Writer Instagram-face of Roleplay (The AI talk)

[War Marshal Helix]

My two cents? Sure. I'll be that hipster in the original post. I've never used it, never will use it. I don't think it should be banned, but you'll never catch me at it. Writing is self-expression, and personally I'd rather write with somebody sporting less-than-perfect writing skills than with a computer.

Obvious caveat, I'll be the last one to tell anybody else what to do. This is your hobby, your free time, one should write in whatever fashion one wants. Doesn't mean I'll ever understand the mindset personally.

TL;DR agree pretty much entirely with Jonyna Si , who articulated my thoughts pretty much to the letter better than I have here.

 

[Drystan Creed]

I use it as a grammar check and research tool, since I do use semi-realism in my analogies and explanations. (One notable example was when I described a five strike technique for a post and it managed to catch that I only stated four body parts that were struck in the next sentence. Very handy in catching minute inconsistencies)

Its also a good way to bounce ideas off. There have been many times where I asked it if it was plausible to do something in a post and it has shut me down. This was definitely for the better given the content I write and where I get my inspirations from. ("Hey chatgpt, would it be too absurd if I had Drystan shift his brain to avoid a blaster bolt going through his skull? Oh ok but what if I said I used the FORCE? Oh ok.")

I don't think strictly AI generated outputs for me are useful since I tend to write really wild stuff in my posts. For example, catching lightning bolts in a storm with your lightsaber to amplify your attack, or doing a 0-inch punch to shatter someone's helmet and knock them out, (Yes Drystan did these, yes I know its based.)

Another example was when I was talking about how babies use imitation to learn about their surroundings and made the connection that Drystan was a big baby for continuing to rely on imitation. (This is the tldr, but I don't think AI would have been able to make that connection for me and inject it into a post if i asked it to.)

As for other people using it. I don't really care. As long as your posts are coherent and interesting to read, you're cool with me. (This also applies to just posts in general)

(Side Note: I thought the "Stars" thing was an actual in-universe expression since I've seen it used here and there so I started including it to be more immersive in my character's dialogue. LOL)

 

[Aadihr Lidos]

I've noticed the same patterns in other posts, but I hold nothing against them as I likely have used ChatGPT as more of a crutch than they have.

I do not considered myself a writer.

I joined as an outsider to the hobby from a tabletop roleplaying / tangentially related theater background. AI usage has made this hobby accessible for me, and ultimately lowers the barrier of entry for more people, at the cost of the issues others have mentioned.

Spoiler: Yap yap tirade/self-report

I post exclusively from my phone, and have no text based/forum writing RP experience before chaos.
I've created tone and style documents from my samples to feed to each AI chat, have chatGPT project folders separated by character, and even used the deep research function to search the Wookiepedia for existing precedent. I've bounced ideas off of ChatGPT to consider different angles of an idea that I felt was stale. I've used it to format BBCode and divs, asked it about etiquette in hyper specific instances, and yes, fell back on it when I felt I had nothing to contribute to a thread that was held up by me.

Also, Em-dashes on mobile are just holding down "-" on the keyboard and selecting like you would an accent mark, so I will continue to shamelessly use them.

Also I'm with Drystan Creed on the Stars thing I thought it was a canon thing from seeing it around.

It's easier for me to modify what I know I don't like than to start from a blank page.
It's more like giving loose stage directions and refining the actor's instinct on their first take. I'm not clever with wordplay. I usually have a bullet point list of what I want to see in a post, along with what emotional train of thought the character is experiencing, or a certain vibe I want to convey and don't have the words to do so.

I do feel like a fraud when my writing is complemented, but my focus is more on developing each character's vibe than individual posts.

Yes, the time spent setting up the prompts, editing, and refining could be used to simply write the post — but I am not a writing enthusiast, just an amateur roleplayer with intermittent downtime with my job and a mobile connection. I ultimately just have a gut feeling for how I want to respond and use AI to put it to words refine that feeling into something that hopefully conveys the emotional intent to the reader.

I don't blame others for using it as a tool or crutch, and I don't hold it against them if they don't want to 'RP with a chatbot'. I just simply could not participate without these tools, and can only hope that I have given each character enough thought and care in editing and prompting that—even if I'm not writing the specific prose of every part of my posts—the core of the character is preserved in the final delivery.

