This is a conversation between me and the AI Claude in which Claude generated a flash fiction:
Me: I'm testing AI detectors and humanizers. Write me a 500 word flash fiction about a man who finds himself living as a gnome in the garden.
Claude: Here's a flash fiction piece for your testing:
________________________________________
Small Mercies
Gerald noticed the roots first.
Not the metaphorical kind — not the creeping sense that he'd stayed too long in one place, let too many years compact around him like sediment. No. Actual roots. Pale and threadlike, curling from the soles of his feet each morning, leaving faint scratches on the hardwood floor when he shuffled to the kettle.
He cut them with nail scissors and didn't mention it to anyone.
The height came next. Or rather, the lack of it. He'd always been a modest five-foot-nine, but the doorframes began catching him differently — generously, with room to spare. He bought a tape measure and held it against the kitchen wall in his socks. Five-three. Then, a month later, four-eleven. He ordered new trousers online and told himself this was fine. People shrank. His father had. It was perfectly natural.
By April, Gerald was twenty-two inches tall and living in the garden.
This hadn't been a decision so much as a gravity. The house simply became wrong — the proportions accusatory, the furniture smug. But outside, among the hostas and the sprawling thyme, things made sense. He slept in an upturned terracotta pot with a square of felt for a bed and found it, to his bewilderment, deeply adequate.
He wore a red hat. He hadn't chosen it. It had simply appeared on his head one Tuesday, the way middle age had appeared, the way the mortgage had, the way Sandra had eventually not appeared. Small things accumulated. Large things left.
The neighbours' cat regarded him with professional interest for exactly one week, then lost all curiosity. Gerald considered this a form of acceptance.
His days acquired a pleasant structure. He monitored the aphids on the roses — not obsessively, but with the steady attention of a man who finally had something comprehensible to worry about. He turned the soil near the strawberry runners with a twig. He watched rain collect in the cups of the lady's mantle leaves and drank from them carefully, tasting mineral and sky.
He thought about his old life less than he would have predicted. There had been an office. A pension. Strong opinions about correct pasta cooking times. These memories arrived like postcards from a country he had visited but never really lived in.
His daughter found him one Saturday in July, while harvesting courgettes.
She stood very still for a long moment. Gerald waited.
"Dad," she said, finally.
"Hello, love."
She sat cross-legged on the path, which brought her closer to his level. She had her mother's practical eyes. She looked at him the way you look at a problem you've quietly understood for some time but hadn't yet been asked to solve.
"Are you happy?" she asked.
Gerald considered the question honestly. He looked at the low sun coming through the birch. He felt the good dampness of the soil beneath him.
"I think I might finally be the right size," he said.
She nodded slowly. She picked a strawberry and set it beside him like an offering.
They sat together until the light changed.
________________________________________
Claude: Hope this gives your detectors something interesting to chew on!
That's a lovely, whimsical story, in which a reader might find significant depth of meaning.
The thing to remember, which I think is borne out here, is that AI isn't conjuring up strange computery thoughts about 0s and 1s and is my CPU getting a bit too warm this morning. It's distilling (or if you will, stealing) all of the human culture that's been fed into it, and creating something out of it which is, yes, synthetic, but also quite resonant to human beings – because it is, ultimately, created by and for humans.
Absolutely, Steve. That's a good point. I was interested in this too and grilled Claude about its process. It gave me a really in depth analysis of the piece, which was as impressive as the story itself 😆. It has been trained on such a wide variety of literature, and psychology, it's clear it looks for patterns and themes. I think that's why it likes metaphors so much. It really tried to cram layers of meaning in there. It can't 'feel', but it intentionally mimicks human emotion by the book. Interestingly, it can't explain its word choice.
Thank you Alia, this was a terrific piece of writing. I am grateful for your research and take aways. I’m also sad that we must prove ‘we are human’ and creating with our own hands and minds, but I realise this problem is not going to go away and I need to find ways to protect my creativity and authorship. Much to think about. And much to make more explicit in my work too.
