When Boris Barilo wants to read a story, he provides ChatGPT with an example of a novel he wants the tale to be styled after. He describes the characters he wants included, chooses a setting, and comes up with the problem and its resolution. Once it’s generated, he further tailors the story with follow-up prompts and suggestions. This way, he creates a story that perfectly suits his interests.
As AI becomes more ubiquitous, people are finding new ways to use it. By plugging in a few brief parameters, AI can now generate entire works of fiction for users. Many, like Barilo, are using it to produce tailored content. Not for profit, but simply for one’s own personal entertainment.
A Reddit user who uses the handle @bonefawn (who does not wish to share their real name) who responded to questions online about similar AI use, says reading traditional fiction stopped satisfying them. The stories that once sparked their imagination began to feel predictable, filled with recycled tropes and familiar archetypes. AI-generated fiction offered a way to break that creative monotony, but also a tool to reshape and reimagine the narratives they loved.
“I wanted to play in the toolbox with all the content and character myself,” they tell upstart.
“It almost feels like playing a soap opera that is customised to me.”
Barilo, who is a Melbourne-based university student, read a lot of classic literature before he encountered AI. He enjoyed twentieth century fiction, especially the works of Lovecraft, the founder of cosmic horror.
“When I discovered AI, I stopped reading literature just because I realised that with AI you can create your own stories and read what you like,” he tells upstart.
When he had a ChatGPT subscription, he could spend up to seven hours a day using it. He says he has written enough text with AI that, put together, it could create a full book. He recalls being initially “fascinated” by what it could do. When other people hear about Barilo’s use of AI, he says some people don’t care, and others look at him like he’s “a bit crazy, but just a bit”.
Marcus Schatten, head of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Zagreb, has researched the role of AI in the future of entertainment technology. He believes that while traditional media encourages passive consumption, these kinds of AI allow people to participate in the creative act.
“This shift means that entertainment is no longer a one-way transmission but a dialogue between people and intelligent systems,” he tells upstart.
This is the case for @bonefawn, who says that AI has transformed entertainment from a passive pastime into an active creative process. Instead of consuming other people’s stories, they build their own.
“I would prefer to use the system and explore my own ideas and stories and mind, in a half passive and half active way, then to sit and waste the same amount of electricity and water on social media fully passively,” @bonefawn says.
Actively engaging with pre-existing media texts has long been a core element of fandom culture, with fans penning fan fiction, creating fan art, photo-shopping and editing videos. However, Eva Cheuk-Yin Li, a media researcher at Lancaster University with an interest in fandom and pop culture, says the social element is at risk. They tell upstart that generative-AI entertainment tools are causing fans to shift away from community-based activities , and towards a more alienated “individualised” experience of fandom.
Li also observes that we are now seeing the automation of creativity “being outsourced”.
“It invites us to think about what creativity means when AI is around. Is the mastery of using AI considered creativity or not?” they say.
“I think the appeal is that it further lowers the artistic threshold.”
Neil Jeyasingam, a psychiatrist with a research background in internet culture and AI, thinks that it would be better if AI left making art to humans.
“I think it’s one of the most stupidest things we have done as a species that of all the things we decided to automate and transfer for a computing system to do, it was creativity and innovation,” he says.
Critics often dismiss generative AI as a shortcut, an effortless alternative to the hard work of creation. To some, using prompts instead of a paintbrush signals a loss of authenticity, or a kind of creative laziness. For @bonefawn, AI isn’t a replacement for imagination but an extension of it, a tool that allows them to explore ideas more freely and with greater confidence.
“Plenty of people say that using AI makes you less creative or lazy, but I’ve found that it empowers me to feel more confident in the art that I do make by hand,” they say.
For Barilo, using generative AI is also another way to read about his favourite fandoms, like Fallout or the fantasy world Anbennar. He believes that while using AI doesn’t improve his writing skills, it does help develop his imagination when bringing scenes and characters to life.
Jessamy Perriam, Associate Director of Education at ANU’s School of Cybernetics and researcher of internet culture, tells upstart that before AI, the enjoyment of creating fan fiction was in “using your imagination to extend the universe of whatever story you were really enamoured with”. Now, there’s less incentive for readers to create new stories themselves.
Redditor and horror writer @SirFall3n uses Claude AI for about an hour each day for creative writing drills and generating the occasional image, video and music piece, AI helps them with their writer’s block and improves their creative process.
Fellow user @EB-77 also uses AI to generate images and stories, because they don’t feel that traditionally published fiction is written for their interests.
“Generally, AI is great because the stuff I get is fresh, not the 10-thousandth small village murder mystery,” they tell upstart.
However, Perriam says “situations where the same stories are just being generated over and over again” could become more common.
For Jeyasingam , says this issue of repetition, as well as AI’s emphasis on user satisfaction, could lead to locking people up in echo chambers. AI is programmed to satisfy its users. Earlier this year, ChatGPT’s high levels of flattery were found to be fostering delusions and disorganised thinking amongst its users. AI companies don’t want people to cancel their subscriptions, so they give users what they want to hear.
“The problem is that if you keep on getting the same ideas, the same perspectives, the same issues being fed back towards people based on the algorithm determining what people are most likely wanting to hear,” Jeyasingam he says. “This leads to echo chamber politics, as well as a narrowing … [of] one’s potential fields of interest.”
AI researcher Schatten agrees that this reduced openness to learning about experiences unlike one’s own “is a real risk”.
“This is why ethical and design considerations are critical to ensure AI not only caters to individual preferences but also nudges us toward discovery and broader horizons,” he says.
Literature has always been seen as a tool to share experiences and build empathy. So, when it comes to AI, which cannot feel emotions, can AI-generated fiction affect us in the same ways?
“Hyper-personalized media could reinforce existing preferences and limit exposure to diverse perspectives,” Schatten says.
Schatten believes that “shared cultural experiences” will continue to exist, but that they will begin to mix with personalised entertainment “much like [how] fanfiction and mods coexist with mainstream franchises”.
Reddit user @EB-77 doesn’t think other forms of entertainment will become redundant as AI becomes more popular, “because it’s still an active form of entertainment, and I sometimes want a passive one like Netflix”.
Whether you think it is reducing creativity or contributing to echo chambers, AI won’t be going away anytime soon. Some believe that the possibilities are limitless.
Schatten compares modern AI technology with the early years of YouTube, when only a few people were posting on the site. However, as the process simplified, YouTube has become mainstream. With barriers to using AI significantly lower than for YouTube, he thinks that soon everyone will be using it.
“Imagine a system where your story, visuals, music, and even interactive gameplay are generated seamlessly in response to your prompts and decisions, producing an entire film, game, or virtual world that evolves with you.”
Article: Kate-Lily Pavic, Alison Tucker, Aleksandr Prikhodko and Angelina Giannis.
