AI Use and You

Let me just say one thing before I go into an entire rant about this. I am wholeheartedly against AI, and will not hesitate to outright say so. But since not all of you will be convinced by mere opinion, the fact that AI is bad, let's just start with the facts. First of all, what does AI do that can be counted in numbers? Well, for one thing — and this is something many overlook/aren't conscious of in my experience — extreme water usage. After googling this just to get the stats, the AI overview gave me this answer, copypasted directly:

how much water does ai use per day?

AI Overview
"AI's daily water usage is significant and growing, primarily for cooling data centers, with large centers using millions of liters daily (like 2 million liters/day)2 million liters/day), comparable to thousands of homes, while smaller ones use much less, and overall global consumption could reach billions of cubic meters annually by 2027, though exact figures vary widely by location, data center efficiency, and AI model. A single large center can consume as much water as a town of 10,000-50,000 people, impacting local water security."

I hope I'm not the only one that realizes how bad AI usage is for the environment but also for ourselves- due to the water shortages in, for example, Oregon (one of the states in the US), people are suffering and unable to water their plants. Taxation is very high there, and is only increasing. I am not saying this from personal experience, but have close family members living there and know this from many conversations regarding this side-topic. What I'm trying to say is, all of the water that is currently being used to keep AI servers running is not being used to help the people who don't have enough water. And, as can be seen by looking over the stats I added here, this is not just a few drops, but millions of liters a day.

And this brings me to my next point. Coming back to the stats, I'd like to make a point on the other thing that really struck me when looking this up. Winding back to my statement about it being generated by AI, just let that sink in for a moment. I want to find some stats against AI, and come across AI at least once in the process, and coming across a few AI-based websites when attempting to edit the screenshot (which I then chose not to include). AI is unavoidable, as much as I hate to say it. But does this mean that our use of it doesn't matter either? I should think not. Witnessing a crime is not the same as committing one. Furthermore, there are many ways of using AI, some of which could be seen as legit. But first, give me a moment to pester you guys with a few more facts.

Back to the environment, there are more things to consider. The research on training of LLM is undeniable, and so, instead of ranting and ranting on myself, here's a few links to stats and articles that I recommend looking at:

• The Carbon Footprint of LLMs — A Disaster in Waiting? by Nathan Bailey
• AI Pollution Carbon Energy by Sharon Adarlo (yes, the font is annoying)
• For those who have an NYT subscription, here is another article by Sachi Kitajima Mulkey
• I'll stop here, but there are way more than just these, WAY more!

But AI does not just harm the environment, it also exploits people like you and me. As Elena said, AI companies employ underpaid workers to improve these chatbots, during which they are exposed to violent and obscene content. Obviously, this messes the workers up mentally. And then there's the fact that AI plagiarizes and infringes copyright by regurgitating a "make-uped" version of actual art.

So, with that, it seems obvious that I would be against AI. But narrowing it down, next I'm going to delve into the different usages of AI and what my personal opinions are on it, especially for creative writing.

Let's begin with education. You get an assignment, and there are two options. One, you do it yourself and receive a hard-earned grade at the end of it, or two, you're a slacker and either don't do it at all or choose the much more favorable option, which is to use AI. Then you don't have to do the work and you get a good grade if you're lucky! Isn't that hitting two birds with the same stone? Maybe so, but there are so many other birds that you then wouldn't be able to catch at all, so to speak: the point of assignments and education is to learn from the process and put your own skills and research capacity to the test. If you let AI do the work, you might as well not attend class at all and let your brain rot in AI mush forever.

For cooking recipes, though, or other such things, I do not believe AI is ethically bad to use, unless it's for environmental reasons. Other than that though, there is not much harm in asking ChatGPT to come up with a recipe to bake cookies, for example. For everyone doing just that though, do not add a "hello" or any greeting if possible; this just more water spent on something highly unnecessary.