Afterthought Edit: Another thing – after editing everything to my liking, I will provide the "final draft" to the AI so it receives feedback on what I personally choose to omit/add/modify from what it drafted.

 

[Azurine Varek]

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

This. 100%
I used to use normal dashes in the same way I use em dashes now until I learned I could easily find the em dash on mobile (which is what I mostly use because it's easier for me).


Here's my issue:
Yes, I can tell when other people use AI to write whole posts half the time. The other half I have no idea.

What makes it worse is that what people consider 'instantly AI' is literally how I've been writing my posts since 2017, long before I ever joined Chaos. I even started putting some of my hand written posts through an AI detector to see what it would say, and I was getting told for some of them that 35% of my post or more was "likely made by AI" and seeing that wrecked me. Not because I hate AI, I have a whole philosophy on it that I don't need to yap about right now, simply because of the fear that I might be seen as a cheater for doing the same types of patterns I've used for years, that I love useing, and worked so hard to develop well.

There is no foolproof way of finding out if something is AI. The idea of having what I put so much energy into that I can barely manage 2-5 posts in a day because I choose not to rely on AI to do more than grammar check me (I have dyslexia and my grammar is atrocious if I don’t put it through something) or get me over a really bad block by suggesting different paths forward reported on the regular because of that makes me so scared and kills so much of my joy.

I've seen what people are doing to artists who even have a smidge of what people have dubbed "AI style", so many of whom prove time and time again that they painted the thing just to keep getting hate and reported and so much else.

If that were to start to happen here, I would leave. Full stop. Because at that point, it's not the game I love anymore.

HOWEVER, I also tend to get disheartened when something I see in response to my posts follows a formatting pattern that I just don't find preferable myself. I have no idea if that pattern would be considered AI, but that being said I don't think we can blame AI for it. No one is going to like absolutely everyones style of writing, and it's perfectly okay to not write with those who's style is antithetical to what you like to read/need to see to be able to keep your joy going while still having respect for the other writer and their choices.

What is not okay is pulling out the "I don't like that style so it has to be AI and now I hate it AND have no respect for you" excuse because the only thing that will do is devolve into groups of bullies and posts reported/people banned who never even did anything wrong.


Anyway, that's my thoughts on it.

Edit: I too started using 'stars' as a replacement for certain words cause I got tired of the site automatically changing the curse I actually had there into something else when I didn't have time to come up with something better to replace it. I thought it was a good in universe replacement for when I need something in a pinch when I saw it used and I don't plan on stopping.

(I didn't put this one through a grammar check, so pardon me if my spelling mistakes are all over)

 

[Ran Serys]

Uhhhh... Has nobody ever watched The Terminator?

Jokes aside, I am not a fan of AI in creative spaces. Especially in creative community spaces! If you're on Chaos, you have community. Need a soundboard for your ideas? Chaos. Need help writing a post? Chaos. Need another descriptive word for your character? Chaos and/or a thesaurus. We don't need AI when we have each other. If you don't know that, I'm here to tell you.

If you know me, you know that I am very understanding, giving, and easygoing. This is one of the few hard stances I've ever taken in my life. If you're going to use AI to write a story with me, please don't. I likely won't know if you do, but regardless I don't want to write with you if you're going to do that. If you have, I still love you. To each their own. Don't let me tell you what to do. Just please keep it far away from me.

In my eyes, AI generation is mostly theft. That is why I do my writing without it. Sometimes it sucks, other times its amazing. Sometimes folks will be waiting two-plus-weeks for my response and that is okay. That's life, we are only human, and this is just one of our very amazing hobbies which we are all already happy to be here for.

I could say so much more since AI is such an inescapable presence on the internet right now, but I won't because it's late and it'll make me big sad.

Just let me leave you with one thing. Next time you use AI for something just ask yourself "Do I need to use AI for this?" "Is this theft of someone's writing, art, image, voice?" "Is it worth the impact it'll have on the environment?" If the answers to these questions don't sit right with you? Good! Find another way, and remember I am always down to help you find it!

This is a creative writing community. Let's help each other with all of that and more.

I am here for you. If nobody else is here for you, I am here for you.

That said, Goodnight. I appreciate you all!

 

[Jonyna Si]

Sometimes it is insecurity over ability, feeling like you are not giving to the other as good as you are getting.

