AI is ruining Fimfiction (also, come rip apart an AI story with me) · 7:42pm April 8th
AI is ruining Fimfiction. I mean, it's ruining everything, but Fimfiction is where I'm focusing my attention for this post.
I know, I know. Everyone is sick and tired of hearing about AI and I don't blame you one bit. But it's not going away, things aren't getting better, and it's going to squeeze the life out of Fimfiction. Maybe we've got a chance to do something about that before it's too late.
Modern generative AI is a thing where you type a request into a box - eg. "Write me a story about Rarity encountering a monster in the woods" - and the AI will duly spit one out for you. The story will be perfectly readable and may even pique your interest. It is, however, machined word fodder. Generated, rather than written.
The AI's output is meaningful and even logical. It reads - superficially, at least - like a human wrote it, and it easily fools humans. I've seen real people comment on AI-generated stories, saying how much they liked them. Don't feel ashamed if you have! Appreciation is subjective and there's nothing wrong with enjoying AI-written work.
Anyway, I'm sure you already know what the problem is with this. A dishonest Fimfiction user now has no need to write a story. They can ask ChatGPT to generate the story for them, then copy and paste it into Fimfiction, and hit Publish. They now have a story without doing any work themselves. This is already happening frequently. Users are simply AI-generating and publishing stories, and pretending they wrote them.
This is dishonest, but it's worse than that. It wastes the time and mental space of genuine readers who came here to read creative works, and are instead being falsely fed word mince.
I put a picture here because this was turning into a wall of text. It's totally not a metaphor or anything.
Fimfiction is not a word factory. The craft of writing is not about producing words, as much as we sometimes facetiously pretend it is. It is about telling stories. Sharing experiences. There are people on Fimfiction who have done things I'll never do, who think things I've never thought. Through their art, they share those things with me. We connect, and I cherish that connection.
Since machine stories aren't written by anyone, there's no connection. Even worse, it's the promise of a connection which turns out to be a lie.
So! I don't want to read machine stories. I think the vast majority of us don't. I think the vast majority of us are artists with integrity and honesty who don't want to be fed lies. But, there's currently a small minority with no compunctions about lying, and unfortunately they have the advantage of deniability. We can't, after all, tell when a story is AI-generated. That's kind of the point - generative AI produces output that looks human-written.
I don't have a solution to this yet. I have some ideas, which I might discuss in a future post, but none that are concrete or workable. However, in the interest of slowing the decline of Fimfiction into a pile of turgid AI mush, I've decided to have some fun with it and mock the everloving crap out of an AI story, line by line. Oh yes, I'm doing this. I always try to be kind to authors, but since this wasn't written by anyone, I won't be.
Let's rip an AI story to shreds
The story I chose is Friendship is robotic by Pony inventor, a user who doesn't know how title case works. I reported this story for being AI, but since I don't have any proof, I have no idea if it'll stay up or not. (EDIT: It did not.)
Let's read the description, which looks like it comes from the AI:
"The main six find themselves inside a strange box. Twilight, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and Spike all have to find a way to escape, figure out what happened, and get home."
Placing your description in quotation marks is a little unusual, but maybe there's a reasonable explanation for that. Strangely, Rarity is absent from the description, even though she is in the story.
There's an Oxford comma there too. That annoys me because I do favor the Oxford myself, and I'm increasingly paranoid about people thinking my writings are AI. Even though, y'know, I can actually write like a human. Meanwhile, I would bet my hat that the user who generated this story has no idea what an Oxford comma is.
Actually, looking at the description on their most recent story, I doubt the user even knows what a comma is.
Twilight Applejack rarity rainbow dash pinkie pie Fluttershy I'll find himself inside of some mystery room with a small biped next to them however they are not all together this fanfiction will explore the chaos and emotions of the main six after escaping the bipeds and finding they are no longer on Equestria however there's no way to get back all their friends family and memories are fake however they don't know that this will be adventure of the main six slowly understanding and coming to terms with the horrible truth that they are just imaginary
Pretty sure the user did write that one.
Anyway, returning to Friendship is robotic, let's dig in to the mincemeat:
Chapter one the welcome back party
Chapter One: The Welcome Back Party
The first line is the chapter title; the second line is the chapter title repeated in the body of the text, but in correct title case. This happened because when the user generated their story, the AI included chapter headings with it (it's nice like that), and the user was so stupid that they forgot to remove the AI-generated chapter heading from their pasted text and then got the title case all wrong, because they can't actually write.