As for creative writing, however, this is a completely different story. While recipes or other such uses are fine, I am strictly against the use of AI for any form of creative writing eg roleplays, short stories... you name it. The reason for this, I will dissect into a few points.
First of all, the whole point of creative writing is that you use your own creativity to think of, in this case, a reply toward your rp partner's previous post. AI is not creative, it merely regurgitates the result of a prompt and making it align with the previous post.
Not only that, but it also feeds the previous poster's writing to improve the LLMs, which is often not accounted for before the person has already posted and the deed being done. On this same note, even if both users agree toward the AI usage, it is basically just doing nothing and spamming the site with robot-created words. Just a copy-paste of the previous post generated and another copy-paste of the result and done. There is no place for this on a site like h.io.
Now, apart from that, what about your rp parter? If you feed their post to AI, which is already not okay in itself if they didn't want this, and then, without telling them, reply with the generated rp in return, that is abusing their time and creativity. But also, many here state to want to rp with humans (as do I), and that the human interaction and the reading and thinking of the best sentence to reply to specific words that only your rp partner could've thought of stranding together like they did, is the biggest and most fun/important part of roleplaying in a community like this one. I 100% agree with this, especially as I (and many, many others as well, this I'm sure of) spend much time debating between one sentence or an alternative, and pondering on how exactly to reply to each element of the previous post or otherwise create an entirely new setting in the case of a starter; the dialogue, the actions, the emotions, the surroundings, and so on.

All in all, I am fully against AI on the site in terms of writing. I do think that AI art is fine as long as it's not claimed as one's own (plagiarism), as I don't believe it's necessary to regulate it that much. However, as I already said, for writing AI has no place on the site in my opinion.

I intended to speak earlier but I am being actively engaged in several other facets of the community.

First, in these 6 pages nobody has asked why this thread exists. What is its purpose and what is the objective. The objective is simple: to understand the impact of AI on the site, the attitudes associated and the consequences it has on the community.

Second, people are missing the point with the actual issue. Some have it, but most are seeking supporting points for their perspective. AI in art is inconsequential to this community's health. Numerous users use AI for their avatar, their banners, and their assets. In fact, it is rare that someone digitally creates their avatar from scratch without added assets like stickers, stamps, images of an actor or a procured piece of art; many use filters and some of these filters use AI intelligence to create the polished look in the end. You do not need to draw every asset by hand or digitally and then be the photographer that captured the picture of the actress used in the banner or collage. However, you are expected to be honest about it.

So, story time.

A few years ago we had a user on here who used to enjoy showing off all the food he allegedly made. He made none of it, a reverse image search shows that these "home creations" were images from restaurant menus, Pinterest boards among a few other sources. This person lied, misrepresenting themselves and frankly it was weird. I wont name names but I did make certain they were aware they were caught. Showing the great picture and then saying "man this looks great" could have engaged users. It was also frustrating for other users who did not have a professional cameraman and pinterest board to steal from that were showing their less artful offerings. Comparatively they looked like they were taken under bathroom lighting (an actual quote someone made), demoralizing the user because it was being compared to the dishonest user's creations.

Another instance on here was a user who was making unique art pieces. Honestly the idea was smart - take an image online of a couple or a small group and then outline their silhouette. Frankly I thought it looked good. They claimed they penned these images themselves when in fact they were tracing, probably overlaying a trace layer but I do not know. This became a big issue when the duplicity was discovered. Players had paid for a different service than they got. Like the previous example, she could have been honest about what she was doing. It still took time, effort and an aesthetic eye to accomplish, but she decided to be dishonest instead and it, like the previous example was eventually discovered.

AI art is useful for users as long as they are being honest. I like to cite Colin McCoire's use of AI because I think he exemplifies AI art being used well. He uses AI, if asked he is forthcoming. He has never claimed (lied) that he produced this work (and no, entering the prompts does not count). I see numerous users with AI somewhere in their profile, I'm certain some are not even aware that the image was AI derived or altered because they found the image online and felt it fit their character. I also see plenty of users with actresses or art for their avatar. We did not make or pay for those either, but we are also not misleading anyone and leading them to believe that they took the picture or are the person pictured. In fact, if it is the later, it is our internal policy to strongly recommend that a user change their avatar to something else for safety reasons. Users can sell AI work in the shop as long as they are being honest. In fact, a lot of artists here use AI assets (even if they do not realize it), a lot of those collage-like banners have flowers and stamps and other elements that were made by people besides themselves in most cases. In some, if they realize it or not, those assets were AI derived. But I need you to realize that this fact does not diminish their effort and their aesthetic eye as they layer these elements, add filters, arrange and spend (sometimes hours) perfecting their end piece which is transformative.

