Writer Instagram-face of Roleplay (The AI talk)

[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

I have a confession to make to the community.
For the last few months, I have increasingly been using AI assistance in my posts.

To start with it was just a tool to keep track of busy group threads—what is everyone doing? How do I make sense of this mess? Are the any contradictions I—as a faction admin—need to address before moving on?

Then: it became a shortcut to getting out posts when I felt the pressure to keep up. Quick. Easy. Fast.

I could get a post out in twenty minutes, instead of an hour. My posts got longer. The analogies got weirder. And my characters all started saying, "Oh, my stars." Or, "Stars!"

Formatting was also weird.
And constantly having to be editted.
So it didn't look like my enter button was broken.

A beat.

I can say with all honesty that I only ever once posted something that was wholesale AI written. There was a rush to get something out to keep a group thread going, and I was heading away for a few days. The rest of the time I would spend a good 15 minutes writing the prompt—before spending another 5-10 minutes formatting. And then editing the post—especially the dialogue.

I was pumping out posts like the heat of the sun upon the earth. Hot. Heavy. Radiant.

Then the patterns started to fully unfold before my eyes. I could see—like a newborn foal—the world in a new light.

ChatGPT posts... Were everywhere.

At first I told myself this was OK. I mean. I am spending now about half an hour to refine this post to make sure that it is correct to the voice of my character, and does not have redundant statements... Who would need to have something repeated three ways, but in different words, or ramble on and on about the same subject... Only to start another line.

About the same subject.

A breath.

But for me it was still a revelatory moment—I was keeping up with faction threads for the first time ever on Chaos.

Then: it all began to feel different.

Posts were flying out the door with ease.

I was still loving the community that I was spending time with.

But, I felt an increasing disconnect with my stories and the characters writing opposite me.

Oh, sure, I was rewriting 90% of the dialogue. And editing out those telling em dashes. And making sure that it the post didn't overdo the sets of three. Seen. Every. Post.

OK, I am done imitating ChatGPT now. I will leave any spelling and grammatical errors. This way you will know that I agonisingly wrote in the telling ways of AI, but I did indeed write it.

---

It is time for the community to have a serious talk about AI assistance in Roleplay. We can brush it off like a snooty hipster with something akin to, "AI is for losers." But at the same time you have only posted once to that thread we started and that was over a month ago. In the meantime, I posted some threads that I (at the time) thoroughly enjoyed.

The connection, however, is waning. There is a disconnect from the soul and personality of the writer with their posts (mine included). People implement these tools because they are insecure about their writing, or afraid that they cannot keep up...or...they seek quantity of output as a tool to wield in some meta-game on the board.

Things like ChatGPT are here to stay. For one, the art from services like Midjourney were amazing, but the character consistency from ChatGPT/Sora is mindblowing. It is only going to get better. And the ability to tell the difference between a post written by a human and AI is going to become harder to parse. What an incredibly new world we are entering! It is exciting, but also scary.

The worst part of all are the compliments. "You are such a good writer." "That post was amazing." "I respect you because you are good at what you do here." I feel like a freaking fraud!

Now. To reiterate. (Heck, I am starting to write things like AI without even knowing it.) 499 out of 500 posts were made with me directly writing dialogue, determining all the actions and ideas within the post, I didn't just ask AI what to do and go with it. So, I could take some of the pat on the back because what was posted was my idea. But I still feel like a freaking fraud.

My grammar and spelling is not that perfect. I barely ever proofread my posts before posting them. And then all of a sudden it looks like I have spellcheck wired into my brain? Yeah. Right.

I don't know the answer. I know for me I have stopped enjoying RP. There is a certain soullessness to my output and to some of the things I receive. It is not completely devoid of soul. It is hard to put into words. There is though a sameness to a lot of posts. Walls of text. Em dashs everywhere. Redundant phrases. Emphasis words in sets of three. Analogies no human would use. Look who is being redundant now, as I make the same points.

For the most part, we are all serviceable writers on Chaos. In many cases, you are phenomenal writers. Do not be insecure in this, or your perceived weaknesses. We love writing with you. You are what makes this place special.

Anyway. I am the one to fall on my sword and acknowledge the IBM System 360 sized elephant in the room.