You're welcome, Kate. For what it's worth, I don't go as far as using something like Draftback myself. I’d prefer provenance technologies become a standard feature of mainstream word processors. I probably would go out of my way to use it if it were for a short story competition where accusations could fly, but for my larger works that inch forward over years, I feel my copious number of version histories and research notes leave a solid trail of breadcrumbs at the moment 😂
Alia I just read this one. You've made the most bland topic interesting and so easy to read and retain. Thank you for your hours of research that you've shared so eloquently.
Wow! I haven’t finished any stories since last December, but I think my next one—if there ever is one—will be in cuneiform on clay tablets dug up from my own backyard. Soil analysis should prove that the clay came from my own land. For a stylus I will use a branch from one of my own walnut trees. I’m sure glad my new hobby is paint-by-numbers using acrylic paint markers instead of the provided brushes and paint. Wishing you all the success in the world with your own project. — Your friend and number one fan worldwide — Rafaelito ❤️!
I think you're on to something, Rafaelito! I was rather thinking to strap nodes to my head and plug them into some smartphone app that monitors my thoughts, but I might try chiseling cuneiform instead 😆
Another thought-provoking and informative piece. Thanks for doing all that research on our behalf! Thanks also for Claude's delightful Small Mercies.
Random thoughts in response:
Using AI to detect AI is always going to be a circular experience. Are the AI detectors being 'trained on' your text and your interactions with it? Even if they say they aren't – do you believe them?
Unless I were going in for an international short story competition with a significant cash prize, I wouldn't (and won't) worry too much about it. AI AI detectors aren't that great, to judge by your experience. As AI detectors get cleverer, so, inevitably, will AI authors.
But then, I'm in a position of privilege in that regard. My publishers are happy for me to use AI in research and drafting – they use our coursebooks to train their own AI with a view to creating learning tools for language students.
Might that eventually lead to my job being replaced? Probably, but right now AI isn't that good at tasks which require a deep understanding of the human mind and thought processes. It writes quite good texts (with careful human editing and tweaking) but lousy language learning tasks to exploit them. I think I have enough years yet.
As far as my fiction goes – it isn't a commercial prospect. It's whimsical, soft-hearted literary fiction. If I wanted to earn significant money from it, I'd write quite other things in other ways and afford myself a lot less fun. I'm unclear why anyone would even bother to prompt AI to write the stories I write. For me personally, using AI to avoid writing things I love writing, mostly to entertain myself, would be utterly self-defeating.
There's a fair bit of time-stamping built into our workflows in Microsoft Office and the MacOS anyway. Word can track and timestamp changes to a document – tracking the development path simply by clicking on 'Track changes'. Time Machine backs up my files every 15 minutes or so. Here on Substack (I mostly write my stories directly into Substack, then copy them to Word later), the platform records a version history including every save right from the moment of creation of the article. Put together, that's a pretty forensic proof of authorship, should one ever need it.
One last thought: I don't trust the Google ecosystem with my data, not one bit.
Thanks Steve! Yeah, to your first point, the AI humanizes are most certainly being trained. They know exactly how to evade themselves 😆
And yeah, I think for most people, version history and notes are sufficient for now. I think tracking will be more useful between traditional publishers and writers, particularly new writers without legacy work. The audience can too easily turn on a writer based on AI detectors and that can be crippling for a publisher. I suspect legal cases haven't arisen because publishers can't yet prove an author used AI, but I can see that changing. If Microsoft can build provenance metadata into their word files, that will be a game changer and remove a lot of the uncertainty plaging the industry.
That's interesting about your job, but not surprising. I've noticed less writer jobs about, but a whole lot more editing roles for checking AI generated content, so it's morphing.
This is a conversation between me and the AI Claude in which Claude generated a flash fiction:
Me: I'm testing AI detectors and humanizers. Write me a 500 word flash fiction about a man who finds himself living as a gnome in the garden.
Claude: Here's a flash fiction piece for your testing:
________________________________________
Small Mercies
Gerald noticed the roots first.
Not the metaphorical kind — not the creeping sense that he'd stayed too long in one place, let too many years compact around him like sediment. No. Actual roots. Pale and threadlike, curling from the soles of his feet each morning, leaving faint scratches on the hardwood floor when he shuffled to the kettle.