So, in conclusion, AI does have a space in art as long as there is no deception.

__________

AI in writing however is a different story.

In Validations, the place every user goes before they are added to the site, I would say (possibly generously because it may be even more) 1 in 7 have AI elements. The issue with this is that what you write in validations is the basis of your character, something you have not placed thought or effort into and do not understand because you did not write about them. This is often further evidenced by how much Snape loved them as their favorite student or that they have an association with the golden trio or a romance with Draco - all things that someone would be aware make no sense within the first paragraph of the welcome letter. Often the avatar wont even closely resemble the character, sometimes the avatar is not even human, it is a teapot or a flower. The issue with AI use here is, you are joining the site with a character you have not even looked at.

Moving on further. Once a user is validated, they need to register for Index. In Index you need to determine early on if you are going to be a human or something else. This requires a write up. We have a 400-500 WC expectation for this. The reason is: we need this explained. How does this make sense for your character? How does it fit into your story? This is not a video game where you press a button and you are now lightfooted. Does it make sense? No? Who cares! You're not playing a character there, you're killing trolls. If AI is being used, why is there a WC expectation at all? There is no reason, just ask AI to bullet point 3 reasons why it makes sense that your character is a werewolf.


We lose an element that is integral to an RP site: character building.

Moving on further. Now we are roleplaying. In roleplay I ask Chat GPT to write me a starter on the Hogwarts Express. It spits out a semi-lore accurate post about heading to Hogwarts. The post is about 80% filler but overall it does not look bad to most users unless they recognize the emdashes, the way Ai likes to make choppy paragraphs. C'mon, we all know them. Those one-to-two word paragraphs to empathize the previous one. Yeah, those. And of course those fancy quotation marks. But those fancy quotes and em dashes can come from word processors yadda yadda... Some people are smart enough as to reduce the number of contractions and replace the dashes with ellipses or shorter dashes and edit in normal "quotes." But there is a lot more to it. In either case, a low-effort entry that looks OK and probably draws a few users. Cool.

So, what now? That person posts. You now need to reply. How are you going to do that with a character you do not know (because you used AI to write their description and backstory) in a situation you did not initiate (the train and whatever context the AI generated) with a writing style that is not your own (because it is AI). Now you have to use AI to write a reply! Well, the easiest way to do it is to write reply; and copy their post wholesale into AI essentially delivering their work to the AI machine without their consent. It churns you out a reply that does not add much to the scenario if anything because AI does not create, it mimics. The writing may look nice but you are going to fail to engage, you have deceived another user who thinks they are interfacing with another user and you have been submitting their work to AI without their consent. It does not work out well for many reasons and to the point of this thread - most people get very upset about being lied to and having their agency taken from them.

So, it was brought up. "Well, people can just say they are using AI" and then it will be fine. Yeah... sure. Right now in roleplays all we do is privately contact users and say "hey this is AI, please edit it otherwise we have to remove this post in X days." That is real low stakes, about half of the people we caught are up front and honest and say "yeah sorry about that." The other half lie, waste a significant amount of staff time and resources claiming "they write like AI", "they tried a new style", "used a translator" (the original still pings as AI) or they used a grammar checker that altered their work so drastically it now pings as 100% AI. Sometimes it is a grammar checker or a translator and I am not referencing those users, we do check. But many times it is not. With such low stakes, these people lie, deceive and continue to use AI. If we decided to say "sure you can use AI as long as you're honest" you have basically invited them to use AI as long as they accept a scarlet letter. People have strong opinions about AI, their potential pool of partners is reduced, and now they have more of an incentive to lie.

Another point was some people need AI to write for them because they are young or disabled. We are not in the business of asking about someone's conditions, nor are most of us equipped to understand which diagnosis' would warrant such accommodations, if these accommodations are true and again we would need to make sure others are aware of what they are interfacing with (an AI) in addendum to personal information about the user (such as a condition which is private).