Pinkie Pie was buzzing with excitement as she dashed around Sugarcube Corner, her hooves barely touching the ground. She hadn’t seen Twilight in over two months, not since she went to Griffonstone to help after a disaster. Twilight had written a letter just two days ago saying she’d be back in three days, and today was the third day. Pinkie could barely contain herself. “Almost done making the 15th cake! I know everypony will love it!” she hummed, frosting flying everywhere as she added the final touches to the party treats.
Oh look! Perfectly-rendered prose. This is actually pretty good for an AI opening - usually they open with sunlight streaming in through a window or something, the classic weather report opening. It's an efficient little hook. I wonder if we'll get any details on that disaster in Griffonstone. Sounds pretty serious if it kept Twilight away for a whole two months.
Just as Pinkie finished her masterpiece, a familiar sound reached the ears of the Main Five—chugga chugga chugga. A train was slowly making its way into Ponyville. The girls, filled with excitement, looked at each other, eyes wide with anticipation.
There's no such thing as the "Main Five", incidentally - that's a fandom term - but hey, that could be the author's mistake as well as the AI's, so I'll let that slide.
Applejack was the first to see her. She squinted, then her face lit up with joy. “Twilight!” she exclaimed, her voice carrying across the platform. Twilight was there, stepping off the train—but something was off. She didn’t look like her usual self. Her eyes were shadowed with dark circles, and her normally immaculate mane looked as though it hadn’t seen a brush in days.
I mean, that's not really off, as such. Maybe she's got a good reason for being tired, you know, like having spent eight weeks in a disaster zone.
What is off, however, is that the story transitioned to the train platform with no connecting scene. They're in Sugarcube Corner and now they're on the train platform. With prose this well-rendered, you'd think the author would have a handle on little writing details like that.
Twilight let out a yawn that seemed to come from deep within her.
As opposed to those yawns that seem to come from just beneath the surface? Using "seemed" is such tepid writing. Bad AI. Learn better.
“That’s great,” she mumbled. “I’ve been up for about two days… running on pure caffeine and magic,” she added with a tired chuckle.
See? She's got a reason for being tired. There's nothing "off" about this - if anything, this is on and Twilight's been doing good work. But the AI doesn't write like that. The AI writes whatever it thinks will catch your attention. Probably why scammers love it.
The Main Five all agreed, their faces lighting up at the thought of the celebration, but also understanding Twilight’s need for rest.
Show, don't tell. These are five individual characters, not a hive mind. Then again, you're probably reaching the end of the generation limit, so best to wrap this bit up quickly.
Spike, who had been anxiously waiting at the door, dashed forward and wrapped his arms around Twilight in a tight hug. “Welcome home, Twilight!” he cheered, jumping up and down with excitement.
By the way, if you're enjoying the sentence construction '"X," Y verbed, clause.', oh boy are you going to love the AI-flooded future of Fimfiction. It doesn't know how to do anything else.
“Thanks, Spike,” Twilight said with a tired smile. She gave him a quick hug before adding, “I’m going to take a short nap. Please wake me up around 5:00,” she asked.
Ending the chapter there? A bit of a limp ending compared to that strong opening hook, but sure, why not. That's chapter 1! It's only 600-ish words, but it felt longer because of the AI's ability to inflate incredibly basic scenes with endless amounts of fluff.
Onto chapter 2:
Awakening
Chapter 2: Awakening
The author forgot the format they were using for their chapter titles, so this one is just titled "Awakening".
Twilight Sparkle gasped as an electric shock coursed through her back hooves. Her muscles tensed, and her mind scrambled to make sense of what was happening. She slowly tried to move her hooves, but they felt stiff and cramped. Her body felt like it had been coiled too tightly in one position for far too long. With a soft groan, Twilight carefully opened her eyes.
AI loves nothingburgers like this. That's a lot of words just to say that Twilight woke up somewhere and doesn't know where she is. And it's really boring. Also, is she frantically scrambling or carefully opening her eyes? Pick a lane.
