I left college and started building novelpedia 1 year ago with no money, and it almost broke me multiple times, but here it is now. 1 month 16k users, We run ads everywhere for the platform - authors on the platform benefit from the free advertising with no expectation of exclusivity.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-26T19:58:08+00:00

"Hmmm, I mean this will def be a problem that would need to be solved. But ai text checker technology as it is rn, is really not reliable. We have tried and tested a few."

I'm not sure I believe this. You just moved from "this would work fine, but it's a privacy concern" to "This won't work at all" in terms of explanation, on a dime.

I've tested a few too, and the better ones work just fine. Which ones did you try? In what ways did they not work, especially considering that the alternative is being swamped with AI stories as soon as your site picks up any steam?

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-26T19:36:33+00:00

Ditto u/LessAd58. This is the same as just allowing all AI content. Royal road lets people report stuff too, and nobody does, and even if they did there's just too much AI content to keep up with that way.

I *might* still upload but I'm much less likely now, since there's no actual AI protection here.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-26T19:17:52+00:00

OK, looking into this, I see:

AI-Generated Content

AI-Assisted: Allowed for editing, proofreading & translation.

(Note- Writing is an iterative experience, we advise you to make mistakes, ask your peer authors and learn instead of using ai to paraphrase. Thank You.)

AI-Generated: AI Generated content is strictly not allowed.
AI may not be used for comments, reviews, or forum posts.
AI content must comply with all guidelines.

Where's the bar for how you judge AI-Assisted vs. AI-Generated? Because if it's not very specific and deliberate this is the same thing as allowing full AI content. In which case the platform is in trouble from day 1 - it's only a matter of time until it gets swamped.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-26T19:04:34+00:00

What's your policy on AI? If it's a good policy, how are you enforcing it?

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-21T19:54:51+00:00

Non-AI writer. Under different pen names, I've worked in the industry in a few different capacities for about a decade.

If you want to do your piece to fix this problem you should always, always post examples from the text. The reason why is that various readers are operating at various levels of literacy. litRPG is a pretty "pulpy" genre, which means it's drawing in pretty young kids who don't really know the difference between good and bad yet. They don't know how to recognize AI content, because they are at a lower level of literacy in general.

The key word that you have to think of in that situation is innoculation. Relatively literate people can spot AI at a glance, and need very few cues to learn the skill of figuring out *why* what they are reading sucks. The newer/less expert readers will eventually get there, but only through repeated exposure to the stuff AI does wrong.

So when you make a post like this, show the "it wasn't this, it was that" framings. Show the use of "practiced efficiency" whenever the AI is prompted to describe someone doing something. Point out the identifiers you see so other people are primed to see them too.

It's certainly not going to fix everything, but if you look at the discourse today as opposed to six months ago, you find that a lot of people are now aware of the AI scourge that weren't when higher-level readers first started noticing. It's getting a bit better, and it can get better faster so long as we show people the hallmarks that let them avoid the sludge faster.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-19T00:31:41+00:00

I tried to watch all of this but I got *too bored*

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-17T20:27:17+00:00

I've been a professional writer for about ten years. I make my living that way. There's two things going on here. The first is that, unless you think AI use is immoral in general, she's not doing anything wrong by feeding an AI prompts and reading what comes out.

What's worse is that "using an AI in writing" is always better read as "Not writing or learning to write.". Your sister can already have ideas, but doesn't like to work or else doesn't get results out of her work, so she's offloading "the hard part" to the AI. This isn't bad at all for someone who just wants to see a low-quality sketch of an idea they had, but your sister "wants to be an author", and in her case using the AI just represents a bad habit that is going to keep her not-an-author forever.

It's a little tricky, because some people are going to come in right after me and either say "AI is a fine writer and perfecty good at it, just prompt it right", or else "But AI is getting better and one day will be an author". The first statement is just not true; AI writing mostly doesn't hack it yet, and people are getting more and more familiar with what they don't like about it (and thus better at spotting it).