He cut them with nail scissors and didn't mention it to anyone.
The height came next. Or rather, the lack of it. He'd always been a modest five-foot-nine, but the doorframes began catching him differently — generously, with room to spare. He bought a tape measure and held it against the kitchen wall in his socks. Five-three. Then, a month later, four-eleven. He ordered new trousers online and told himself this was fine. People shrank. His father had. It was perfectly natural.
By April, Gerald was twenty-two inches tall and living in the garden.
This hadn't been a decision so much as a gravity. The house simply became wrong — the proportions accusatory, the furniture smug. But outside, among the hostas and the sprawling thyme, things made sense. He slept in an upturned terracotta pot with a square of felt for a bed and found it, to his bewilderment, deeply adequate.
He wore a red hat. He hadn't chosen it. It had simply appeared on his head one Tuesday, the way middle age had appeared, the way the mortgage had, the way Sandra had eventually not appeared. Small things accumulated. Large things left.
The neighbours' cat regarded him with professional interest for exactly one week, then lost all curiosity. Gerald considered this a form of acceptance.
His days acquired a pleasant structure. He monitored the aphids on the roses — not obsessively, but with the steady attention of a man who finally had something comprehensible to worry about. He turned the soil near the strawberry runners with a twig. He watched rain collect in the cups of the lady's mantle leaves and drank from them carefully, tasting mineral and sky.
He thought about his old life less than he would have predicted. There had been an office. A pension. Strong opinions about correct pasta cooking times. These memories arrived like postcards from a country he had visited but never really lived in.
His daughter found him one Saturday in July, while harvesting courgettes.
She stood very still for a long moment. Gerald waited.
"Dad," she said, finally.
"Hello, love."
She sat cross-legged on the path, which brought her closer to his level. She had her mother's practical eyes. She looked at him the way you look at a problem you've quietly understood for some time but hadn't yet been asked to solve.
"Are you happy?" she asked.
Gerald considered the question honestly. He looked at the low sun coming through the birch. He felt the good dampness of the soil beneath him.
"I think I might finally be the right size," he said.
She nodded slowly. She picked a strawberry and set it beside him like an offering.
They sat together until the light changed.
________________________________________
Claude: Hope this gives your detectors something interesting to chew on!
If I'd written that (great premise by the way) I'd be pretty happy with it.
Scary, isn't it. I can't imagine I'd ever want to read a novel by an AI, but I will admit to liking that little story.
That's a lovely, whimsical story, in which a reader might find significant depth of meaning.
The thing to remember, which I think is borne out here, is that AI isn't conjuring up strange computery thoughts about 0s and 1s and is my CPU getting a bit too warm this morning. It's distilling (or if you will, stealing) all of the human culture that's been fed into it, and creating something out of it which is, yes, synthetic, but also quite resonant to human beings – because it is, ultimately, created by and for humans.
Absolutely, Steve. That's a good point. I was interested in this too and grilled Claude about its process. It gave me a really in depth analysis of the piece, which was as impressive as the story itself 😆. It has been trained on such a wide variety of literature, and psychology, it's clear it looks for patterns and themes. I think that's why it likes metaphors so much. It really tried to cram layers of meaning in there. It can't 'feel', but it intentionally mimicks human emotion by the book. Interestingly, it can't explain its word choice.
Couldn't agree more. .. I use a NO AI Logo ... it's on here >> https://www.dieterluske.com/certified-human.html
Yes, you literally wrote the book, Dieter! 😃
.. did you like my cute hand-drawn NO AI logo?
The bookis not as scarry as the real thing :-)
I do 🙂 I wish such things weren't necessary, but given the circumstances, it's good to declare such things and place value on human authored words.
Thank you Alia, this was a terrific piece of writing. I am grateful for your research and take aways. I’m also sad that we must prove ‘we are human’ and creating with our own hands and minds, but I realise this problem is not going to go away and I need to find ways to protect my creativity and authorship. Much to think about. And much to make more explicit in my work too.