She blinked in confusion. At first, it was hard to make sense of her surroundings. All she could see was glass. It was cold and clear, like a box of some sort. Twilight's heart raced as she realized that she was trapped in something she couldn’t understand.
Twilight, it's glass. You do understand glass. This sounds like something an AI would say to try to sound dramatic because it doesn't know how people - or ponies in this case - think.
Her magic flared weakly as she tried to push against the glass, but it wouldn’t budge.
With a grunt of frustration, Twilight pushed harder, and with a sharp click, the box opened with a soft latch.
Those two lines were back-to-back. Guess she just needed to try the same thing twice. This is riveting.
Confused and disoriented, Twilight looked around. The room she found herself in was stark, sterile—a sharp contrast to the warm and familiar environment of Ponyville.
No, reaaaaaaaaaally? A cold, empty room full of glass boxes is different to Ponyville? Being kidnapped in your sleep is different to not being kidnapped in your sleep? I'm so glad you included this detail, author. You're so human.
When no answer came, her heart began to pound in her chest.
Actually her heart was already racing, but it's fine. Nobody's going to remember something that was written five lines ago, and I suppose you only have so many metaphors for this sort of thing.
Inside was Rainbow Dash, motionless, her body stiff and unresponsive.
Inside was V, W, her X Y and Z.
“Rainbow Dash! Wake up!” she shouted, her voice growing desperate.
---
Rainbow Dash’s Point of View:
Ah, the old mid-chapter POV switch with heading. A classic device of all good authors. Nice 3-hyphen line break there by the way. I love Markdown. Fimfiction has [hr] for that, but like you know, whatever.
“What is it, brainhead?” Rainbow Dash replied, trying to roll over again and get some more rest. “Why are you waking me up?”
It's "egghead", not "brainhead", Dash. I guess this AI isn't really a true fan. Actually I've never heard the insult "brainhead" before. It sounds like a compliment?
The next section is just all the girls waking up in glass boxes and being all confused, and to be honest, the writing does kind of work here because the characters are all confused and talking past each other, which is exactly the kind of atmosphere you want for a waking-up-in-a-strange-room story.
It does immediately forget that this is supposed to be Rainbow Dash's POV, however, and just goes back to the normal third-person perspective.
Anyway, they talk about nothing for a bit because none of them know where they are and the AI isn't ready to move on yet. But eventually they do:
The Mane 6 walked toward the door, their steps echoing on the cold, metal floor. As they stepped into the next hallway, the walls seemed to stretch on forever. There were stripes on the walls, but everything looked unnervingly sterile and artificial.
Oh, the irony.
Also, we're the "Mane 6" now, not the "main six".
At the end of the hallway, they found a large door.
AIs are particularly good at this kind of mystery plot where nobody knows anything, since it can just keep generating new mysteries as the story progresses. Nothing really needs to tie back to anything else, or be meaningfully resolved.
Twilight used her magic to push the door open, revealing a strange, large object on the other side.
A large, strange object, surely. Adjectival order, you know.
Tracks ran beneath it, and as she looked closer, she realized something shocking.
“This is a train,” Twilight whispered, eyes wide.
I hope you were shocked by that, because the AI said it was shocking, and the AI is a good writer that understands emotions.
“But… where are the smokestacks? Where’s the engine?”
Well, at least Twilight knows more about trains than I do.
Then, in the conductor’s room, Pinkie Pie accidentally hit a large red button. Before anyone could stop her, the train lurched to life. The doors slid shut, and the train began to move.
That doesn't make sense. If Pinkie already hit the button, it's already too late for anyone to stop that from happening. Also, this story always refers to Pinkie as "Pinkie Pie", never just "Pinkie", and it sounds totally not artificial at all.
Anyway, they find Spike, chapter over.
Chapter 3 The Mystery Deepens
Chapter 3: The Mystery Deepens
Missed a colon, you complete tool.
The main six stood in front of the large door, staring at the polished metal surface. Applejack squinted at it, trying to figure out how to move it.
We're back to "main six" again. And if you're wondering how they solve this puzzle, Applejack pushes the door and it opens, because that's how doors work. This AI seems to find doors fascinating.
"Okay, girls," she said, her voice sounding tired but determined. "We don't know what’s out there, but whatever it is, it must be better than in here."
I'd love to know your logic there, Applejack. What if out there is a giant blender?
