AI Ruining Stories (No, not in that way. No, not like that either.)

[TheExperimentalist]

So I view it as being three tiers (maybe more that I'm not even thinking of yet) of ways in which AI is affecting art.

1.
The most basic, obviously, is people making AI slop or having AI 'fix up' creations that are possibly even halfway decent, rather than improving their own skills.

2.
False assumption of AI involvement. This tier, aside from including the most obvious thing affecting this community, includes the reality that, in the past, if I saw a picture of video of something really cool and unbelievable on social media, my first thought was 'wow, how did they do that? I want to learn more!' Now, my first thought, even when it's actually something real, is 'it's probably just AI'. Half the time, I don't even look to vet or learn about it the way I used to, and I'm sure that, as a result, I end up missing out on some wondrous things about the world in which we live. I suspect that many others check even less than I do now and just always assume AI.

Included in this tier is also the hopeless feeling on the part of creatives who give up creating after asking themselves 'why should I even bother when people will just bury my creations in mountains of AI slop?' I will admit to struggling with this question a lot myself lately.

3.
This is the tier I specifically want to talk about. It pertains to stories more than anything else, but it's about the ways in which plotlines and character motivations are affected by the realities of the AI age. I've only been writing naughty fiction for about a year, yet in that time, roughly half of my WIPs set in 'modern' day (I have twenty or so in a modern setting, so about ten) will need some major tweaking to either explain character motivations or explicitly set them in a year prior to 2025.

I'm talking about the little changes that AI has, in such a short time, caused to ways in which we operate or view things. Stuff like 'why does this character believe they're chatting with a real person?' or 'why aren't they assuming that picture is just AI?' or 'they could accomplish that task they're stuck on in about five seconds.' And while that last one COULD be solved by setting up a character as AI-refusing, making sure a reader knows that without affecting pacing, when it's not a main plot point, would be difficult if not impossible. It would also be unrealistic for EVERY character to refuse to participate in the majority trends of the modern world, much as I myself may hate them.

A WIP I recently started has this moment near the beginning where the first-person character is longing for the slower days of their youth, and reflects on the changes in the world:

The internet had been in its infancy at the same time I was. The World Wide Web and I grew up side by side. We had to listen to thirty seconds of screeching if we wanted to connect to anyone or anything outside our physical possession, and hope no one picked up the phone if we wanted to maintain that connection.

How had we gotten from there to a world where everyone was agitated by even the slightest delay, where creativity and quality were routinely curtailed in the name of 'efficiency'? It had been getting bad for years, I reflected, but now with the onset of the 'AI Age', I had truly begun to feel alien in my own world.

What bothered me even more was the peer pressure. Within the space of a single year, all of my friends and coworkers had gone from talking about how unreliable AI was to urging me to 'try it' and waxing poetic about how much it's helping them accomplish. I didn't understand it. Was it some kind of mass delusion? Mind control? Was I the last sane human being left on the planet?

Oh, I knew (thanks to the selfsame internet) that there were pockets of people who, like me, had declined to sell their soul to unfeeling technology in the name of efficiency, but it seemed that most of the world had made their deal with the devil.

Of course, it was merely the most recent in a series of events that felt like it had stripped away everything I cared about.

I wrote it in large part as a way to explore my own feelings on the matter, but I can't write every story like that. Thus, I'm left feeling a little stuck in a world I wish hadn't taken the turn that it has.

Has anyone noticed any other ways AI is affecting plotlines and assumptions, and if so, what do you do about it?

 

[StillStunned]

I don't think it's such a big deal as you make out. I've managed to live these past few years without using AI in any way, with only minimal effort to scroll past the useless AI results when I do an online search. Nobody else I know uses AI more than very occasionally, except one friend who works in IT and sometimes uses it as an aid.

It's omnipresent at the moment, but in the same way as a cloud of mosquitos.

 

[alohadave]

False assumption of AI involvement. This tier, aside from including the most obvious thing affecting this community, includes the reality that, in the past, if I saw a picture of video of something really cool and unbelievable on social media, my first thought was 'wow, how did they do that? I want to learn more!' Now, my first thought, even when it's actually something real, is 'it's probably just AI'.

