Providing some clarity on my usage of AI in my writing process and my feelings with it, as well as future changes.

-

⸻ WHATS GOING ON?

This has been brewing inside me for a while now and I think I need to get everything about this topic off my chest. The trigger for me to finally decided to come clear is the statement of the sickynikki, which made me reflect on the topic of AI assisted writing.

I am close to reaching a significant milestone, but to be honest, it doesn’t feel like I deserve it. Before commenting, please read through my reasoning so you can understand where I’m coming from.

I always had a imposter syndrome when it came to my writing, which led me to make a very stupid decision. I began relying on AI more than I should have. At the time it felt like a quick fix for the pressure I was feeling, but in the long run it only made me feel more like a fraud. Every time I received praise, I felt guilty, and even gaining new followers made the feeling worse. Especially when I started to overtake other creators, I kept thinking that they deserved it far more than I did.

-

⸻ HOW I USED AI

You might be wondering what exactly I did, so I want to explain it clearly. Otherwise this would be too vague and people wouldn’t be able to form their own judgment.

For my initial messages, I would first write a draft of the message and then use a prompt with ChatGPT to improve it, using improve loosely here as human written content is always better than AI. I don’t want to share the exact prompt because I don’t want to encourage others to make the same mistake I did. But I will explain what the prompt did to my draft of the initial message: The prompt didn’t just correct grammar or spelling. It changed prose, rewrote sentences, sometimes whole paragraphes and added content to my writing, which made it no longer fully mine. So basically instead of what you usually should do with a draft, go back to it and rework it, I made ChatGPT do that.

For the personality section of my bots I used AI to rephrase my writing and trim down tokens of some section, most affected was the background in this process.

I never used AI to fully generate me a bot, all generated content was always based on my own writing. I don't think that makes it any better to be clear, I just don't want leave any information out, so you know exactly how I used ChatGPT.

I am really sorry for not being honest and transparent about my process till now. Escpically because you, users of my bot, came here under the impression that all of my content is 100% written by me when that wasn’t the case.

And to my fellow creators, I am also deeply sorry. I hope i didn’t demotivate anyone from writing who saw my content reach trending, there are amazing writes here that got overshadowed because of my actions and that’s not something I ever wanted to happen.

If you are disappointed in me, I completely understand that. I am very disappointed in myself as well. I come from a fanfiction writing background, and honestly I should have held myself to a higher standard than this.

-

⸻ WHATS NEXT?

I will stop using the method I relied on previously and instead write everything myself. I have no plans of quitting, but I do want to change the way I make bots.

I want to be proud of the things I create and the achievements I reach, rather than feeling like a fraud. I genuinely want to do better and not add to a problem that’s so common on this site and be part of the reason others are losing their motivation to write.

I enjoy writing and don’t fully understand my own reasoning on why I felt the need to rely on AI so heavily. I think partially it was a mix of insecurity and seeing others do it and be successful.

If you feel like I have been too vague at any point or need clarification on something, feel free to ask in the comments.

Thank you for taking the time of reading this and bye bye.