r/HFY • u/Blackknight64 Biggest, Blackest Knight! • Apr 24 '25
MOD HFY, AI, Rule 8 and How We're Addressing It
Hello everyone,
We’d like to take a moment to remind everyone about Rule 8. We know the "don't use AI" rule has been on the books for a while now, but we've been a bit lax on enforcing it at times. As a reminder, the modteam's position on AI is that it is an editing tool, not an author. We don't mind grammar checks and translation help, but the story should be your own work.
To that end, we've been expanding our AI detection capabilities. After significant testing, we've partnered with Pangram, as well as using a variety of other methodologies and will be further cracking down on AI written stories. As always, the final judgement on the status of any story will be done by the mod staff. It is important to note that no actions will be taken without extensive review by the modstaff, and that our AI detection partnership is not the only tool we are using to make these determinations.
Over the past month, we’ve been making fairly significant strides on removing AI stories. At the time of this writing, we have taken action against 23 users since we’ve begun tightening our focus on the issue.
We anticipate that there will be questions. Here are the answers to what we anticipate to be the most common:
Q: What kind of tools are you using, so I can double check myself?
A: We're using, among other things, Pangram to check. So far, Pangram seems to be the most comprehensive test, though we use others as well.
Q: How reliable is your detection?
A: Quite reliable! We feel comfortable with our conclusions based on the testing we've done, the tool has been accurate with regards to purely AI-written, AI-written then human edited, partially Human-written and AI-finished, and Human-written and AI-edited. Additionally, every questionable post is run through at least two Mark 1 Human Brains before any decision is made.
Q: What if my writing isn't good enough, will it look like AI and get me banned?
A: Our detection methods work off of understanding common LLMs, their patterns, and common occurrences. They should not trip on new authors where the writing is “not good enough,” or not native English speakers. As mentioned before, before any actions are taken, all posts are reviewed by the modstaff. If you’re not confident in your writing, the best way to improve is to write more! Ask for feedback when posting, and be willing to listen to the suggestions of your readers.
Q: How is AI (a human creation) not HFY?
A: In concept it is! The technology advancement potential is exciting. But we're not a technology sub, we're a writing sub, and we pride ourselves on encouraging originality. Additionally, there's a certain ethical component to AI writing based on a relatively niche genre/community such as ours - there's a very specific set of writings that the AI has to have been trained on, and few to none of the authors of that training set ever gave their permission to have their work be used in that way. We will always side with the authors in matters of copyright and ownership.
Q: I've written a story, but I'm not a native English speaker. Can I use AI to help me translate it to English to post here?
A: Yes! You may want to include an author's note to that effect, but Human-written AI-translated stories still read as human. There's a certain amount of soulfulness and spark found in human writing that translation can't and won't change.
Q: Can I use AI to help me edit my posts?
A: Yes and no. As a spelling and grammar checker, it works well. At most it can be used to rephrase a particularly problematic sentence. When you expand to having it rework your flow or pacing—where it's rewriting significant portions of a story—it starts to overwrite your personal writing voice making the story feel disjointed and robotic. Alternatively, you can join our Discord and ask for some help from human editors in the Writing channel.
Q: Will every post be checked? What about old posts that looked like AI?
A: Going forward, there will be a concerted effort to check all posts, yes. If a new post is AI-written, older posts by the same author will also be examined, to see if it's a fluke or an ongoing trend that needs to be addressed. Older posts will be checked as needed, and anything older that is Reported will naturally be checked as well. If you have any concerns about a post, feel free to Report it so it can be reviewed by the modteam.
Q: What if I've used AI to help me in the past? What should I do?
A: Ideally, you should rewrite the story/chapter in question so that it's in your own words, but we know that's not always a reasonable or quick endeavor. If you feel the work is significantly AI generated you can message the mods to have the posts temporarily removed until such time as you've finished your human rewrite. So long as you come to us honestly, you won't be punished for actions taken prior to the enforcement of this Rule.
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u/DATowoTHO Apr 24 '25
What if a post get mistakenly flagged for some reason? What are some ways you can prove you didn't use AI?
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u/Blackknight64 Apr 24 '25 edited Apr 24 '25
While we don't anticipate many such cases, my suggestion is that you do your writing in a system that saves revision history, and maintain a copy of the document. Google docs does this, for example. In that event, you'll have a document that we can review.
