Advice appreciated on how to deal with editor's allegation of AI use

It flags some sentences, I guess that’s a guide to what it’s looking for. But this wasn’t widespread enough to ring any real alarm bells.

For the avoidance of doubt, I use only the crappy spellcheck in Word365 and human beta readers.

Emily
 
Yeah, all the free versions only handle so many characters at a time. SEO.AI checks up to 20,000 characters at a time with the free version. But the free version doesn't give you a breakdown by line and only gives you a percentage of the probability of AI usage.
I put my latest story into Sapling, it truncated it to 2,000 characters (no way I’m paying for this). I got 0.0% fake.

My credential: https://sapling.ai/ai-content-detector/a6d441c63a3cb54b60ed1c5b100fda39
 
It flags some sentences, I guess that’s a guide to what it’s looking for. But this wasn’t widespread enough to ring any real alarm bells.

For the avoidance of doubt, I use only the crappy spellcheck in Word365 and human beta readers.

Emily
And that spell checker puts in the semi colons that winds up Mr Doom! 😁
 
If I’m understanding it right, these were what it found most suspect:

  • Saturday morning, she was wide awake at 5am.
  • As it was bubbling away, she heard the thud of James coming down the stairs.
  • How could a six-year-old boy make so much noise?
  • She gathered the requested items, added a glass of water and placed them on the kitchen table.
I’m not clear what is AI-like about those.

Emily
 
If I’m understanding it right, these were what it found most suspect:

  • Saturday morning, she was wide awake at 5am.
  • As it was bubbling away, she heard the thud of James coming down the stairs.
  • How could a six-year-old boy make so much noise?
I’m not clear what is AI-like about those.

Emily
Just to make everyone laugh, my 99% chapter is now 100%. The only thing I added was the chapter headings.

https://sapling.ai/ai-content-detector/9dd03fc536cc2a9f1839b9a2fa37be81

The thing it’s picking up most are third person sentences and dialogue grammar issues. :confused:
 
If I’m understanding it right, these were what it found most suspect:

  • Saturday morning, she was wide awake at 5am.
  • As it was bubbling away, she heard the thud of James coming down the stairs.
  • How could a six-year-old boy make so much noise?
  • She gathered the requested items, added a glass of water and placed them on the kitchen table.
I’m not clear what is AI-like about those.

Emily
The whole story is 3rdP
 
The sentences are common to millions of stories. Therefore, they might have been scrapped from those stories. It isn't logical, but it sort of is. But not every single line can be unique in a story, or even a typed page of Word. It borders on lunacy to toss a story on those types of sentences.
If I’m understanding it right, these were what it found most suspect:

  • Saturday morning, she was wide awake at 5am.
  • As it was bubbling away, she heard the thud of James coming down the stairs.
  • How could a six-year-old boy make so much noise?
  • She gathered the requested items, added a glass of water and placed them on the kitchen table.
I’m not clear what is AI-like about those.

Emily
 
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Mine - I more commonly use first person past, but the one I tested is third person past

Emily
Thanks for clarifying. Mines in third person present/past, having similar issues and phrasing picked out.

Interesting.
 
I write first person past sooooo

Why the fuck am I out on my own with most of this bullshit?

At this point, it's starting to feel like my account is just flagged whenever I post
I mean, I have had 27 rejections to date for this.

Plus 7 published since I changed virtually my entire approach to writing my stories but let’s not look too closely at those…
 
I write first person past sooooo

Why the fuck am I out on my own with most of this bullshit?

At this point, it's starting to feel like my account is just flagged whenever I post
You can test this.

Your next story, post under a different account. See how you do.

Emily
 
It would definitely make for an interesting experiment, especially if the newer work submitted is written the same way as my current story, but the fear of it being right is taking over. Like, if I could get 2 stories through without rejection on a second account, then it would confirm that my account is a problem and it worries me
Yes and no. It means if you can convince Laurel, then all is well.

Emily
 
It would definitely make for an interesting experiment, especially if the newer work submitted is written the same way as my current story, but the fear of it being right is taking over. Like, if I could get 2 stories through without rejection on a second account, then it would confirm that my account is a problem and it worries me

So I am in the interesting position of having five AI rejected rewrites sitting now for a week (again) and two fresh, no grammarly, just written through wordpad and submitted stories sat there for nearly 24 hours without change.

The stories I’ve managed to publish to date have all been in wordpad with no editing using any kind of website or software. They all seeed to get “new” applied virtually same day.

The latter two I have submitted haven’t.

So it will be interesting to see if they get through or not.

On the balance of probability, I am coming to the conclusion that AI detection is a pseudo science and probably snake oil.
 
So I am in the interesting position of having five AI rejected rewrites sitting now for a week (again) and two fresh, no grammarly, just written through wordpad and submitted stories sat there for nearly 24 hours without change.

The stories I’ve managed to publish to date have all been in wordpad with no editing using any kind of website or software. They all seeed to get “new” applied virtually same day.

The latter two I have submitted haven’t.

So it will be interesting to see if they get through or not.

On the balance of probability, I am coming to the conclusion that AI detection is a pseudo science and probably snake oil.
This post did not age well.

Within ten minutes of writing this, 5 rejections for AI and 2 now pending for publication tomorrow.

All 5 rejected used Grammarly.

The 2 which went through didn’t.

All 7 are similar styles and lengths of story.

So my guess is there is something Grammarly does that I’m just not seeing where my work is concerned.

So I am going to bin those five chapters and write new ones with similar themes.

Seems the only thing I can do.
 
The argument that Grammarly does something can't be right because I didn't use it on the last two parts of my story and sailed through with no issues, the other I'm waiting on the 6th rejection for.
I’m just reporting back my own findings.

You may be right, I have no idea.

I’m not a coder, or IT wizard. All I can tell you is what I’ve experienced.

For me, it feels like the best way to get through is to just avoid anything like that and rely on my own editing skills, albeit obeying the house rules on dialogue structure too.

By the way, that’s 32 rejections for AI now across basically the same group of stories. Do I get a prize yet for tenacity?
 
The argument that Grammarly does something can't be right because I didn't use it on the last two parts of my story and sailed through with no issues, the other I'm waiting on the 6th rejection for.
The bolded sentence says you didn't get rejected when you didn't use Grammarly, so you seem to be contradicting yourself.

@STrent has just said the same thing, if I read their post correctly, which suggests, don't use Grammarly.
 
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