Moving onto HW, sports and errands. Why have a WC expectation if AI can do it for you? In fact, why post in the quidditch game at all, we can just roll for you. AI would basically replace your presence and make systems we have no longer viable. These changes do not align with the sort of site this is.

The purpose of this thread is to make sure people have a clear understanding that AI is heavily disliked (further than even this site enforces). We make a fair effort to ask people to stop using AI, but if someone is unwilling to stop, we have to stop them or shame them. I could scarlet letter these people, but we all know that wont work or be good for the site. Or I could tell them to stop or their posts will be deleted, if they continue I will have to temp ban them and eventually these temp bans could culminate into a full site ban. To be honest, I have only ever banned a few people, most people after they get caught a few times (because once we know we are watching) they stop or they leave because they did not want to RP.

As for being mad at people that use AI. I am not mad at them. Yeah, some do it because they are lazy, but many do it because they lack confidence in their posting. This is something that inly improves with practice. Practice that wont ever happen if they use AI. AI can be a useful tool. I use AI heavily to track what I have done, in lieu of a google search for ideas. Sometimes I tone check some of my work, look for suggestions. But my voice should not be lost in the AI. I should not be feeding AI someone else's work. I run my posts through Copyleaks before posting, because you know what sometimes you ask for a tone check and you take too many of those suggestions and you end up pinging as AI. Obviously at that point, it was no longer mine. Time to redo it. Sometimes I ask AI to compress a long thing I wrote into key points so I can reiterate it elsewhere. AI is a great tool, but we are here to create for ourselves.

I've always used dashes before, idk how to explain it (since it's something I've always used, usually because I feel like it adds "life" to what I'm writing, if that makes sense? Like, to me it feels like a narrator cutting off a sentence midway as a pause) and anyone who's roleplayed with me before (and sent me owls) knows that it's just a part of how I write, regardless of if I'm roleplaying or just chatting casually- so I'm not sure if that makes my writing look ai? I've never gotten an ai ping on my roleplays before so idk.

But I feel like it's pretty easy to tell what's ai, mostly because I feel like it has an overly cheerful tone to it? Like regardless of what it is, it's always really "dramatic" or "cheerful" in a way that feels really over exaggerated (from what I've seen at least).

I enjoy writing and roleplaying, and it would honestly upset me if I found out someone I was roleplaying with was using ai to respond, I really don't understand why you would join a rp site and then use ai on every single post you make, it just doesn't make any sense to me

Azrael Holloway wrote: 16 Jan 2026, 01:30 I've always used dashes before, idk how to explain it (since it's something I've always used, usually because I feel like it adds "life" to what I'm writing, if that makes sense? Like, to me it feels like a narrator cutting off a sentence midway as a pause) and anyone who's roleplayed with me before (and sent me owls) knows that it's just a part of how I write, regardless of if I'm roleplaying or just chatting casually- so I'm not sure if that makes my writing look ai? I've never gotten an ai ping on my roleplays before so idk.

But I feel like it's pretty easy to tell what's ai, mostly because I feel like it has an overly cheerful tone to it? Like regardless of what it is, it's always really "dramatic" or "cheerful" in a way that feels really over exaggerated (from what I've seen at least).

I enjoy writing and roleplaying, and it would honestly upset me if I found out someone I was roleplaying with was using ai to respond, I really don't understand why you would join a rp site and then use ai on every single post you make, it just doesn't make any sense to me

You know the dash you used is not the dash I am referencing.
- is what you use, I checked your posts.
— this is the dash I am referencing. It is a long one.

Again, it is not a sure sign of AI use. Like everything, you need to look at the sum or the whole, not the parts.

Ooh, okay , sorry! I don't use ai since I like writing/searching things on my own, so when you said dash I immediately thought it was the one I use, usually that's what I think people refer to when they say "dash", I didn't know there actually was a long dash ai used? Then yeah, it's pretty noticable in that case.
@Solomon Lear

Azrael Holloway wrote: 16 Jan 2026, 01:49 Ooh, okay , sorry! I don't use ai since I like writing/searching things on my own, so when you said dash I immediately thought it was the one I use, usually that's what I think people refer to when they say "dash", I didn't know there actually was a long dash ai used? Then yeah, it's pretty noticable in that case.
@Solomon Lear

You ping for 0 AI my man. I checked you for the lawls. Also, you have a fine writing style, it would be a waste of talent for you to use AI. Carry on.