I think this is 100% convenience. I suffer from imposter syndrome, and I don't use AI, so I think it's people wanting nothing more than to take the easy route.

Like, I get it. It sucks to be bad at something and feel inferior to those around you.

But, if watching media has taught me anything:

We all sucked at one point. We all got better. You can too, you just need to put in the work.

THAT SAID,

I do take umbrage with another thing in that sentence.

Can we stop pushing this idea that if my writing partner drops a novel in my lap, I have to respond in kind? Sometimes, especially with my bipolar depression, I just wanna pump out a few sentences and call it a day. Sometimes, I don't have a lot to say. I understand it doesn't give you a lot to work with, but I'm sorry, not everyone wants to write War and Peace every post.

I came from chatroom RP, where you had 1000 characters per post as a limit. As a result, my writing style is very to the point. I don't do a lot of flowery description, because I'm going in the script writing, and because I read comic books. My inspirations, the media I consume, it's all very low on purple prose.

I'm sorry if I can't match your speed if that's your vibe, but I don't really care to. I write how I wanna write.

 

[Razmir Tezhyn]

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!

By default, everything that's fed into popular LLM services is used for training. The policy may differ per provider, but a rule of thumb is that it's an opt-out privacy setting. You need to manually disable data collection (GPT: Settings -> Data Controls -> Toggle off 'Improve the Model for everyone'), and then pray it's not just placebo, really.

Scraping, i.e. collecting data from other websites, is also a widespread practice by LLM providers, though that's a different can of worms.

 

[Razmir Tezhyn]

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))

Wow, thank you for linking these papers. The abstracts alone are making me go down a small rabbit hole on this topic. I've been pretty preoccupied with the technical side to the point where the impact on knowledge work has been mainly peripheral, so these make for a fascinating read.

 

[Zaiya Ceti]

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”

I've used grammerly for my posts for the longest time when I transitioned from GDocs to it so I could sneak posts while at work without it being blatent (Since I also use Grammarly for formatting email communications and the like). It just helps keep things in line and sometimes I don’t even accept all the recommendations on grammar placement because it just doesn’t flow right. I think that's cause I try to purposefully write in different styles, tones, manerisums and the like for my characters; with Danger, Zaiya and now Sibylla being my most prominent ones folk see now a days.

But Grammarly has also added new resources to help you improve your writing as well, which has been neat to explore, especially when I can just click the thesaurus and it gives me a neat list of synonyms to use then and there rather than digging through the book itself.

Either way, if someone wants to use a resource to enhance their writing, fine by me. I know there are lots of folks who are not aware of the little bits of Star Wars lore or references that require a deep dive into Wookiepedia in the categories neat Star Wars environment, materials, or planetary info to get some context or reference a creature to twist a modern idiom into a star wars one. Or my fav, star wars food, and drinks among others found in the consumables category. But I also know that while reference pop out of my head from writing in star wars so long, but that may not be the same to someone barely starting it now.

But that’s also why I still like sharing neat lists and categories for use whenever someone asks me on whats something in star wars would be. So for anyone using stars out there as a curse word, well, it is on the Wookieepedia's List of Phrases and Slang, so don't feel bad for using it. I posted references to a version of the same list Star Wars Insults and Expletives -- Learn How to Curse in the Star Wars Universe pinned on this writing forum back in 2014 and recommended anyone to use for neat cursing flavor. And certainly, I’ve seen many folks use the "--" dash for years, although I didn't realize that there are apparently three different types of dashes in reading this thread. I use them a lot in my tenure writing as "--" and will continue to do so when it feels right, lol.

All that to say -- write however you enjoy writing, with whatever resources you want to use. Do super lengthy confusing posts make my eyes glaze, yes -- but I also know I can get into my feels and write super long as well so, pot to the kettle. At the end of the day for me, I just enjoy getting char dev and making connections oocly here for rp plots.

 

[Azurine Varek]

So for anyone using stars out there as a curse word, well, it is on the Wookieepedia's List of Phrases and Slang, so don't feel bad for using it.

That's literally where I found it the first time cause you sent me that very list to look at when my dumb brain couldn't think of a better way to say "that's gonna hurt like a b**ch" and get my point across without the site cleansing it to "queen" xD

But seriously, I don't plan on changing how I do my writing because people see my em dashes or sets of three or out of the box descriptions and start to decide to assume I'm using AI when I'm not. I think it's kind of stupid to change everything about how you like to do your writing just to avoid accusations because that in of itself also sucks the soul out of it. It turns us against each other when we should be building each other up instead of tearing each other down.