Same thing used to happen with Photoshop and photograpy. Take an unusual or technically outstanding photograph and the first inclination was to ask about Photoshop.

A lot of people have a really casual relationship with visual media even though they look at it all day, every day of their lives.

 

[YmaOHyd]

It hasn't affected my work yet, but if I continue writing in the Daniel-and-Katherine-verse, it's almost certainly something that will affect Daniel's job, but probably positively. Might be something that helps him make a little more money; I don't know that he can give Katherine the lifestyle she's accustomed to (and wants).

Emily in What's Left of Me is, assuming I get there, probably going to have to deal with the deepfake problem, as will one or two other characters in that story. I don't have a resolution to that yet, and it may be that there just isn't one.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

If people would stop spamming Lit with this stuff, I'd never even think about it.

What, like 80 threads now?

I wish Lit would ban the topic and block the terms from being posted.

 

[Britva415]

Has anyone noticed any other ways AI is affecting plotlines and assumptions, and if so, what do you do about it?

Not me. My characters only ever interact in person, my plots don't permit questions like "how do they know that's a real person" or "why isn't AI doing this job."

People would be amazed how much IS the same in 2025 as always in human history everywhere ever.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Has anyone noticed any other ways AI is affecting plotlines and assumptions, and if so, what do you do about it?

Somebody wrote this about one of my stories:

You've graciously given us a window into another place and time. The year is not mentioned, current events are not referenced, famous people are not tied in; we are provided with just the right amount of detail to bring a careful reality to the setting. When this story unfolded around me I wanted nothing: not more sex, not more players, not some psychological crisis; the story was just enough to leave me satisfied.

The reader caught the mood of the story exactly - it's a story about the human condition, about two people, and for me, that will never change. AI is irrelevant to stories about people, and at this point in its development it just gives me the shits, frankly. I write contemporary stories, mostly, and so far, I've not referenced it once. I guess that's my "solution" - AI is irrelevant for creative story telling, so I don't bother thinking about it at all.

 

[StillStunned]

I started writing my sci-fi series The Dome sort of as a response to the anthropomorphising of AI:

If Mother could have experienced an emotion, it would have been satisfaction. For millennia, the Dome had functioned without disruption, its people prospering and kept safe from the dangers outside.

Perhaps its creators hoped, by naming the Dome's operating system "Mother", that it would assume a maternal attitude towards the populace. If so, and if they'd been around to see it now, they'd be disappointed.

Despite their best efforts, Mother didn't regard the million inhabitants of the Dome as its children. It saw them merely as events, impacting its models and analyses in ways that were both random and predictable. They were, in that respect, like the weather. Unlike the weather, though, their patterns -- if not their actual actions -- could be influenced. Steered. Controlled.

 

[CalBishForNow]

I'm talking about the little changes that AI has, in such a short time, caused to ways in which we operate or view things. Stuff like 'why does this character believe they're chatting with a real person?' or 'why aren't they assuming that picture is just AI?' or 'they could accomplish that task they're stuck on in about five seconds.' And while that last one COULD be solved by setting up a character as AI-refusing, making sure a reader knows that without affecting pacing, when it's not a main plot point, would be difficult if not impossible. It would also be unrealistic for EVERY character to refuse to participate in the majority trends of the modern world, much as I myself may hate them.

I don't get it.

• It may be annoying if someone assumes that a chatbot is a real person or vice versa, but I'm having a hard time thinking of a time it would be important to either real life or a plot I'd write. Either you're getting what you want from the help desk or you aren't. Misreading situations and misplacing emotional bonds is sad or funny whether the subject of them is a real person or a chatbot.
• It's often obvious if a picture is digitally manipulated, like extra fingers. Even if there aren't problems obvious to a layman, there are many details an expert could find. In addition, that sort of thing has been possible for over a hundred years. Look up Arthur Conan Doyle's fairies. The provenance of a picture has always been roughly as important as its content: is the source trustworthy or not?
• Very few tasks can be solved effortlessly by AI in 5 seconds that couldn't have been solved by Google circa 2005 in 5 minutes, or by a smart person standing in the middle of a library in 20 minutes in 1985. AI can generate lots of content (generate, mash it together, steal it, whatever) in ways that couldn't have been done in 2005 or earlier, but you still need a knowledgeable human to review it and see if it's accurate and would work as intended.