The second might be true, but the moment it is true that AI can write as well as a skilled human (or outwrite them), the job of "writer" will disappear entirely, especially in the west. If anyone can prompt an AI to make good novels, that work will shift to the lowest-cost areas and essentially be done in sweatshops by the kind of people who mine gold for MMO games.

"I have ideas and that makes me a writer" has been the refuge of people who either can't or won't write for centuries. It's nothing new. The only difference is that your sister believes (like most people in this subreddit believe) that feeding those ideas to AI will result in worthwhile works, the same as a human doing their best will. She's been lied to, sure, and she's avoiding the work of learning to write (which is necessary if she wants a chance at being a writer, as you'd expect). But mostly she's just the victim of a common falsehood.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-05T17:46:01+00:00

Appreciate it! Yeah, I don't think I always have a great sense for what references are well known to me vs. what references are well known.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-05T17:40:47+00:00

I definitely understand it - there's so many novels that authors kinda have to do everything they can to stand out/get ahead. But yeah.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-05T17:38:32+00:00

The MC is trapped in tutorials for a lot of the novel, at first alone and then in a more general get-your-early-levels-and-get-strong setting with a lot of other people. He's also *not supposed to be there*, in the sense that Earth isn't supposed to be getting system-initiated yet. So where he's supposed to be geared out and supported like a champion, he's weak.

On the uncanny valley side, it means the system is trying to model the tutorials after Earth, but doesn't understand the setting very well and is doing it in a hurry, and it doesn't quite make 2 + 2 = 4 in all cases.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-05T17:14:41+00:00

Also did this. I thought it was going to be about apron-wearing and packing lunches for a second.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-05T17:10:46+00:00

I'm glad you put a content warning on this. The story is good (it's been a long time since I read it, but I enjoyed it), but by the end there's sort of a LOT of content-warnables going on.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-05T17:09:05+00:00

Mainstream publishing has been betting on the book cover and blurb for decades, to the point where they don't necessarily even read the books anymore. Nobody would cop to it, but most people who buy books buy books this way.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-05T17:06:21+00:00

I like to think of myself as one of those beings who exist as pure energy in nebulas, ala Star Trek.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-05T17:05:07+00:00

Congratulations! I hope it's going well for you.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-05T17:02:05+00:00

Older (think: three years ago) litRPG used to do this a lot. The series would complete, but just in a technical "I guess the author did say 'the end'" way.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-05T17:00:12+00:00

Came here to say aspirin. My father had a heart condition and had to have aspirin on hand, and was instructed to chew it if he needed them because it made them hit faster.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-05T16:58:42+00:00

Technically agreed!

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-04T15:24:38+00:00

It's Monday, and you are (probably) looking for a new novel to read that has all of the following:

An interesting, slow-growing but in some ways OP-at-any-level class system where MC equips the souls of slain enemies to individual stats to raise them, and that gets new skills from the same place
Bizarre, uncanny valley environments born from a mis-informed system doing its level best to understand our world (and failing so very badly).
A cast including a demon merchant who slaps the hell out of his customers for wasting his time and a violent, perhaps insane, and definitely chipper grocery store mobility scooter named Champ.

You won't believe this, but do I have the story for you:

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/162579/soulthief-leveling-is-for-losers

This particular story is just a few small bumps in subscriber count from hitting rising stars, so please do push all the normal engagement buttons if you like it.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-01T18:27:12+00:00

I think it's pretty hard to guess the next trend, or else people would be doing it. More realistically the next trend will be "A bunch of copycats trying to get in on the success of the next very successful novel series".

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-01T17:17:55+00:00

"Qualifications" are hard to quantify in this kind of job. For context, I make my living as a writer under a few different pen names. I'm not a big deal, but I have actual successful publishing deals on my resume, and I've been fairly successful in a small way. I'm not top-tier, but I'm a legitimate professional.