At the end of the day, AI mimics what literary devices are popular and liked, and imitation is the sincerist form of flattery. It shouldn't be a sign that we need to change because if we start to change that just to differentiate ourselves then the AI will also adapt to also follow that new pattern of what is found to be most popular. We'll be in this position of constantly having to cycle through how we do things which, for someone who is auDHD and dyslexic and struggles with having to frequently change routines/prefers consistency in patterns, really kind of sucks

(Edit: god this is a primary example of why I use stuff like quillbot to correct my typos and grammar in my thread posts, I found 5 typos and letter switcheroos in just one reread after posting this)

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

[IMG alt="Makai Dashiell"]https://www.starwarsrp.net/data/avatars/s/0/770.jpg?1718980986[/IMG] 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

We all sucked at one point. We all got better. You can too, you just need to put in the work.

This is something I've been thinking about since it was brought up.

When I first started roleplaying, some of the communities were harsh, even downright mocking of my poor writing. It made me want to find a way to fit in, to feel like I was a good writer. In ye olde days, your only choice was to improve your writing skills.

I don't want to fall into the old guard habit of I suffered so you should too, nor do I want to encourage reliance on a bot for writing.

But, I think I understand the appeal of AI a little better now.

Had AI been available when I was a brand new baby writer and struggling to keep up with those around me, I can't say for certain that I wouldn't have used it. Chaos has a robust community aspect and it's normal for people to want to find their place and be accepted.

While I value authentic writing and believe that writers who are unsatisfied with their own skills should work to improve them, I understand the urge to feel included. If someone uses AI to write their posts, it's up to them to decide if the shortcut is worth it.

Side note: I don't really consider spelling or grammar editing tools the same way as I do using a bot to generate posts. Apologies to my elementary school teachers, but some of those lessons were unable to stick definitively to the walls of my smooth brain.

 

[Aether Verd]

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.

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

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”

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.

^These are my hills, I will die on them.

 

[Azurine Varek]

Don't mind me as I keep yapping, this is just a topic that is rather important to me in the long run.

When I first started roleplaying, some of the communities were harsh, even downright mocking of my poor writing. It made me want to find a way to fit in, to feel like I was a good writer. In ye olde days, your only choice was to improve your writing skills.

I guess I got lucky l because this wasn't something I had to deal with when I first started.

But that was probably in 2009, I was around 12 years old, and stumbled into post rp by accent through a friend I made in chat games. The site we went to had such a variety of people from all sorts of style, length, and format preferences and I went from using * insert action here *, to 1-4 sentences, and eventually to multiple paragraphs with a lot of encouragement and love from the people around. I firmly believe that I never would have gotten as good at writing in general as I eventually became without being able to learn and grow as I did in my early days of doing post rp (a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away LOL)

It's sad to me that not everyone had the start that I did, but this isn't the first time I'm hearing about situations like that. I try so hard to be as encourageing and loving to new folks as was done to me when I was a beginner, and yet at the same time I understand that my posts can be intimidating to people who haven't yet had the time to learn and grow and I also don't have nearly the same amount of energy to rapid post like I did way back when.

Quick interjection:

Spoiler: Relearning to embrace the short post rant

That's something I can probably also attribute to the fact that I was so much more willing to post a single paragraph or two then rather than agonize over putting in detail and proper pros with perfect descriptor clarity... I'm working on challanging myself to vary my post length and help my brain to feel comfortable with the fact that I don't have to put 100% into every single post because of something I learned recently:

Sometimes, what we may consider to be 'barely adequate' by our stupid personal standards is actually brilliant as it is to the people around us. And even if it isn't, no one can possibly be their best every second of the day.

As TNB has told me many times now, "Embrace the short post!"

And if there are people in the community who didn't have that early start I had, who come here and see these massive posts regularly and don't know how or where to begin and feel they need to use things like AI in order to improve themselves, then who the hell am I to judge them for it? Instead, like Zaiya Ceti said , maybe we should be more encouraging and provide them with resources that they can use to better their skills and not shame people for being beginners and relying on krutches to get that leap until they can run on their own. A little bit of encouragement and love goes so much farther than shame and fear, you know?