On the other side was another hallway—just like the one they had come from before. Only this time, it seemed even longer and more endless, with walls that glowed unnervingly white.
You might think this is boring, but unnervingly white empty corridors are actually the AI's fetish.
Also, did you catch that em-dash? AI stories use lots of them, human authors don't.
Pinkie Pie, however, seemed unphased. She was already bouncing happily, her eyes scanning the area for anything interesting. "Ooooh! This place is so mysterious!" she chirped. "I bet there’s a fun surprise around here somewhere!"
unfazed, AI. Who taught you how to spell? Was it a massive corpus of text containing the common misspelling "unphased"? I bet it was.
By the way, I haven't been quoting Pinkie much in this story, but she's a complete idiot with no personality because all the AI knows about her is that she's the silly one. This is what you've got to look forward to in our AI-written future on Fimfiction - character personalities with all the depth of a wiki character bio written by someone who's never seen the show.
The Mane 6 took a cautious step forward, peering through the now open doorway. Their eyes widened with surprise at what they saw.
It wasn’t another hallway. Instead, they found themselves staring into a small, stark room with smooth, metallic walls and a series of buttons and numbers lining one wall.
I'm telling you, this is the AI's fetish. Also, back to "Mane 6" again.
Twilight’s mind was racing. The sudden appearance of this elevator, and the strange machine they had encountered earlier, didn’t feel like mere coincidence. It all seemed... orchestrated.
I'm sorry, Twilight, could you give us more detail there? Why's it not a coincidence? Orchestrated how? I hope you're not just saying things to make it seem like there's an overarching mystery when there actually isn't.
As the platform began to rise, they all exchanged nervous glances, their stomachs tightening with uncertainty. The walls around them flickered with strange symbols and numbers, adding to the surreal atmosphere.
Wow, that certainly is mysterious and surreal and zzzzzzzzzzz
As they reached the top, the doors of the elevator opened with a soft whoosh, revealing a breathtaking sight.
They stepped out into a lush, familiar landscape—the Everfree Forest.
Oh, sure, why not. The Everfree Forest is definitely a place in the show and it's mentioned in enough media that the AI probably knows all about it. Plus it's a forest, so you'll probably run into about twenty different OCs.
Chapter 4 ponyville
Chapter 4 : Mystery of Ponyville
You're not even trying, are you?
Twilight Sparkle and her friends stood at the edge of Ponyville, staring at the eerily quiet town. The once-bustling streets were silent, with not a single pony in sight. It felt like something was missing, as if the life had been sucked out of their world. The usual sounds of chattering, laughter, and distant music had been replaced by an unnerving stillness.
Oh, thank god, now we don't have to deal with other characters. I didn't want this to get too interesting.
Rainbow, Applejack, Pinkie, and Fluttershy all say lines in sequence and according to their character, with Fluttershy somehow managing to be even more vapid than Pinkie:
Fluttershy’s wings fluttered uneasily at her sides.
"It’s just too quiet. I don’t like it, Twilight. It feels... wrong."
No, really, Fluttershy? The entire population of the town has vanished in a night and that feels wrong to you? You weirdo.
The group made their way down the deserted streets, heading toward the heart of Ponyville where the towering Crystal Castle stood in all its shimmering glory. The Golden Oaks Library was a distant memory now, long since destroyed during the battle with Tirek, and its place was the castle Twilight had inherited from Princess Celestia.
Three things: It's not called the Crystal Castle; it's the Golden Oak Library; and as we all know, this castle grew out of a magic lockbox and Celestia had nothing to do with it. AI's so good, isn't it? It's going to help us all become better writers.
As they approached the entrance to the castle, Twilight’s mind was working overtime, trying to think of a reason why the town would suddenly be empty.
"Maybe there's been some kind of emergency," she suggested. "Everypony's hiding somewhere, or they're on some kind of mission?"
Do you remember how Twilight in the show was the intelligent one? Ah, good times.
Twilight stepped up to her writing desk, levitating a piece of parchment and a quill, as she quickly began to write.
> Dear Princess Celestia,
We find ourselves in an unusual and troubling situation. Ponyville is completely silent—there's not a pony to be found anywhere. I've sent a letter earlier, but I haven't received any response. I don't know what's happening, but it's growing more concerning by the minute. I need your guidance, Princess. If you know anything, please respond.
