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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

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[disclaimer: I do not and will not use LLMs to write text I post directly to TheMotte; only in linked content I try to identify as LLM-produced.]

I've not been impressed by any AI-built writing itself, but they can be useful when analyzing a written work, even if only in a way that's helpful to the original writer. They've been able to catch everything from the standard typos and grammar errors, to pacing problems, to (in one case) a theme I overlooked, along with sometimes fairly biting criticism. They're not perfect when it comes to either false positives or false negatives, nor do they handle every use case well, but it's much more useful than info-dumping-and-getting-generic-responses back.

((Most of the time. I have had one or two times where the only criticisms I could pull out of the LLM were just 'try to make your characters feel more grounded in the setting' schlock, and that's not because the work was stellar. And for writing adult or erotic fiction, the LLMs can be hit-or-miss about pacing, unsurprisingly.))

Some of that might reflect the quality of other beta readers available, especially in fandom or extremely-genre spaces. I can't compare the LLMs to professional editors, which might well blow the machines out of the water. But I can't make that comparison because professional editors are and have long been unavailable for randos like myself.