from Hacker News

AI-generated fiction is flooding literary magazines – but not fooling anyone

by wyem on 2/26/23, 4:29 AM with 6 comments

• by ofalkaed on 2/26/23, 4:52 AM

  The people who make AI out to be great at writing are people who have never studied literature beyond high school and their own experiences with reading. Even the more complicated long form AI writing fails at subtext and does worse than than the average person with no real writing experience, it may be able to maintain plot but even genre fiction is more than plot.

  I think AI is going to increase the importance of the agent and greatly expand the agents role. As of now the agent largely deals with writers who have established themselves on some level even if it is just a few published short stories. There is a massive gap in the market, the agent largely ignores anyone with no publishing history. AI is going to cause the publishing industry to put more on the agent, it will be their job to sift AI from human which will expand the agent's role to include authors who are just starting out.

  Overall I think this is a good thing, it will provide much needed guidance for the writer who is just starting out, they will be able to get an agent from the get go and that agent's job will be to help the writer achieve their goals, it will force agents to take a longer term view and not just be middle men. Literature has largely lost the mentor/student relationship, this will force the agent to take up some of that, they will have to deal with the writer who is just starting out if they want to survive.

• by dsq on 2/26/23, 7:54 AM

  Could someone please post a representative snippet of such a story created by AI so we can judge it directly? Especially something that aroused the attention of the editor.