I am off to do some life recalibration and find my wannabe author's soul again.

-Bran

(Do not consider this post as a judgment on you or anyone you know. It is just time to have this discussion.)

I need eleven more words to make one-thousand words. There.

 

[Rel Ahn-Dross]

This is a great post and I mean that with all sincerity. You've essentially laid it all out for anyone to read and absorb.

What you're saying is a reality too. ChatGPT, etc is only going to get better. It's AI, it's meant to learn from us and the people that are coding it are only going to help it to evolve as well.

Personally I don't use ChatGPT to assist with my writing but I know several people who do and there is no judgement. As writers I feel like it is acceptable to use all the tools at our disposal to assist in becoming better at writing regardless of what it is. It's not unheard of for AI to be able to help us say something differently than we'd originally envisioned or to help us articulate a setting or atmosphere we might not have the right words to describe at the time. Is it really any different than the author who has an editor proofread his work? I'm not entirely sure that it is.

All I'm trying to say is don't lose heart. You are the writer, AI could be seen as your assistant if you choose to make it such. There's soul in any idea because whereas AI might refine what we've done it hasn't created for us.

 

[Makai Dashiell]

If you're going to use ChatGPT to do all the writing why even join a play by post roleplay forum?

(Genuinely curious, this is not directed towards anyone)

 

[Elias Edo]

This is definitely a conundrum that will only grow larger as time goes on.

Over the last few months, I've seen both ends of the spectrum here on Chaos - from writers who use ChatGPT and other AI platforms to generate ideas for threads, subs, etc. as a sounding board... to those who copy/paste direct AI generated content and drop four to five posts, each to separate threads, within minutes of one another. AI is an exciting tool, one that many I suspect are using for the same reasons you listed above. A sense of urgency to get posts out so people aren't stalled in fast-moving threads, or a shortcut to get normally time-consuming content out much faster (like faction info pages, bios for new characters, etc.)

My personal experience with ChatGPT and AI is that the more I used it to soundboard ideas, the more tempted I was to just let it take the lead and write the posts I'm behind on... if I'm the one giving it the prompts, if I'm training it using my own writing style, what's the harm? But I very quickly realized that for me, using AI sucked all the joy out of play-by-post RP. Sure, it gave me some unique ways to word things I was stuck on. It made descriptions livelier, gave me some new vocabulary to inject into my posts, but it lacked the magic of getting a thread rolling and really stewing on the story. AI doesn't understand nuance. It overuses em dashes. Repeats phrases and information.

It doesn't write like me.

I found that I was editing so much of the generation to make it fit how I write and what I want to say that I may as well just write it all by myself. So that's what I did. And in my personal opinion, I write much more potent posts than I have in years because of that realization. The urge to be better than generative AI has driven me to really tax myself as a writer. I skim the Word of the Day articles on various websites, jot down lines and phrases when I watch TV or play video games, dig into synonyms and antonyms of words I find myself overusing - it all sounds super elementary, but it's helped me improve my writing and come to a place where I'm satisfied with 90% of my posts.

Do I still lean on ChatGPT to help me name NPCs? Yep.
Do I use it to generate art of my characters so I don't spend hours scrubbing IMDB for headshots? I do.
Do I ask it to give me ideas for strengths and weaknesses on my new bios? Sure.

I won't pretend that I've never had AI give me a hand. I won't throw shade on anyone who uses it as a tool. My only suggestion is to not give in to the temptation to let AI be the writer. AI can't replace the human element in writing, music, or art. It can refine or inspire, but at the end of the day, it's a human pressing the "post reply" button.

 

[Razmir Tezhyn]

I have a view very similar to the one that visual artists hold towards AI, and it's that I very much dislike Gen-AI in the space. Like Midjourney, Sora, etc. it's trained on pre-existing material and, essentially, simply steals and reshuffles already existing content.

Gen-AI is great for offering a wider range of ideas for inspiration, providing an editor's eye on some text, or allowing you to think with new perspectives. But once it starts to worm its way into the writing itself is where it starts getting harmful.

The quality, even if it's higher on the surface, suffers because it's no longer the person with all their ideas and idiosyncrasies creating something, but a very complicated number-cruncher remixing pre-existing words and texts. The art loses its soul.

