RIP AI

As Gordon Ramsey says when he’s growing upset, just before he spews a rant filled with expletives: “Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”

My story has lain dormant for weeks as I ponder what has gone wrong, why it falls so flat, why readers are not engaging. Then I found this article about AI composition.

The article is about key tells of AI writing:

1. Lack of Consistency with Narrative Details
2. Overly Formal and Complex Words
3. Choppy Sentences
4. Inconsistencies
5. Vague Overgeneralizations
6. Weird linguistic choices

So now I know the tool I have been using to write has sabotaged my writing until it is just too difficult to absorb.

I’ve spoken previously about the anachronisms that sneak into ChatGPT’s contributions to my work, and how I have struggled with repetition, not to mention inconsistencies within the repetitions. Oh, and don’t get me started when it comes to high-flying prose that sounds so good but makes zero sense when you really read it. Especially when it comes to arcane words.

A friend just did me the kindness of reviewing my recent chapter introducing one of my main characters, Thomas Lightfoot. ChatGPT had put a piece of “molded cheese” into Tom’s pocket. My friend wondered about that one. Initially I thought it was just poetic license but then I realized, moldy cheese is cheese with mold, but molded cheese might be shaped to resemble the Statue of Liberty. So now according to my text it is moldy; a less poetic word adding far more clarity.

Using his suggestions I rewrote the chapter within my blog post but have yet to replace the historic text at the beginning of Chapter 1. I am still torn. The scene is so graphic, yet so important to understand the level of persecutions faced by the Quakers and other religious dissenters at the time.

But in any case it seems to me I have bigger fish to fry–I need to eradicate all the AI-isms throughout my work. Because evidently it is too generalized, too choppy, and riddled with weird words.

ChatGPT, you are dead to me.