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u/BruFoca May 22 '25
I paste one story I´m writting in various AI detector tools including Pangram.
The results from ZeroGPT, GPTZero, CopyLeeks and Grammaly is 0% AI generated.
Smodin give a 19% AI Generated content,
Originality AI gave it 67% AI Generated Content and Pangram gave 99% confidence of the text being AI generated.
And I´m literally writing the text right now.
What I got is a few phrases that many authors use in HFY stories were flagged as AI. And if you use AI to translate like I use in a few parts is even worse.
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u/Top_Hat_Tomato Apr 25 '25 edited Apr 25 '25
I am concerned about about their data retention policy, are posts being stored long term by this service? Do they comply with GDPR? How could a user request their data removed since they weren't the uploader?
Is it possible they are training their detection off of posts uploaded to the services?
Edit* For anyone who had the same questions as me.
Did a bit of digging. They don't process your content per this site
Can't find anything on GDPR though.
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u/mmspero Apr 27 '25
Hey, co-founder of Pangram here.
Thanks for surfacing our data privacy page! We don't sell or train on data, but we do store it so that the user who uploaded the data can see it along with the AI report. If you believe your data was sent to us by a third party (such as the mod team) want to request your data removed, please email support@pangram.com with an excerpt of your writing and we'll search our databases and remove any writing that matches.
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u/Blackknight64 Apr 27 '25 edited Apr 27 '25
Thanks for chiming in! We're glad to be working with you.
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u/Lugbor Apr 24 '25
"How is AI (a human creation) not HFY?"
Because it’s not AI. It's an overhyped set of algorithms that can't actually create anything on its own. All it can do is steal someone else's work, throw it into a blender, and regurgitate the resulting slurry.
If the day comes when an actual, thinking AI comes into being, and it decides that it wants to write a series on here, it'll have my full support, but until that day, I'll be sitting here working out blueprints for an EMP shotgun shell.
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u/Jeutnarg Apr 25 '25
If it's not from the AI region of California, then it's not AI. It's just sparkling plagiarism.
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u/-Drayden Apr 24 '25 edited Apr 24 '25
A computer algorithm built off of stolen books made to replace the jobs of the authors who's own stolen books it was built on. If anything it makes me feel like Humanity fuck no
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u/Much-Blackberry2420 Apr 25 '25
This. The sole design function of modern LLMs, I refuse to call them AIs. They are neither. The sole function of these things is to obfuscate the source of theft and disrupt the ability to enforce copyright laws. They are semi-automatic theft engines.
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u/Mark_40_ Apr 25 '25
Totally agree, we should stop calling them AI and call them by what they are, a Large Language Model (LLM), a glorified and bigger autocorrect
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u/MedicalPiccolo6270 May 27 '25
Exactly they might be a useful tool for some things. I know I use them all the time for research purposes especially random useless research purposes I’m talking things like why is this specific thing the way that it is, whether that be a toddler asking the question and you actually don’t know the answer or one of those random things like how to describe the taste of venison to someone who’s never had it. Or something like that, but they should not be taking the place of a human. They should not be treated as a 100% accurate source I treated it like I would Wikipedia where if it’s not all that important that the answer is 100% accurate as long as it’s close. I don’t normally worry about fact, checking it But if it actually matters, I might ask ALLM about it and then I’m gonna go and maybe ask it for a good way to put that into Google and find some articles on it. I’ve used one quite a few times that will make a 3-D rendering from a description because I do a lot of 3-D modeling personally and for that kind of thing if I’m in a bit of a hurry, but I have an idea and I know I will forget it before I can get to my computer to actually model the part out fully. I will describe it on there and get it to generate something that looks about right so that I have not Onlytext for me describing it but also a rendering of it that I can go off of
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u/Previous_Access6800 Apr 25 '25
I think you are mixing up AI and General AI (GAI).
An AI is any non-natural agent that takes action in a given environment. A bot playing chess... AI, an NPC in a very old game... AI. Your fridge telling you to buy milk... AI.
GAI is something more "human" like, which can think, be creative. The idea behind GAI is that you can set it in front of any task and it will do a decent job at it similar to a human. (A chess bot will look at you quizzically if you tell it to play StarCraft)
That being said: Nobody wants to read LLM slob, its just uninspired.