 

[Jonyna Si]

I've been pretty adamant about my refusal to use AI myself. It's a Me Thing, as I've spent the last decade honing my writing skill, and just got a scholarship to a writing program at a decently prodigious film school.

I don't knock others for using it for art, I understand the grind of trying to find what you want, and at the end of the day, it's not my place to judge people for trying to.

I don't even really blame people for using it to correct their posts, or get them past a writing block. Grammerly is more or less the same thing for that first one, and I can understand wanting some assistance in getting past creative constipation.

But my line in the sand is that I don't want to write against a computer. I come here to write with other people, not other people making the computer do the work for them. Especially when we put stakes involved, like Invasions or any sort of site/faction competition. To me, that feels like paying someone else to do your school essay for you, then getting the A because you needed it to play football, while I spend two weeks struggling to get it done myself, only to get a B-

I get it. People want convenience over anything. When there's no rules telling us we can't, people will always flock to the easy option.

I won't, and while I don't blame people for doing it, I reserve my right to not write with you if you're just gonna make the computer do your homework for you.

 

[Brandyn Sal-Soren]

Rel Ahn-Dross - I think there will be increasing value in society placed on the product of human time, energy and skill. Something that has not been washed through the waters of large language models or other AI tools. At least, I hope that is the way it will go. I suspect though that the masses will accept the remix rather than requiring something warts-and-all-authentic. There is a larger conversation to be had from everything from architecture and product design to entertainment and education. So much of life is being homogenised, because imperfection is "bad". So far as AI, I certainly see the power in the tools, but I am not convinced that I will ever find the same connection in spirit that I get when I am really vibe with a writer in a thread. One of the things I compare AI writing tools too is the dialogue option tree in Bioware games. Sometimes you click on a response and it goes wildly off in a direction you did not want nor expect. With RP posts you have the option to redo and repost, but there is always an element of this 'not my intended direction' because we have handed over some authorial control to the algorithm.

Makai Dashiell - One reason could be so that you can be a part of the community. There is a lot of pull to the OOC aspect of this place. There are reasons and answers. It is not as cut and dry as you would think.

Elias Edo - I think one of the realities that we must acknowledge is that play-by-post RP has always had an element of vicariously living the lives of the characters. People talk about their characters like they have real emotional reactions to posts, as if they are voices in their minds. An over use of AI tools re-homes those voices to the computer and cheapens the experience for your fellow role player. I, for one, feel bad for having done so. The moment you realize you are writing (mostly, or even partially) with an AI written character, you have less connection to the person behind the screen. You can get a similar experience with a chatbot, so why do I need to deal with this OOC drama to maintain a hobby I could do by myself?

Razmir Tezhyn - It is our imperfections that often define us as humans. When the AI can start mimicking our imperfections and foibles, we are in a lot of trouble.

Jonyna Si - I don't think it is always a desire for convenience. Sometimes it is insecurity over ability, feeling like you are not giving to the other as good as you are getting. There are probably other reasons, if I took the time to think it through. I think I value the connection more than the convenience (or at least I am learning to do so). It is something I knew was a part of the Roleplay experience, but it has only come to the fore with these recent experiences.

 

[Darth Kentarch]

Then the patterns started to fully unfold before my eyes. I could see—like a newborn foal—the world in a new light.

ChatGPT posts... We're everywhere.

Yup. You can pay for the advanced stuff and find out who is and is not us AI its very easy as if we used all these damn hyphens --- in 2020. Seriously, go look at the post back then and the post now.

Remember, AI is not sentient; it's not anything special. It's a tool, it's capital.

The best use of this tool is to correct your grammar and polish your posts. But you take it a step further, rewriting and 'assisting' your post in the style you want. Use it to enhance your style, tell it how you want the post to sound, how you want your character to talk. You still need to give it some kind of agency for it to work.

If you're going to use ChatGPT to do all the writing, why even join a play-by-post roleplay forum?

What's the point of painting a portrait of something when you can take a picture?

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

I have a view very similar to the one that visual artists hold towards AI, and it's that I very much dislike Gen-AI in the space. Like Midjourney, Sora, etc. it's trained on pre-existing material and, essentially, simply steals and reshuffles already existing content.

