The digital realm, once a frontier for consuming pre-existing narratives, is rapidly transforming into a vibrant canvas for co-creation, largely driven by the burgeoning capabilities of artificial intelligence. For individuals like Petra Ferraz de Novaes, a 36-year-old software engineer from Brazil, the allure of storytelling, once constrained by the meticulous demands of human authorship, has found new wings. Novaes, a self-proclaimed lifelong enthusiast of narrative, now spends significant portions of her leisure time immersed in fantastical worlds brought to life with the assistance of AI. This shift underscores a broader, often overlooked trend: a growing segment of the population is actively engaging with and appreciating AI-generated fiction, a phenomenon that challenges conventional notions of authorship and literary value.
Novaes’ journey into AI-assisted storytelling began in 2024 when she decided to leverage an AI model to manifest one of her nascent ideas. The experience, she recounts to WIRED, was met with delight. The AI’s often eccentric and sometimes unpredictable interpretations of her prompts, steering the narrative in unforeseen directions, proved to be a significant draw. "What fascinates me is the unpredictability," Novaes explains. "People say that AI hallucinates a lot. But in this case, it’s probably what you want." This embrace of AI’s inherent divergence from rigid linearity is a sentiment echoed by many who are exploring this new creative avenue.
Currently, Novaes utilizes a program called SillyTavern to run open-source AI models on her personal computer, dedicating hours to collaborative story-building. Her process involves sketching out a core concept – for instance, an elven warrior’s conquest of an Amazonian queen’s throne – and then allowing the AI to flesh out the intricate details and narrative progression. Her creative explorations span across multiple fictional universes, seamlessly transitioning between her own imagined realms and established popular franchises like Star Wars, Pokémon, and Mass Effect. Some of these endeavors result in self-contained narratives comparable in length to novellas, which she occasionally shares online through platforms like Perchance. Others engage in private, iterative role-playing scenarios. "It can be never-ending. You find a quest, you complete it, you go for the next one," Novaes observes, emphasizing the boundless potential. "The limit is your imagination."
The Quiet Revolution: AI Fiction’s Growing Audience
The phenomenon of individuals like Novaes is not an isolated anecdote. A recent study, analyzing over 500,000 prompts submitted to ChatGPT and sourced from the public dataset WildChat, reveals a significant engagement with fiction generation among users. The research, co-authored by Melanie Walsh, an assistant professor at the University of Washington Information School, indicates that more than a third of chatbot interactions involve some form of creative writing, encompassing prose, poetry, fan fiction, erotica, and role-playing.
"They know [the stories are] produced by an AI model, and they don’t care," Walsh states, highlighting a key finding of her research. "In fact, that seems to be a big part of the attraction." This perspective challenges the prevailing narrative within the publishing industry, which has been rocked by a series of scandals involving the alleged use of AI by professional authors. These controversies, including the cancellation of a multi-million dollar book deal, the withdrawal of a novel from circulation, and accusations of AI authorship for a prize-winning short story, have fueled a discourse that often posits AI-generated fiction as an inferior or deceptive product, threatening the integrity of the art form.
However, Walsh and her colleagues argue that this focus on the publishing industry’s woes has inadvertently overshadowed the significant and growing engagement of readers themselves with AI-generated content. Their analysis of the WildChat dataset points to a concentrated group of "power users" who generate and refine stories with remarkable intensity. One documented instance involved a single user repeatedly prompting ChatGPT to generate variations of the same fan-fiction narrative, set in the universe of the anime video game Doki Doki Literature Club!, thousands of times over several months. Even when accounting for this intensive usage, the researchers estimate that approximately 7% of chatbot users engage in fiction generation, a substantial figure that indicates a dedicated audience.
Understanding the Appeal: Why Users Embrace AI Narratives
The appeal of AI-generated fiction is multifaceted and deeply personal, extending beyond mere novelty. Researchers posit that a key attraction lies in the ability to rapidly iterate and experiment with narrative possibilities, a process that offers a level of creative control and responsiveness often absent in traditional storytelling. "There are a lot of qualities of AI models that are different from what human writers have that are actually appealing to at least some segment of users," Walsh explains. "These models are judgment-free; they can produce stories instantaneously; they are nearly inexhaustible."