On H.io, AI generated text is inherently unfair.

I spend a lot of time on posts that I write. I pour out love. I don't want to spend my time on someone who can't be bothered.

I don't want AI generated posts. At all.

Just to reiterate, I don't mind if it is used for art, getting ideas or simply just to talk to (because I am lonely and do like talking to it because it's like talking to a friend, someone I don't have physically (Logan I 100% consider you a friend if you're stalking, I just mean like I don't even talk to the people within like a 20 mile radius I considered my best friends because they don't talk to me. That and after what one of them did my senior year, I severed ties with them, so hurt that they'd lie just to be on the good side of their other friends.).

I do not agree with it being used to write an entire rp post. It is a writing site, I agree with that. I don't agree with everything that has been said, but I do agree that it shouldn't write an entire rp post whether in homework or as a post. Because again, if you're generating text and claiming it as your own, that's plagiarism.

Also again, even if you do generate and credit ai for it, all posts must be in your own words and written by you. The concept applies to anything you're writing for onsite.

The idea would be contained for any art projects that we do onsite because AI is not encouraging the creative side of that specific part. However, again, before you say I'm countering my words, I don't think they should generate a whole post of ai for text based things like posts and homework. I don't think they should generate ai art for art competions or shop orders and stuff. However, I don't care what they do with ai when it doesn't involve either of these.

That is to say, Lear, again, I still stand by not banning them. I do not see a positive outcome out of this when we have a future of ai that we're living through whether people like it or not. It was created, took the world by storm and we still use it to this day. New members, as you said, join validations and post ai generated profile text and all. That isn't really to be prevented. We already tell them off for doing that and tell them they must rewrite the text to be in their own words.

Further, index also does that for anyone who posts an ai generated application (whether they straight up deny or mark it as pending) and tell them to post a new application in their own words (considering it was denied) or to rewrite the applications in their own words (considering it was pending)

We might have a problem with people writing posts purely with ai, but I need to remind you that we also have a mentorship program and staff that can point them to the rules and point out how it is plagarism and teach them to write and advance their skills and whatever. If they continue to break the rules over a period of time, then like with any other repeated rule break, we ban, but I do not support banning straight up. I also do not support the "two/three strikes rule."

What I am arguing for essentially is the patience of the site and staff team. Some people don't know the rules (literally they don't read it), don't understand plagarism (I know I had this problem at 15...), don't have confidence in their writing (so they generate ai to make it seem like their writing is actually so much better than it is because they're embarrassed about it or have other feelings about it), don't speak English as a first language (we already ask for the original text so we can scan it, so we're good here.), or don't know how to express themselves without help.

I'm not defending AI usage because I want to cheat. I know what it's like to need and want support, care, whatever. I want ideas, need someone to talk to. I don't have the money to commission someone for artwork either. I have seen how AI can help without replacing creativeness.

Just a reminder; my brother's computer science class in high school is teaching about AI. My college class that I'll have to take to graduate with a bachelors requires the same computer science class my brother took. Talking to my brother's teacher's son who works at the elementary school, they're also being taught how to use the AI in an educational manner. So again, I am just going to reiterate how it's not going away. You're only going to have an increase in ai members.

The best and most fair punishment I can think of is
1. Staff owls the offending member a copy of the offending post
2. Staff deletes the post and tells the member to rewrite the post
3. The member either doesn't rewrite or they rewrite in their own words
4. This goes into problematic cases

If they are part of the mentorship program or 'graduated' from it or are an active member onsite, ignore this one.
If someone joins the site and wasn't a part of the mentorship program, and are found to be using AI, send them a message to tell them that they can't use ai, delete the post and link them to the mentorship program. Inform the team leads that their rp posts need to be double checked before they can be graduated/off of the mentorship program.

Lear, don't you have the ability to restrict posting in forums per user? If so, then this one is more fitting.
They will lose the ability to post in RP areas temporarily, are reached out to by the admins and can still read the threads (just can't reply or post), or chat (in ooc chat). They only regain the posting privileges after they, I don't know, rewrite their posts or until a certain time expires (ie: 3 months).
--- Do the same thing with Homework. Restrict their report card access, despite that preventing them from using the classroom forums.