This is the biggest issue I have with using AI to write posts, specifically where you have to feed your writing partner’s content into the AI to generate a reply. Correct me if I’m wrong, but does that also not help train the AI without a writer’s consent?

 

[Darth Kentarch]

Corazona von Ascania , no, because AI analyzes the site on its own.

 

[Valery Noble]

This was an interesting read!

I've always used Grammarly to help me find quick spelling errors or grammatical mistakes. It was initially very useful for me because English isn't my first language, and I made plenty of mistakes that I could now easily catch. But with the rise of AI, it has started doing way more than just simple spelling checks.

It offers suggestions on how to improve your writing, too.

I wasn't against it because it also helped me improve my vocabulary, the same way reading a book also introduces me to new words or ways to describe something. But it has definitely gone a bit too far, and you notice patterns in what it suggests. I've been using the Em dash ( This one: —) since a friend in my old SWTOR RP spammed it in her emotes back in 2019. My first post here on Chaos years ago uses it plenty, too.

But seeing AI throw it around so much has now made me consciously try to not use it at all anymore, just to make my writing feel less AI lol. So, I suppose it has been affecting my writing in weird ways, too.

That said, I do think there are plenty of good ways to use it. I agree with pretty much everybody here that it's meh to have it do everything. But asking it for suggestions to improve or using AI to generate ideas for threads or thread objectives can be pretty useful. I have used it to brainstorm for new faction stories, and it's pretty sweet for it.

Maybe worth making a tips and tricks thread about useful ways to utilize AI without it taking over the personal aspects of Roleplay

 

[Kurayami Bloodborn]

I personally don't care if the person I'm writing with uses AI as an assist, or to write the whole post. I personally have never, in almost 18 years of writing RP used AI since it became available outside of generating art. For me, its that I'd rather take the time to really get into my character's head during the reply. And I find that much easier, if more time consuming without a computer helping me.

I dont post often because i try to think of good IC reasons I might be present in a thread. What characters mine would be connected to and how I could fit in. In essence, I overanalyze it to death. AI cant help me with that because even if it gave me a list I'd just end up stuck picking that apart too.

 

[Vazela]

Personally I do not like these type of conversations. This is because it will create groups of people calling on AI being used to help or in some cases create entire roleplay posts to be banned from the website which will lead to false positives.

 

[Jend-Ro Quill]

Brandyn Sal-Soren

Thanks for starting this thread and for your honesty.

I have specific AI use cases but nothing to do with writing, and I keep it that way. One of the biggest reasons is I really want to work to be a better writer, professionally and creatively, and I think there's a good chance it would get in my way. (Example, example (pdf))

I don't go around asking myself whether people's posts are AI because there's so often no way to tell these days. I do value stuff that seems clearly human. It appeals to me, makes me more likely to dig what people are doing and hop in when there's an opportunity.

 

[Reina Daival]

I still feel like this is an important thing to discuss. You'll always get people saying that AI related stuff should be banned from the website, even if posts like this weren't made.

I personally can see the appeal in using AI to help write posts. I had it used to make the strengths and weaknesses for one of my characters recently just because it's one of my least favourite parts of making a character and I noticed how much it hit the nail on the head with what I wanted to write but my head couldn't find the words. I can see how it can be a rabbit hole on helping out with writing posts.

I won't lie, I can easily burnt out when I look at the threads I have to reply to, and there are parts of me that wishes I could just get a post straight out to make sure people aren't waiting for me. Now, I know I have ChatGPT there for me to help deal with that problem but I can't actually bring myself to do it. I want to have people tell me I'm a good writer, I'm sure most people here do, but I don't want it to be a lie. If people are going to say I'm good at writing, I want it to be because I am. Not because I'm throwing something in to get generated.

I feel like I'm losing my train of thought here. I know people take their time out of their day to write posts to me. So as much as I want to get posts out quickly, even when I'm not in a writing mood, I'd much rather wait until I feel ready to do the posts, even if I feel bad making people wait.

I'm glad that someone's made a thread about this though. It's been something that's been on my mind for a while.

 

[The Warden]

Serina Calis here!

I have a very simple measurement when it comes this topic.

Do I enjoy writing with you?