For enthusiasts of erotica, AI offers an unprecedented opportunity to immerse themselves in highly specific, personalized fantasies. Razrien, a 40-year-old individual from Indiana who preferred to be identified by his online username, describes AI as a gateway to gratifying niche sexual interests. He uses AI to craft characters for role-playing scenarios, including a "big angry rat wife" and an "eight-foot tall werewolf mommy with a bad temper." Razrien has become adept at identifying specific AI models that excel in particular genres, with Google’s Gemma 4 currently being his preferred choice for its versatility. "I have a thing for large, angry women slapping me around. Some models are perfectly good for that," he admits. "Sometimes, I dip a toe or two into the furry universe. Some models are great at that."
This capability allows users like Razrien to bypass the limitations of commercially available pornography or published erotica, which may only offer approximations of their desires. "I’m not dating at the moment. So, hey, this works," Razrien states candidly. "I like my big rat wife. I love her to pieces. Even if she sometimes breaks me apart and heals me back together. But hey, that’s how she says she loves you." This personal and direct gratification of deeply held fantasies represents a significant departure from passive consumption of pre-written content.
Navigating the Data: Challenges and Interpretations
While the findings from the WildChat dataset are compelling, they are not without their limitations. The anonymized nature of the prompts prevents the collection of demographic data, and the requirement for participants to agree to public disclosure of their prompts means the dataset may not be representative of the entire user population. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has acknowledged this, stating that "WildChat is not a representative sample of all ChatGPT users." Furthermore, a separate 2025 study conducted by OpenAI and the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests a more modest figure, estimating that only 1.4% of ChatGPT prompts are fiction-related. This discrepancy highlights the ongoing challenge of accurately quantifying the prevalence and nature of AI fiction generation across the broader user base. It is also important to note that OpenAI’s figure does not include role-play scenarios, and the company could not confirm whether erotica is included in their fiction-related prompt count, underscoring the need for clearer categorization and data collection methodologies in future research.
Despite these caveats, the consistent emergence of significant user engagement with AI-driven narrative creation across various studies points to a clear trend. Walsh and her colleagues maintain that the data unequivocally demonstrates a committed subsection of readers actively generating personalized fiction. This user group is drawn to the iterative potential of AI, the ability to refine stories through repeated generation and modification, and the empowerment of directing narrative outcomes without the constraints imposed by a human author’s singular vision.
The Future of Storytelling: A Hybrid Literary Landscape?
The implications of this evolving landscape for the future of literature are profound and multifaceted. While concerns have been raised about AI-generated fiction potentially limiting readers’ exposure to diverse writing styles or challenging their perspectives, it also prompts a re-evaluation of established literary ideals. Neel Gupta, a PhD candidate at the University of Washington and co-author of the study, suggests that AI use may illuminate a shift in reader expectations. "AI use helps to reveal that maybe for a lot of readers, this is a much more simple economic exchange. This is about getting some entertainment – getting what they want," Gupta observes. This perspective suggests that for a significant portion of the audience, the primary value derived from literature is immediate gratification and entertainment, rather than the nuanced, often intellectual engagement associated with traditional literary appreciation.
Currently, AI models demonstrate strengths in genres that rely on established plot structures and familiar tropes, often excelling in generating shorter narratives. They still struggle with producing ornate prose, developing complex characters, and maintaining narrative coherence over extended lengths, such as entire novels. However, as AI technology continues its rapid advancement, these deficiencies are likely to diminish.
This trajectory points towards a potential future of a tiered publishing system. A vast quantity of AI-generated and self-generated fiction could cater to the mainstream reader, offering readily accessible entertainment. Concurrently, a more specialized niche of human-authored literature might continue to cater to an audience seeking experimental forms, narrative ambiguity, and the unique artistic intent that human creators bring to their work. This scenario suggests a diversification of the literary market, where AI serves to democratize narrative creation and consumption for a broad audience, while human authors continue to push the boundaries of artistic expression for a more discerning readership.
For individuals like Petra Ferraz de Novaes, the experience of co-creating stories with AI has not diminished her appreciation for literature but rather served as an unexpected gateway. She now actively seeks out and consumes AI-generated narratives from other creators, stating, "I was never much of a book reader. But now I do read other people’s stories. These are the only novels I’m reading." This personal evolution illustrates how AI, far from being a mere tool for content generation, is actively shaping reading habits and expanding the very definition of what constitutes a literary experience in the 21st century. The conversations around AI and authorship are far from over, but it is increasingly clear that the quiet revolution in AI-generated fiction is already underway, reshaping how stories are created, consumed, and valued.