This is actually amazing timing. I literally just wrote a scene in my latest WIP where the FMC is confronted with blackmail material. She says she's not worried about it are because they would be breaking the law if they used it, not her, and because the man in it could be her husband. The blackmailer easily dismisses of both of her objections. I didn't have her add that it could be faked, but the blackmailer could have dismissed that just as easily. (For one thing, it's harder to fake movies than pictures; for another, even if fake, it would still be really embarrassing; for a third, she really was at the location the blackmail material was made, so her phone's location data would back up the allegations...)

What, like 80 threads now?

I think this thread is one of those. My opinion there was that the concern was overblown, and a lot of people agreed with me.

 

[TheExperimentalist]

I don't think it's such a big deal as you make out. I've managed to live these past few years without using AI in any way, with only minimal effort to scroll past the useless AI results when I do an online search. Nobody else I know uses AI more than very occasionally, except one friend who works in IT and sometimes uses it as an aid.

It's omnipresent at the moment, but in the same way as a cloud of mosquitos.

I'm fascinated by how different our experiences are. I don't know if it's a generation gap thing, or something to do with a difference in what fields most of the people in our social circles are in, but for me, EVERYONE I know is CONSTANTLY talking about AI stuff these days.

Good to know that it's not as ubiquitous as I thought, though. Thanks for giving me some amount of hope.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm fascinated by how different our experiences are. I don't know if it's a generation gap thing, or something to do with a difference in what fields most of the people in our social circles are in, but for me, EVERYONE I know is CONSTANTLY talking about AI stuff these days.

My son is in his early thirties, and all his life his bullshit filter has been crapola. His primary source of information these days is podcasts, ffs. His sister is only two years younger, yet her ability to parse sense from nonsense has always been vastly superior, even as an eight year old. I contend it's got zero to do with a generational thing, is purely down to gullibility and the ability to recognise bullshit when you see it.

Good to know that it's not as ubiquitous as I thought, though. Thanks for giving me some amount of hope.

The trick is to balance cynicism with optimism. Something useful might come out of AI one day, but so far I'm not seeing it.

 

[OddLove]

I'm fascinated by how different our experiences are. I don't know if it's a generation gap thing, or something to do with a difference in what fields most of the people in our social circles are in, but for me, EVERYONE I know is CONSTANTLY talking about AI stuff these days.

Good to know that it's not as ubiquitous as I thought, though. Thanks for giving me some amount of hope.

I'm actually in a boat closer to yours, cause when I write, I can catch myself reading over a 'problem' or argument that realistically would've been resolved immediately via the internet, whether that be googles AI overview answer bot, or any other version. And if I really feel like I need to, I can go back and change the story so that obvious 'solution' isn't left dangling in the readers face untouched. But I don't do that very much because technology changing so fast that 'modern' stories are going to be dated every few years most likely.

I don't really try to solve that problem of aging, I just know there could be a point a couple years from now where AI changes so much things about our everyday lives that my story will naturally become a dated story about a time before that. Maybe a story about going to a gas station to fill your gas tank becomes 'old days' if all cars are electric, or certain job industries the main character works in no longer exists due to AI, so being a editor becomes 'old days' when AI takes that over.

It's an impossible fight to win IMO. We just got to let our stories be time capsules of the time it was written for, whether that's past, present, or future.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Same thing used to happen with Photoshop and photograpy. Take an unusual or technically outstanding photograph and the first inclination was to ask about Photoshop.

A lot of people have a really casual relationship with visual media even though they look at it all day, every day of their lives.

AI, in some variety, has been impacting society since before the personal computer became popular.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

but for me, EVERYONE I know is CONSTANTLY talking about AI stuff these days.

Kids are lazy these days.

It's a getting closer to 5555 when your arms will hanging limp at your sides and your legs won't have anything to do because some machine will be doin' that for you.


Use your brains while humans still have them. I didn't and mine is largely dysfunctional.