Think you can tell the difference between a human-written short story and an AI-generated one? Most people can’t. Test yourself by reading the two short stories below:
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Excerpt 1
In the stillness of the early morning, I find myself at the edge of the koi pond, a relic from my childhood, watching the fish swirl in patterns only they understand. Their vibrant colors – a mosaic of oranges, whites, and blacks – mirror the autumn leaves that dance on the water’s surface. Each koi, with its graceful, unhurried movement, seems a silent sentinel guarding the mysteries of life and death.
The pond, nestled in the heart of my mother’s garden, has been a constant in my life. As a child, I would spend hours by its side, my mother sitting quietly beside me, her eyes always carrying a soft, distant gaze. She would tell me stories of her youth, of her dreams and fears, her voice weaving tales that made the past seem like a vivid tapestry, full of color and life.
But now, the chair beside the pond sits empty, the fabric faded and frayed. My mother, who once tended this garden with such care, lies in a room that smells of antiseptics and sterile detachment, her life slowly ebbing away. It’s a stark contrast to the world outside, where life in the pond continues, unfazed and serene.
In my visits to her bedside, I find our roles reversed. I am now the storyteller, recounting the happenings of the world she can no longer partake in. I tell her of the koi, how they seem unchanged, timeless in their quiet world. Sometimes, in her lucid moments, she smiles, a flicker of recognition lighting up her weary eyes.
“Life is like those koi,” she whispered during one of these visits, her voice barely above a breath. “Constantly moving, yet going nowhere. Beautiful but confined. We are all swimming in circles, aren’t we?”
Excerpt 2
Something is wrong with the fish in the koi pond outside my mother’s floor-to-ceiling bedroom window. There are three of them, small golden-orange, medium marmalade, and large vermillion with black markings. Last time I visited for the weekend, I named them, in reverse order of their descriptions and with no assignment of gender intended, Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson.
My mother’s husband says he thinks one of them is about to give birth. Then he says the big ones usually eat the young, but that they’re pretty good at hiding among the hydrangeas growing hydroponically in one end of the pond. I haven’t seen new fish born here in some ten years, but perhaps that’s why, maybe they’re not so good at hiding after all. I idly ask him whether they’re born live or laid as eggs that hatch, vaguely aware that I should know the answer to this myself. But I’ve asked because of the way Goldie is canoodling against Kurt, as if he’ll be trying to catch the babies in his mouth as they’re born.
My mother is in a hospital bed next to the window, where she’s been for the past 60 days after her husband unilaterally—that is, without discussing it with me—decided to engage hospice care for her. She can look to her left and watch the fish, or to her right to see the fluffy apricot tabby, who is keeping careful watch over her from a chair upholstered in burnt-sienna plush across the room. Mostly though, she sleeps, waking to eat bland meals of rice and boiled chicken, to have her sip of amber bourbon with the five o’clock news, and to occasionally answer her cell phone when I or another well-wisher calls, whispering her responses,Read more Earthquake response strains Colombia’s new government and rescuers
These are two excerpts of the samples used in a series of experiments led by a team at Villanova University. During their research, the scientist found two things: First, most people indicated a preference for human written stories, but couldn’t tell the difference between AI and human writing; and second, when presented with two similar short stories, one written by a human and one generated by AI, readers tended to prefer the AI-generated piece – if they had been told the AI story was written by a human.
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Other experts in the field who have done similar research emphasize, however, that length is often a key factor in our being able to detect AI-generated content… since AI-generated stories tend to be pretty formulaic, the longer they are, the worse their quality is.
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Want to read more of the stories for yourself? Check them out here.