If I enjoy writing with you? I don't care how you do it, AI or human.

Do I not enjoy writing with you? Then I won't write with you in the future, AI or human.

Personally, like anything, the user is responsible in how they use the tool. If you lose your juices because of AI, or have a negative experience because you are using AI, that at the end of the day is something that is great to talk about, but requires you as the individual to make the necessary changes to come back to enjoying the writing. The AI isn't going to disappear and change, how you use it will however be subject to change.



TANGENT WARNING:
We need to establish something very, very quickly here.

There is a difference between your personal experiences using AI, and how you deal with others using AI. The technology is on track to revolutionize itself an insane amount of times in the coming decade.

I can see the merit in a conversation about personal experiences on the use of AI and how it affects muse/creativity/feeling etc. etc.

But I don't see the point in trying to draw lines in what we accept/don't accept in a system that is rapidly (and already to a very heavy degree) becoming untraceable.

All in all, trying to draw arbitrary lines in the sand because "oh you use AI" is counterintuitive and at worst can start some very unnecessary witch hunts. I get the feeling of "oh I don't wanna rp with a computer" but we are arguably at a stage now where AI is becoming untraceable in written word.

So how do you then judge what is AI and what is not?

Disregard the idea of looking over a post and going "hrr this is AI hrr" and rather ask if you enjoy the writing and want to respond to it.

If you do enjoy it and want to respond, do it. If you don't? Don't write with it.

Because trust me, AI can be a really useful tool especially for EAL (English as Another Language) writers who may struggle to use proper grammar. I know for me personally I enjoy whipping out the grammar monocle over my posts (but DM me or see me here and realise how much of a lazy bum I am when it comes to regular grammar XD) but I know a vast majority of people don't. So let us not dissuade people who otherwise might struggle to write because they use publicly available tools to assist or even fully write for them.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Corazona von Ascania , no, because AI analyzes the site on its own.

I was under the impression that anything you feed into an LLM is used to train it? I would love to hear from any folks who have experience with this!

I gather that there is a sense of unease when people present AI writing as something that they wrote. I hover around a few digital art communities where artists who have an "AI-like" style end up facing a lot of scrutiny and criticism. In some instances, they're asked to produce time-lapse videos of them drawing to prove that what they've submitted is human made.

Personally I do not like these type of conversations. This is because it will create groups of people calling on AI being used to help or in some cases create entire roleplay posts to be banned from the website which will lead to false positives.

On the subject of banning AI written posts - even if there was a foolproof way to detect AI text (and detectors can only be so accurate as AI constantly evolves), I don't think that would be conducive to a healthy roleplaying environment.

If a ban was to be implemented (and that's a huge if), you open up the door for people to start scrutinizing posts and potentially report them in bad faith. As some folks have pointed out, they've started feeling pressure to change their own writing styles so that it doesn't sound too much like AI. I can only imagine how much that would ramp up if it became banned.

I do think that this is a good conversation to have as AI is very quickly becoming a part of our daily lives. It's not something I've personally felt the need to use in my writing, but I like reading the different views and opinions here.

All that said - you can pry my em dashes and sets of three from my cold, dead, clammy hands.

 

[Reina Daival]

I was under the impression that anything you feed into an LLM is used to train it? I would love to hear from any folks who have experience with this!

From when I was messing about it with, I can type something like "Oh, can you write me a summary of this character from Star Wars Chaos" (normally to try and get vibes for my own characters), it'll scan through the website instead of needing me to put in my posts or character biography. It's more accurate I feel like if I put the posts in directly but it's not necessary all the time.

 

[Allyson Locke]

I like grammarly. Sometimes brain tired so it’s nice to just slap shit in a doc and grammarly or even word to be like “lol ur spell bad”

 

[Vazela]

If a ban was to be implemented (and that's a huge if), you open up the door for people to start scrutinizing posts and potentially report them in bad faith. As some folks have pointed out, they've started feeling pressure to change their own writing styles so that it doesn't sound too much like AI. I can only imagine how much that would ramp up if it became banned.

This was what I had in mind when I said I don't like these type of conversations. There will be some on this board who will want AI posts to be banned and those people also tend to be the types who scrutinize other peoples posts which leads to false positives and drama.