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My first critique of AI-generated content involves DeepAI with the prompt, “give me a rough draft for a harry potter fanfic” with which I used that exact capitalization and lack of proper punctuation, though in saying this, I doubt capitalization will have much effort.
At first glance—
Well, that isn ’t very easy.
First, the opening paragraph—
“The sun shone brightly over Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, casting a warm glow on the peaceful aftermath of the battle that had taken place just a month before. The scars of war were still fresh, but the students’ laughter below was a welcome sound.”
—is a pleasant opening paragraph, one I expect would draw the readers in.
However, if I were to examine the rest of the generated content, I ’d argue that it is basic and boring. It lacks any style to the writing, reading very much like something I might get from a young and/or newbie writer rather than one who’s managed to polish their craft.
This, I think, lends credit to one of the fears that specific individuals will copy and paste what they ’re given and post it to A03, but the stories they generate would, in turn, result in content that is quick to produce and quick to bury the hard work of others.
Yet, in saying this, this isn ’t exactly something that would long term attract a readership as the same bland, underdeveloped style would permeate everything this person posted. Thus, they wouldn’t gain the readers they’d hoped for. So, let this serve as a warning for anybody who would want to copy and paste, which cheats the system.
It won ’t work, but churning out a lot of content over the quality of content has never done well for writers who churn out a lot of content without paying attention to quality. Hell, I pay attention to the quality of the content I churn out and have gotten flack still for the amount I am capable of churning out, as a specific reader got upset that what they kept seeing was always my stories.
I can ’t blame them, yet as someone who can’t write and has to get the content out of my head, I can’t stop producing. I’ve got to get the story into words for others to read, but so many stories are stuck in my head.
However—
This is simply the person who would want to copy and paste. What about the writer who would like to use this as a tool to generate drafts to work from to formulate a newer story?
After all, the amount of content generated is 915 words.
I can instantly see someone saying there ’s not much difference between that and a thousand-word first chapter, right?
I managed to generate a title, a summary, four chapters with titles, and a blurb explaining what the draft was set out to do. The chapters are 233, 199, 204, and 170 words, respectively, totaling 806 words.
A writer would have to add around at least 800 words if one were aiming for chapters that are at least 1k in length, but even more if one is aiming for longer chapters, and certain writers could extend the chapters to contain substance to them, yet—
Certain writers will give people a ton of fluff to pad their word count, yet these stories often don ’t fare much better than simply copying and pasting, as the stories would be dreadfully dull.
So, it would need to be a writer who can build up what they ’re given, yet this brings me to the second thing I noticed.
At face value, the story looks like a great start to a fanfic, with Hermione finding a secret room with objects from the founders waiting to be seen, only—
On second look, I caught the part that said, “ This draft sets up an exciting adventure for Harry, Ron, and Hermione, exploring the mysteries of Hogwarts post-war while introducing new elements and potential threats. It captures the essence of the original series while allowing room for creative exploration. ”
And right there is a problem. The above claims that the AI set us up for a post-war story, yet the story reads like something pre-war because anybody who knows the books would know Hogwarts had to be rebuilt from the ground up, but the story acts like the school is intact. It ’s even there in the first paragraph that looks super nice, and one might miss it if they sneezed.
In fact, it starts with Ron and Harry going to Hagrid's hut for tea, while Hermione comes to them with an arm full of books, meaning the writers would need to rethink the plot to get the story to work.
Having finished the first glance, I started at the beginning of this draft for Harry Potter and the Enigma of the Forbidden Room, and my first thought on seeing the title is the AI-generated dropped the words “enigma” and “forbidden” in their because it’s flavor text, words that catch the readers attention yet may not have anything to do with the story.
The summary regurgitates that “ after the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry, Hermione, and Ron discover a hidden room in the castle … ” but adds in, “ that holds the secrets about the founding members of Hogwarts and a dark force that threatens to rise again. ”
I can ’t tell you how wrong the summarized plot can go wrong if not handled by an experienced writer or someone who has the understanding of how complicated of a plot that is — but, well, the very last part is often the plot of many a Harry Potter story that heads into Mary Sue territory.
And it ’s also rather odd that Hermione comes running up, “ No! It ’s about a hidden room that supposedly holds a secret related to the founding members of Hogwarts. We could investigate. ”
I do not know how in the world Hermione knows what secret the room contains before exploring it, but I also found her wording odd, given that she originally says, “You’ll never believe what I found in the library.” And Ron replies, “What? More books? ”
It makes far more sense for to say, “No! I found…” and outright say it’s the map that is mentioned in the second chapter. The map ends up as Harry says, “I think it’s linked to the Maruder’s Map. But how?”
Hermione then brainstorms and, instead of answering Harry's question, answers where the room's location is. Later, she switches to mentioning a book, but her words earlier say she didn ’t find the information in a book because Ron asked if she found more books and if she found it in a book, her response would be yes before going into what she found in the books. And the dark force doesn’t come up until the third chapter.
Which? Apparently, it is “a guardian of what once was,” which is because “You seek knowledge, but the price of that knowledge may lead you to doom.”
And then suddenly, in the fourth chapter, Hermione insists they go on an adventure with absolutely no build-up into why they need to seek out the knowledge they seek.
In other words, what the writer gets isn’t a good story, and even a good writer would need to put in some major work on this one. But the real question is, will this hold true if I try this a few more times?