a screen to rebuild!
Do I can if an author uses AI? Only if it takes away from my pleasure in reading. So far, I've rarely found that to be the case. Where I did, it was mainly because the material was either completely AI generated or at least seemed to be as the material had the EQ of a hormone addled teenager.
Exactly. If it enhances the process without diminishing the experience, I simply don’t care what tools were involved. The story still has to work. That’s the test for me. ❤️
I have questions about this. I have proof my writing is not AI. I can even present it. But what if someone does a scan and then claims it is AI generated? Will anyone even look at my proof?
And that’s exactly the problem. Once a scanner produces a number, suddenly the writer is expected to defend themselves against it. You shouldn’t have to present evidence proving you wrote your own work. That’s the culture of suspicion I’m worried this creates.
Yes. The button is not a reading tool. It is suspicion with a user interface.
A reader who has been moved does not ask for a forensic workflow audit. She has already received the work. The kitchen went dark. The dogs waited. The sentence crossed the room.
That is the measure.
The scanner arrives later, wearing a little badge, hoping to convert resentment into evidence.
Mr. Boogs inspected the button and sat beside the paragraph instead.
Suspicion with a user interface is exactly it. We’ve somehow taken the most human exchange imaginable, one person telling a story and another person feeling something and inserted a little forensic checkpoint between them. I’d much rather sit beside the paragraph with Mr. Boogs. The paragraph knows what it did. 😂
Thank you Warden.
"Nobody ever asked my camera who made the photograph." That single analogy cuts right through the entire debate. You nailed the core issue: the only metric that has ever mattered in storytelling is whether a piece of work actually reaches out and connects with a human being in the dark. Turning art into a forensic audit workshop misses the entire point of why we read and write in the first place.
Exactly. Forensic audit is such a perfect way to put it. I don’t want to investigate art, I want to experience it. Did it make me laugh, ache, stay up too late, think about it the next day? That’s the metric I care about. Thank you for getting exactly what I was trying to say
I always appreciate your perspective on this issue. It’s one that means a lot to me. If anyone’s interested, I have a take on it too. But this post really nailed it. Thank you for sharing, Warden.
https://findingthekingdom.substack.com/p/the-witch-trials-come-to-substack