u/human_assisted_ai

Any issues with this sub's new moderation?

I became this sub's moderator almost 6 weeks ago. Anything that you want to see more of or less of?

I’ve been super busy with building a full time AI novel writing business (details on other subs) so I have been slow to mod.

Sorry about the anti-AI comments not being removed promptly. I took action yesterday and today. Yesterday, I added new content removal reasons and today I handed out a 3-day ban for anti-AI comments (to the exactly the user that you’d expect).

I will continue to issue warnings to new anti-AI users who get into the long tit-for-tat exchanges but I’m now issuing bans. Send me ModMail if you want me to add a user to my anti-AI watchlist.

If you want to tell me anything, you can either comment publicly on this post or send ModMail privately.

Since January 2026, I've paid for and taken several non-AI writing courses. When I found some in March, I paid for and took several AI writing courses. It's been interesting.

Both types of courses have outlining, then writing, then editing.

At first, the non-AI writing courses were really great because, as it turns out, outlining is really important and translates really well from the non-AI realm to the AI realm. Outlining is somewhat easier with AI but it's pretty much the same process.

Then, I went into the writing portion of the non-AI classes and it was a nightmare. All the stuff about self-discipline, daily word count and taking months to write a first draft is totally irrelevant with AI. I saw people painfully struggle to write without AI, exhausted, depressed, put out of commission by family issues, day job issues and health issues. All that trauma is unnecessary. I despised the writing portion of the courses. Write your first draft with AI in 1 - 2 weeks, instead.

Editing has been okay. It's kind of in between: not as useful as outlining but not as irrelevant as writing.

Overall, non-AI courses: outlining = B+, writing = F, editing = C.

Now, the AI writing courses.

I loved the AI writing courses at first. They were a breath of fresh air, they moved quickly and they were directly applicable compared to the non-AI writing courses.

I had my own way of writing with AI but it was great to compare and contrast how I did it with a completely different AI writing technique and figure out the pros and cons. The courses also showed me a lot of writing software which I had heard of but procrastinated on. It was great to look over someone's shoulder and be compelled to learn it myself.

But the bloom is coming off the rose. The AI writing courses have some problems as well.

The AI writing courses are combative, not collaborative. I can ask questions but I'm treated dismissively. I feel disrespected.

The AI writing techniques in the AI writing courses generally are stronger artistically and weaker technologically. They show strong writing skill but show a weak understanding of AI and tech. This results in more expense (in money, time and effort) for weaker first drafts.

The AI writing courses make several major business errors. They could permanently 3x their sales and profits instantly if they took a day to fix these 2 - 3 obvious business blunders. By comparison, non-AI writing courses make only minor business errors.

Overall, AI courses: outlining = A, writing = B, editing = C.

I feel like I'm fast approaching the point of diminishing returns with my current batch of both non-AI and AI writing courses. I'm not entirely there yet but I feel like I'll leave all of them behind later this year.

For non-AI writing courses, it's their obsolescence and lack of AI, really: it's a lot of friction to apply their non-AI knowledge to AI. For AI writing courses, my AI writing artistic and tech skill is outpacing and surpassing theirs; they also have no community to grow with.

I honestly don’t think that there’s a significant Human Premium. I know lots of people think that many readers will pay €10 (or even €2) when the AI equivalent is €1. But I think that this is false and there’s no reason to think that it’s true.

I think that nearly all publishers will say, “AI may have been used in the writing or publishing of this work” in the fine print. They’ll CYA so they won’t get caught if AI slips into the process without them being aware. They’ll just give up on trying to capture the imaginary Human Premium and use that “AI may have been used in the writing or publishing of this work” phrase to save the time, trouble and risk of picky auditing.

They’ll still get copyright and still easily defend copyright because any infringer will have to prove that AI was used enough and in such a way as to void copyright. Which will be expensive and risky for the infringer.

Any other visions for how the EU AI regulations will play out? Am I misunderstanding the AI regulations?

From your POV, of course.

I’m also interested in any significant news that indicates that anti-AI is gaining ground, though I doubt that there is any.