Your faithful student,
Twilight Sparkle
Twilight actually didn't send a letter earlier. They've only just got here. But, what's more interesting to me is the > character at the start of the text, which is how you would write a quotation in Markdown, the markup used by ChatGPT - but not Fimfiction, which has the [quote] tag for this.
Anyway, there's some nothing dialogue and they decide to head to Canterlot, because the AI's data embedding returns very close values for Ponyville and Canterlot.
Canterlot was not far, but the heavy silence followed them the entire way there. The once-bustling city felt just as still as Ponyville had—an eerie calm that seemed to swallow all sound.
Please stop with the "seemed". Say that the eerie calm did swallow the sound. It hits harder.
Incidentally, Rainbow Dash apparently went ahead of them, but doesn't show up for the rest of the chapter. Maybe she's there and maybe she isn't, but the main five don't get any more dialogue so they can suck it.
They meet a lone nameless guard at Canterlot who tells them everyone's vanished and they don't know what's going on. Hey, do you remember that underground facility with the glass boxes? I wonder what that was. I'm sure we'll get an answer to that and that the AI won't just keep generating mystery after mystery without resolving any one of them, haha.
The story ends there for now because the user ran out of AI credits, probably. Can't wait to see how this gripping mystery unfolds through chapters 5 to 370.
Please don't let this be Fimfiction's future.
I understand why you are frustrated and upset about it, but I’m assuming this user is new here and does not understand that AI is not allowed.
So why don’t you cut them some slack, If they are new here, why are you ripping the story apart, yes, it may be AI generated. I haven’t read it yet and I’m not going to.
The website might really benefit from an AI tag, so those issues would be at least partially dropped
Honestly, proving it's AI is the hard part. Spotting it is fairly easy. Like you observe, there's a ton of clear signals when something's AI-generated and even when not? The vibe is usually there. Thankfully I don't think we've hit the point of it being really really bad yet - not like how so many image sites are being flooded - but it's bad enough.
Doesn't help that there's a couple of bad actors around who keep making apologies/excuses to defend it.
5840097
I have thought about that before - Derpibooru, for example, introduced a set of AI tags and eventually just booted all the AI-generated art onto a separate website. Which may even be the way to go, I'm not sure.
I don't really want to encourage AI content at all, but sequestering it in its own place might be an improvement. Assuming, of course, that people don't lie and continue to pass off AI as their own work.
5840097
I agree.
5840099
The way I see it, without further speculation about how others were managing it, at the very least it will give a framework to combat the issue. No AI tag? The story is deleted. Repeated offender? The user is banned. Et cetera
You kinda need to acknowledge something as existing within the system to proceed to work with it. Right now, everything related to it is too murky
Behold, a future! Not a good future, but it sure is a future. (And some startling similarities to certain TV series. Every answer another question until they have to actually wrap up the series and make everything make sense...)
5840099
Given that the site no longer receives real attention from the owners as-is (embeds have been broken for months, there's zero effort at spam filtering new users, and so on) I'm gonna put the odds of an AI version of Fimfic coming from the same people at about the same odds of the Montreal Expos coming back as an MLB team.
5840110
Some embeds work for me. I mean, STORY embeds.
- MLP: FiM
- Comedy
Starlight accidentally reveals Twilight's coronation surprise. An alternate ending to "Harvesting Memories".If you want embedded images, a LOT of image hosting sites decided not to support sites like fimfic so well anymore and that's not fimfic's fault. Here's a blog post about how to make images work...
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/1028988/image-hosting-on-fimfiction-an-authoritative-account
Well...AI written stories seem to come in a spectrum of sorts. For a lot of them 'logical' is excessively high praise, as your analysis of this example story shows.
Anyway, your blog post is a nice example of how to find some of the problems in many AI written stories, thanks!
Honestly, this is a better write-up on this story than mine, wherein I would have taken one look at the description, a small portion of chapter, and nodded while saying, "Yep, that's AI." Because English is one of my strong suits, I am a severe perfectionist of the crippling degree when it comes to writing ponefics, and I am part of the generation that people think have a lack of English skills. (Doesn't work for all AI stories, of course -- just the ones by those whose aim is to fool people, which there are a lot of.)