Hope all is well,
Kate :)
You're welcome, Kate. For what it's worth, I don't go as far as using something like Draftback myself. I’d prefer provenance technologies become a standard feature of mainstream word processors. I probably would go out of my way to use it if it were for a short story competition where accusations could fly, but for my larger works that inch forward over years, I feel my copious number of version histories and research notes leave a solid trail of breadcrumbs at the moment 😂
Alia I just read this one. You've made the most bland topic interesting and so easy to read and retain. Thank you for your hours of research that you've shared so eloquently.
Thanks Michelle. That was a long one so I'm glad you found it interesting.
Wow! I haven’t finished any stories since last December, but I think my next one—if there ever is one—will be in cuneiform on clay tablets dug up from my own backyard. Soil analysis should prove that the clay came from my own land. For a stylus I will use a branch from one of my own walnut trees. I’m sure glad my new hobby is paint-by-numbers using acrylic paint markers instead of the provided brushes and paint. Wishing you all the success in the world with your own project. — Your friend and number one fan worldwide — Rafaelito ❤️!
I think you're on to something, Rafaelito! I was rather thinking to strap nodes to my head and plug them into some smartphone app that monitors my thoughts, but I might try chiseling cuneiform instead 😆
If there’s a smartphone app that can monitor my thoughts I’m in big trouble if my wife finds out about it. ❤️!
If there’s a smartphone app that can monitor my thoughts I’m in big trouble if my wife finds out about it. ❤️!
Crazy world! Thanks Alia, I’d never really thought I’d ever have to prove I actually wrote something so that was fascinating and useful.
Thanks Jonathan. It's sad, really. But we can't ignore the new realities.
Another thought-provoking and informative piece. Thanks for doing all that research on our behalf! Thanks also for Claude's delightful Small Mercies.
Random thoughts in response:
Using AI to detect AI is always going to be a circular experience. Are the AI detectors being 'trained on' your text and your interactions with it? Even if they say they aren't – do you believe them?
Unless I were going in for an international short story competition with a significant cash prize, I wouldn't (and won't) worry too much about it. AI AI detectors aren't that great, to judge by your experience. As AI detectors get cleverer, so, inevitably, will AI authors.
But then, I'm in a position of privilege in that regard. My publishers are happy for me to use AI in research and drafting – they use our coursebooks to train their own AI with a view to creating learning tools for language students.
Might that eventually lead to my job being replaced? Probably, but right now AI isn't that good at tasks which require a deep understanding of the human mind and thought processes. It writes quite good texts (with careful human editing and tweaking) but lousy language learning tasks to exploit them. I think I have enough years yet.
As far as my fiction goes – it isn't a commercial prospect. It's whimsical, soft-hearted literary fiction. If I wanted to earn significant money from it, I'd write quite other things in other ways and afford myself a lot less fun. I'm unclear why anyone would even bother to prompt AI to write the stories I write. For me personally, using AI to avoid writing things I love writing, mostly to entertain myself, would be utterly self-defeating.
There's a fair bit of time-stamping built into our workflows in Microsoft Office and the MacOS anyway. Word can track and timestamp changes to a document – tracking the development path simply by clicking on 'Track changes'. Time Machine backs up my files every 15 minutes or so. Here on Substack (I mostly write my stories directly into Substack, then copy them to Word later), the platform records a version history including every save right from the moment of creation of the article. Put together, that's a pretty forensic proof of authorship, should one ever need it.
One last thought: I don't trust the Google ecosystem with my data, not one bit.
Thanks Steve! Yeah, to your first point, the AI humanizes are most certainly being trained. They know exactly how to evade themselves 😆
And yeah, I think for most people, version history and notes are sufficient for now. I think tracking will be more useful between traditional publishers and writers, particularly new writers without legacy work. The audience can too easily turn on a writer based on AI detectors and that can be crippling for a publisher. I suspect legal cases haven't arisen because publishers can't yet prove an author used AI, but I can see that changing. If Microsoft can build provenance metadata into their word files, that will be a game changer and remove a lot of the uncertainty plaging the industry.
That's interesting about your job, but not surprising. I've noticed less writer jobs about, but a whole lot more editing roles for checking AI generated content, so it's morphing.
Alia, thank you so much for this essay. Super helpful for all writers.
You're welcome, Meg :)