AI Fiction in the Wild
2026/06/22 by Neel Gupta, Maria Antoniak, Melanie Walsh · 18 voices · 1 citation
#cs.CL #cs.AI #cs.CY
paper · pdf
Abstract
Some professional authors are beginning to use AI tools to help produce their fiction writing. Are readers using AI to generate fiction, too? Drawing on over 500,000 anonymized, English-language ChatGPT-user conversations (arXiv:2405.01470), we find that more than one third of the conversations involve some form of fiction generation -- including original stories, roleplay, fanfiction, and erotica. This AI-generated fiction is notably dominated by power users. We identify common fiction generation patterns and profiles among these users, including what we call "infinite story demanders," who repeatedly request and revise variations of the same or similar narratives over extended periods of time. We show that users especially gravitate toward fanfiction and erotica, and that they are broadly drawn to generic forms, repetition, immediacy, and niche combinations of story elements. Our findings motivate two theoretical provocations. First, we argue that AI technologies may lead to a shift in the conventional relationship between the author and reader, potentially producing what we call a "solipsistic reader-writer," who both generates and consumes fiction within a closed conversational loop, interacting with a machine rather than a human other. Second, we note that LLMs enable interactivity, play, and permutation in ways that are seemingly pleasurable for users, raising questions about where AI will fit into contemporary storytelling and entertainment ecosystems. We situate these developments within broader transformations in literature and media, including self-publishing, fanfiction, and pornography, and suggest that AI-generated fiction shares structural affinities with on-demand, personalized, and repetitive cultural forms.
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Discussions
- What are people really doing with chatbots? 👀 Turns out that a lot of them are writing/reading various kinds of fiction, and in particular, they're generating a ton of erotica! What does this mean fo [bsky, 61 points, 3 comments]
- Preprint with @mariaa.bsky.social and @mellymeldubs.bsky.social on how real people are writing fiction with LLMs based on the Wildchat dataset here arxiv.org/abs/2606.22748. [bsky, 41 points, 1 comments]
- Are readers generating fiction with AI models? [hn, 37 points, 62 comments]
- We situate AI-generated fiction within a longer trajectory that includes self-publishing & fanfiction. We also discuss our concerns about AI fiction, including, among other things, the loss of a human [bsky, 27 points, 2 comments]
- "Not unlike the consumption of porn, the LLM-user fictional exchange is often defined by familiar genres, instantaneity, repetition, niches, and momentary gratification" arxiv.org/abs/2606.22748 [bsky, 26 points, 2 comments]
- strange and interesting from @mariaa.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2606.22748 [bsky, 22 points, 0 comments]
- thinking about how people use AI. specifically that one user who had it write thousands of Doki Doki Literature Club birthing fanfic stories (cite: arxiv.org/pdf/2606.22748) [bsky, 11 points, 2 comments]
- Eine Auswertung von über 500.000 ChatGPT-Konversationen zeigt: Mehr als ein Drittel dient der Fiktion – dominiert von wenigen Vielnutzer:innen, die vor allem Fanfiction und Erotik im geschlossenen Kre [bsky, 7 points, 1 comments]
- This paper's worth reading because it studies actual use of AI for entertainment, analyzing 500k anonymized, free ChatGPT sessions from '23-'24 HuggingFace arxiv.org/pdf/2606.22748 34% are generating [bsky, 7 points, 1 comments]
- Hey, who wants to read a study about someone who generated 27,000 ChatGPT fanfics about Doki Doki Literature Club characters giving birth? arxiv.org/pdf/2606.22748 [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]
- The AI Fiction in the Wild paper is very good, but I'm not sure I agree that porn consumption is an inherently isolating experience. And to that end, neither is fiction generation. I think the discove [bsky, 2 points, 1 comments]
- it's kinda interesting that some technologies develop and become less suitable for home production at scale while others develop and become more suitable for home production at scale. #linklog [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]
- Are readers generating fiction with AI models? https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.22748 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- At first, I thought the fears of AI taking my job was overblown, but now it's coming for the pregnancy fan-fiction authors arxiv.org/abs/2606.22748 [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]
- (from arxiv.org/abs/2606.22748) [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- Are readers generating fiction with AI models? https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.22748 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48750247) [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- Are readers generating fiction with AI models? https:// arxiv.org/abs/2606.22748 # ai # arxiv [mastodon, 0 points, 0 comments]
- Paper using 500k+ anonymized ChatGPT conversations to ask whether readers, not just authors, use AI to generate fiction. Submit to upvote on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=https%3A%2F%2F [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
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