Unfortunately, as long as the site owners aren't willing to step up, this is the future we will have to accept. And I remember reading a doc about all sorts of site features it'd be cool to have -- an AI tag would be beneficial. But the only thing I've seen is fixing site problems mods cannot.
I'm not going to go into a whole ten-page spiel about AI because I tried that on another story already and...it didn't end well. But I'll speak about the issue again this time, as an exception, because this is a good analysis and I commend it.
I will lay down one definitive message, though: killing a forest and its wildlife is not worth you putting out words you didn't even write. For God sakes, write with your ten fingers and your eyeballs and your not-yet-developed/fully-developed brain like a sane and normal human being. It's just common sense!
In the spirit of your blog post, I was in the middle of writing my April Fool's madness and I guess the cursor blinked for too long while I was thinking so Google suggested I could click ctrl + w to have AI help me write.
Curious to see what it might come up with, I suggested the scene I was working on: "Secretary murders a PETA volunteer with a Bad Dragon redacted" and Google AI churned through its circuits and said, "We’re still learning, and can’t help with that."
5840120
I abuse the hell out of punctuation, sometimes just for fun, sometimes to troll my editors and sometimes because I love commas too much.
5840110
Yeah, I'm not expecting it to happen. Still, I think it's a useful exercise to think about it.
5840122
I can't wait for the day they finally figure it out and get back to you
5840124
I think what I wrote was better :P I'll admit, I stole the idea from Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. And then followed it with a Die Hard reference, lol.
But I took another pause and the little chatbox came up again and so I suggested the next scene that was going to happen, which was 'barbarian kills a man with a toilet ripped from the floor.' And it actually did it, also correctly figuring out which character in the story is the barbarian (it's Buttercup).
It even put a little disclaimer at the end: "This is a creative writing aid, and is not intended to be factual." I'm gonna have to remember to use that statement in the story.
So just like the new writers brought on during Seasons 8 & 9, who were given wiki-style cheat notes of the characters along with select clips to informing them (some of them not even nominally about the featured character). Seems familiar.
Obviously they turned out much better than this slop, because they were still written and edited by human hands the whole way.
Sorry, don’t have anything else to add to your analysis, bud, that bit to compare for comedy was all I felt I could add. Hope it did the trick.
Oh, wait, there was one bit:
Wait, these AI writers cost money? People aren’t just generating this junk because it’s lazy and free, they’re actually paying for it? Somehow, that makes it even worse, that even at a (small) cost, they’d take this over writing something or commissioning from an author.
5840131
No, I was being flippant. Some do place a limit on how much you can generate in a given time, though.
I think this website should have a rule that says if you use AI, you have to say that you’re using it and if you don’t say it, your story will get taken down.
Or a tag for an assistance, but that rule also says that the story shouldn’t be written entirely by AI!
I know you might not like my response, but that’s ok.
Wait, I thought AI stories were banned here.
5840290
They are. However, people still post them anyway.
5840292
If people are still posting them anyway, shouldn't we be... y'know, reporting them?
I think AI can be used for plenty of cool things (like the one time I got it to upscale some old Pinball art I needed for a project of mine-- it's very good at image upscaling).
I tried AI story generation just for fun (I was curious if it could make a fun story and I wasn't gonna post it or anything). It became clear to me how dogshit it really was at writing, probably because it has no human experiences. Could it ever get good? I don't know but I'm not that interested in that.
You can tell how I haven't posted anything with AI, btw, because of how rarely I update my stories now.
If I was using it, my shit would have been done ages ago. 
However, if you could get AI so good that it can do things like restore old media that is half lost or maybe even make fully animated Fimfics when fed them (imagine feeding it your favorite Fimfic and you get a pony episode). I would be on board 10000000%. Who knows what the future brings, but I still feel like THAT future is either very far away or not possible. But, who knows.
Sad if Fimfic is being taken over by Slop though.
5840317
We are, and in considerable numbers. The problem, once more, is proving that something's AI. Unfortunately vibes aren't good enough, but between AI text detectors (which are flawed in their own way so you have to take them with a grain of salt) and obvious mistakes1 I'd say we can nail about half-ish of them.
(1And by mistakes I mean big, dumb, obvious errors. Like I've reported ones that left in ChatGPT going "Okay, I'll continue this story from here" or including direct links to the LLM they used in the story text.)