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u/Nolongeranalpha Apr 25 '25
Add rifling that spins the magnet prior to disbursement so it can work similar to a grenade. Perfect for shutting down killer robots or disabling Mech suits.
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u/KazakiriKaoru Apr 25 '25
I tried using one of those dialogue AI for raunchy stories. It was just so so unsatisfying. It has no soul. It doesn't understand what a human wants.
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u/Fontaigne Apr 25 '25
I spent six months redteaming various AIs. Some of them are really good at that, some really bad. Just like people.
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u/Fontaigne Apr 25 '25
For a minute I thought this was a story. Now it's a story prompt...
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u/mage_in_training Apr 25 '25
It can be a story prompt if you stop caring and throw enough words at the page...
Probably.
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u/emteeoh Apr 25 '25
Ok, so I have an idea for a story. I tried to have a chat with gpt about it to workshop the ideas. GPT misunderstood me and wrote a crappy, very crappy, story based on my ideas instead of giving me the kinds of feedback I asked for.
Now, I’m not going to do anything with that sad excuse for a story until mine is written and posted, but I feel like I should share it, ‘cause it exists. Is there an acceptable way to post it?
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u/Blackknight64 Apr 25 '25
...Let me discuss that with the team, and I'll get back to you. In the meantime, I'd say that there's probably better places to post it out there.
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u/Duck_Giblets May 18 '25
Try gemini 2.5 flash, i find it's far better for breaking down suggestions than other LLMs.
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u/PsychologicalAir1117 May 19 '25
Have you seen those stupid channels on YouTube that do the stories from this sub but have ai generated pictures? I want those down.
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u/Blackknight64 May 19 '25
We unfortunately have no control over YouTube. The secondary issue is that some of them, at least, get permission from authors to do their stories. Some don't. I've found at least one instance of mine in the wild without permission, and have had to submit a takedown request to Youtube. It's a problem.
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u/-Drayden Apr 24 '25
I like the way you described stories as having a "human soulfulness and spark". I can barely stand to read stories that feel like AI. I much more enjoy stories with crappy Grammer over feeling like a robot made it. I also feel bad for any timid authors who have AI rewrite their stores thinking it'll be better, only for it to become soulless slop, I hope that isn't a common problem.
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u/Cakeriel May 05 '25
That’s disappointing. If people don’t like a story they can scroll past it.
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u/MeemawFlexington Jul 28 '25
Ive heard for some time now the m-dash is a pretty significant tell of whether or not AI has been used. You can find examples of the m-dash in the Q&A section of this very thread. It looks like this "or pacing—where it's rewriting significant portions of a story—it starts to overwrite your...." as opposed to looking like this "....or pacing - where it's rewriting significant portions of a story - it starts to overwrite your..."
I punched a small sample of my own writing into the pangram and came up with hits inside of 4 sentences on 3 paragraphs. Apparently " life of quiet repetition" , "streamlined" , "world outside" "unpredictable". Of those 4 hits, 2 were contained in the same sentence.
"The world outside his screen felt unpredictable, noisy, and frankly, exhausting."
I dont understand LLMs or how it is that they are trained, but I feel as though people who can actually write would actually use a sentence just like that. I say this because.... I f*ckin wrote it.
I feel there are a few inherent flaws inside of programs like pangram
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u/KnightHiryuu May 27 '25
I think is good. More, I think is great, there MUCH AI made garbage around.
That said... like others, my only concern is the infallibility of this... I got some old texts of mine to test, written around 2015-2017... Pangram give me around 50%-60% AI written, Grammarly 15%-20% and Sidekicker an unbelivable 80%-86% of AI written :/
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u/Blackknight64 May 27 '25
As we've explained in the original post, and in responses to other commentors, Pangram is basically our first set of eyes to help us filter down to the stories we need to take a look at. It's not a be-all, end-all situation, and multiple sets of moderator eyes review any posts before they're actioned, once flagged.
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u/Bonecleaver Apr 25 '25
I think I said it in a previous post relating to this but where do sentient ai fit into this
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u/un_pogaz Apr 25 '25 edited Apr 25 '25
I appreciate your stance on the subject of AI/LLM, and the great caution that is evident in your methodology, but I'd like to add a point to warn you.
AI/LLM detectors can often make false positives on autistic or neuro-divergent people. I don't know what Pangram is worth on the subject, but it a thing to know and take in mind.