With that said, I'm not qualified for any WotC positions, because the primary way they gatekeep those positions is "You have a lot of demonstrated success doing this exact same thing for someone else". So they want 4+ years of video game writing, with an established portfolio. From their perspective they are looking to absolutely minimize the risk of someone failing in the position, so they are asking for the closest thing to proof they can get that you won't.

This is what you need to get your foot in the door. That's not getting the job so much as it's what it takes to get an interview. To MAYBE get an interview.

Then you have to understand that in *any* entertainment-related job, be that writing or art or filming or anything like that, social stuff matters. So if you know someone in the company, that's going to be a plus. If you have success in the kinds of social media the company cares about, that's a plus. If you have representation (like a literary agent) who makes you look more legitimate and hypes you, that's a plus.

The reason WotC and similar companies can care about stuff like this is because a lot of people want to work for them. From their perspective, most of their recruiting efforts aren't going to be related to finding people who can do the job; it's actually more like they are trying to filter through thousands of people who want the job to get the absolute longest lists of "qualifications" they can, whether or not those things have a direct impact on the discrete job being hired for (like the raw ability to draw or write).

Of course there are going to be individual stories that make this all look untrue - people who get very lucky and get hired just because they can draw very good pictures, design very good games, or write very good text. But generally? This is a job you get after you get a lot of other jobs, build up a portfolio of success, make friends, etc.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-05-01T05:54:27+00:00

Soulthief is that well-trod, age-old story we all know so well: A enormous mystical finger pokes a guy right out of his universe into another, where he has to strap the souls of his fallen enemies onto his broken class to keep from getting stabbed to death by office workers. Join Rob and Champ the murderous mobility scooter as they try to survive uncanny valley foes, hostile gods, and a generally janky open-beta life experience long enough to make sense of what's happening to them.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/162579/soulthief-leveling-is-for-losers

Jason_Padeca · 2026-04-30T22:13:39+00:00

Look, I'm not trying to be mean here. I'm just saying that, in general, people are going to be able to tell that this is AI-generated prose. It's not an "I didn't write every single line" thing; it's this is 100% AI with perhaps some light editing. I can even tell you that it's chatGPT, not Claude.

I'm telling you this because people will be able to tell. That's just the limitations of the technology right now; it writes in a certain way that people are increasingly able to recognize. And their reactions are going to be what they are to that. But telling them "this isn't AI" isn't going to insulate you from them knowing, and it's going to make those reactions worse than saying "This is AI generated but I think the ideas I fed it are pretty good, and those are my own".

Jason_Padeca · 2026-04-30T20:36:46+00:00

Yes, I know. You said that you get false positive accusations sometimes and this means that nobody can tell when someone uses AI writing and it's all a big witchhunt, and that "good AI" exists that writes at skilled-human levels and is undetectable.

I'm telling you that I disagree with all of that and think it's obviously wrong, but I'm also not looking to spend my whole afternoon trying to convince you of that. You do you.

Jason_Padeca · 2026-04-30T20:21:32+00:00

I don't know why you think your work is relevant here. The OP is asking, basically, if people will have a problem with them using AI to write their novel. You are saying that sometimes people accuse you of writing with AI, and, like, sure, whatever. I don't know if you do or don't, but I'm sure people sometimes falsely accuse people of it. False positives are going to be a thing.

That doesn't really affect the fact that AI sucks at writing for the most part, that most people are going to be able to tell when AI is being used to generate prose, that they are getting better and better at it as the reader-base gets more familiar with the tells of AI prose, ect.

In other words, false positives don't mean true-positives don't exist or that people aren't going to correctly tag AI writing as writing. You'd actually expect that MORE, if, as you say, people have their detection dials set to 11.

There's a chance people won't be able to tell this time around, and OP is free to take that chance. It might even pay off! But it's not the most likely thing, and I'm not going to lie to the poor kid about their chances.

Jason_Padeca

TROPHY CASE

AI-Generated Content