I became this sub's moderator 2 weeks ago. Anything that you want to see more of or less of? Too much tools spam? Not enough tools spam? ;)

FYI:

Believe it or not, auto-mod (Reddit's moderation robot) was moderating regularly and there was a 9-month backlog in the moderation queue. I cleared out the queue a week ago and approved almost everything. Auto-modded content was random and probably just trolls abusing the "report abuse" option.

There are no banned users.

The previous mod got in touch with me and was cool. They said that they didn't really know how to moderate so they just left it. We came to informal agreement that I'd approve any posts or comments that they wanted which I think was among their biggest concerns about me becoming a moderator.

I've been approving almost everything (even posts and comments that are flagged to be removed) except posts that are just profanity. Is this the right policy? Let me know.

I've debated replacing the sub icon but I think that we're all used to the purple blob so I'll leave it for now. If you don't like the purple blob, let me know. I recently updated my other subs, r/BetaReadersForAI and r/selfpublishForAI , was cutesy icons so you can take a look over at those and see if you'd prefer something like that. (Probably nobody cares.)

If you want to tell me anything, you can either comment publicly on this post or send ModMail privately.

Here's a link to a description: https://authors.ai/marlowe/

There are 2 kinds of reports: Basic (which is free) and Pro ($20/month for 4 reports).

I signed up for free Basic reports and, 1 - 2 weeks later, I was offered 2 months of Marlowe Pro (4 reports a month) for $10/month.

The Basic report is manuscript statistics on steroids. It's not AI but it offers convenient info like word count, repeated phrases, cliches, possible profanity, dialogue to narrative ratio and more. It's all numbers, charts and graphs.

The Pro report is the Basic report plus AI analysis of characters, settings, themes and more. Unlike the Basic report, it's subjective essays evaluating and analyzing your novel to generate recommendations to improve it.

My review of Marlowe Pro reports:

You'll probably pay $1,000+ for a human dev editor so $2.50 - $5 for an AI dev edit report is a good deal.

I have mixed feelings about the reports themselves. They correctly identified some weaknesses in my sci fi and romance novels, though I felt that they missed one or two others.

Over time, I imagine the reports becoming more useful as I get more familiar with them and know better how to leverage the report. You can just dump the report into AI with your novel and have AI do its best to apply the recommendations. You can also use it, not only to fix this novel, but, by knowing what to look out for, you can write future novels to avoid things that you know that Marlowe will flag. (No promises that that actually results in a better novel.)

There's several shortcomings in my opinion:

1. Marlowe is unnecessarily picky. It only accepts .docx and .epub. You have to strip out all the front and back matter, images, tables, pretty much every kind of formatting so that it's essentially just plain text with headings and fonts. This is annoying and, if you miss something, Marlowe isn't smart enough to skip it.
2. Marlowe shows its reports either on a website or a PDF. That's pretty limiting, too. Furthermore, my PDF included a "press this button to see more" image (which of course didn't work) which shows that their PDF generation is pretty sloppy.
3. The report is static. Unlike a human dev editor (and unlike other chatbot AIs), Marlowe Pro does not allow you to ask followup questions and dive deeper into the feedback. That's a real shortcoming because, if you want to dig deeper, you're stuck. There's no way to get more detail.
4. For a 6 year old company, I feel that the site experience is too basic, buggy and rickety. They seem to know a lot more about AI and dev editing than they do about how to code a website.

Still, I recommend paying for the Marlowe Pro reports. I think that their value will grow over time as you learn better what to expect, how to interpret the report and how to mitigate common issues that it flags while you are writing (or generating with AI).

It's been forever that I've been meaning to check it out.

Their website that's been around since Q4 2024! (Maybe they'll ship someday.)

https://trythoughtly.com

Their YouTube channel with exactly 1 video and 1 subscriber.

https://www.youtube.com/@TryThoughtly

That 1 YouTube video: https://youtu.be/UcSzBJ0dnS8

Any opinions?

u/George-Smith-Patton:

I saw that your post with the image about 1 - 15 Acceptable AI Uses image was removed from r/WritingWithAI . I encourage you to post it here on r/BetaReadersForAI and I'll approve it. Thank you.