Writing sprung from artificial intelligence is not eligible for publication in Bloom. If we receive it, it will be rejected as a form of plagiarism. If a program wrote it, those aren’t your words. If a program helped out your plot, those aren’t your ideas.
As an editor in 2024, I might not be able to tell if a writer has run their work through some form of AI at any point in their writing. In fact, I can’t tell. I mean, there is egregiously bad AI writing out there, and we all can spot that. Flowless, repetitive nonsense that meanders. It’s everywhere. But as we use AI more and more, we refine it. As our tactics with it improve, so improves its ability to emulate human words and works.
Exhibit A: Unedited opening of AI output from the prompt “write me a prose scene of dialogue between a pair of lovers who are breaking up because the woman cheated on the man.”
The café was quiet, the hum of distant conversation blending with the clink of coffee cups and the soft scrape of chairs. At a corner table, Sarah and Alex sat in silence. The afternoon light cast long shadows across the table, and the empty space between them felt more suffocating than the air outside.
Alex’s fingers were curled tightly around his cup, though he hadn’t taken a sip in what felt like hours. His eyes were fixed on the surface of the table, as if the grain of the wood held some kind of answer he needed. Sarah sat across from him, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes flickering between him and the window, but never staying too long on either.
Finally, Alex broke the silence. His voice was quiet but edged with something raw. “How long?”
Sarah’s breath caught in her throat. The question hung there, heavy, in the space between them. She had prepared for this moment in her mind, but now that it was here, she didn’t know how to answer.
“Sarah,” he said, his voice tight, “how long?”
She exhaled slowly, as if giving up the fight. “A few months,” she whispered, barely audible.
Alex’s grip on his cup tightened, his knuckles going white. He didn’t look up at her, didn’t let her see the rage, the hurt. Instead, he focused on the way the cup trembled in his hands. “You’ve been seeing him for a few months?”
Her throat tightened as if the words were stuck, unwilling to leave her. She nodded, slowly, ashamed.
“I thought we were good,” he said, almost to himself. “I thought we were happy. Was I that wrong? Was I that blind?”
Tears welled in Sarah’s eyes, and she fought to keep them in check. She couldn’t bear to see him like this. “No, Alex,” she said, her voice breaking. “You weren’t wrong. You were never wrong. It was me. I lost myself. I… I don’t even know how it happened. I’m so sorry.”
Exhibit B: Unedited opening of AI output from the same program with the more specific prompt “write me a prose scene with raw and quirky dialogue between a pair of young, disenchanted lovers who are breaking up because the woman cheated on the man with her boss from the bar where she works.”
The dimly lit bar smelled faintly of stale beer and fryer oil, the kind of place that might’ve been cool once, before the regulars grew old and the jukebox turned into background noise. Jesse sat across from Lily in their usual corner booth, the one by the window where the streetlights flickered like dying fireflies. They hadn’t spoken in what felt like hours, but there was still that tension between them, thick as smoke, heavy in the air.
Lily fidgeted with the edge of the napkin, folding it into tiny triangles, one after another. Jesse stared at her, his gaze unfocused, but burning all the same. He was waiting. They both were.
Finally, Lily exhaled sharply, like she’d been holding her breath for too long. “So… you wanna hear the story?”
Jesse didn’t say anything. His fingers tapped against the chipped glass of his beer bottle.
She didn’t wait for him to respond. “It’s not like it just happened, okay? It’s not like I woke up one day and thought, ‘Hey, I’m going to ruin my relationship over a pair of nice shoes and a questionable amount of whiskey.’” She threw him a glance, but it wasn’t quite a look. Just a glance.
Jesse blinked, and then looked away. “You slept with him. Your boss. With Greg.”
Lily’s lip curled in a half-hearted smile. “Yeah. Greg.” She let out a humorless laugh. “What a mess, right?”
The first prompt—general and vague—yielded an absolutely generic scene that issues the distinct stink of soap opera dramatics. That second one, though, reads a bit differently, doesn’t it? Now we’re getting some character. Now we’re getting a little more…real.
But it isn’t. It isn’t real.
And you know that thing you get when you’re really writing—like when the muse just has you by your guts—and it’s just spilling and spilling and spilling out of you, and you’re making yourself laugh like a fool and you feel high (you’re shaking) from what you just wrote?
An effective AI prompt will never give you that.
“Successful” or even skillful employment of artificial intelligence will never exorcise anything or get you off. It’s a hollow sham.
I can’t sniff out every instance of artificial intelligence in writing. I can only remind us all why we do this and promise to champion real stories told by real writers.
Angela Denk, Editor
Bloom 