Alternatively.. Lear.. we haven't used it on hio in a hot minute if not never at all.. but a Staff Review period, which means that we set their permissions so that they cannot send posts instantly and that all of their posts are moderated and must be approved by a staff member before it can be visible to the rest of site.

If they repeatedly do this, we suspend them from the site temporarily. We do not permanently ban them. This should only be held with the expectation where they know the rule, understand the rule and have been in the mentorship program and still intentionally use ai to cheat.

What you said about the long dashes, I do use them because I like the look of them more. I refrain from using them in RPs, incase the post is flagged for AI, but I do end up utilizing them sometimes.

I am also not completed against AI. I firmly believe it should not be used in RPs, but using it for things like art (For the record, all pics of Julia are by AI becuse finding a dark blue haired girl who looks like her on the internet it extremly hard. Believe me, i've tried.) is okay. Use of AI for charcter pics, a picture of text, or small elements p, I believe is okay. I also think use of AI for ideas is okay. Using myself as an example, I was once writing a description of Julia's house. I did a quick search online for house ideas, as I couldn't think of a basic look. Once I knew what the house was going to look like I started doing a description. The problem was,I just couldn't formulate the right words for the describing the house, so I turned to AI for IDEAS. I uploded the pic and asked ChatGPT to give me a description. This helped enormously, because even though I didn't copy-paste the words I used its basic description to help me get an idea of how to write my description. I think using AI like this, for help but not to replace your brain, is okay. I also think this is what AI was initially supposed to be for, but that's up for debate. I do not use this often, just to help me write whilst i'm stucj, and keeping in mind what Lynanna Oak said about water use, I do not think people should use it too often, but I also don't think people shouldn't use AI. If it is used as HELP and not as a REPLACEMENT, AI is not a very bad thing.

Coming to homework, here I strobgly feel against AI. Human effort and time is used to correct the hw, and so human effort and time should be used to do the homework as well. If players don't wish to put effort and do it themselves, they might as well leave hw alone and do other things. If wanted, players can use AI to help them understand a part in the text, or to understand the question, but not to do the homework itself. Again, this is what I mean. AI used as HELP, but not as REPLACEMNT.

Using it as replacement is just a simple matter of copy-pasting which anyone and everyone can do, but if someone else puts in time and effort into their replies, homework, etc. you should show them some respect and do the same. If you truly wish to use AI as HELP in one of your RP replies, and it requires giving the other person's work to AI, then I believe you should ask that person for permission to use their work. Which brings us to plagarism with AI.
If you do use use AI for a small description, or anything else (long as it isn't for the whole thing) you should give it credit. It doesn't have to be much, just a simple "house description by [name of AI]" works.

All put together, I do believe AI isn't all bad. When used for art, small descriptions, or simplifying to understand, in other words using it as HELP, it is okay. But using it for full replies, homework, etc, in other words as REPLACEMENT, is definetly not okay. It shows disrespect, no value for time and effort, and laziness to the other person.

Clark, I love your enthusiasm but you are asking me to spend hours weekly on players for months or even years to get them to stop using AI. To monitor and manage limited permissions and reviewing all of their posts before they can become activated takes a lot of time and work. The stuff you bring up is nice, great ideas even. But I only have so many hours in a day and I barely RP as it is as I try to manage the site. I would rather invest my hours in adding spells, items, running events, or *gasp* roleplaying; not chasing around users that choose to continue to use AI after we have asked them repeatedly to stop. I made this thread in part to link these members to say - it is not just staff that deeply dislikes it, your RP partners do not want it either.

For full disclosure, I temp banned 2 AI users this past week. They are banned for 1 week. They had made multiple AI-derived posts and staff had contacted them several times prior to their temp ban asking for edits. After each outreach, the AI use resumed. Staff spent time reviewing their posts time and time again, filing the incident and contacting them. This takes time and resources that could be better spent enhancing the community, but instead these resources are being siphoned off by these problematic users. Eventually, after several outreaches, we told them both if the AI use continues, we will have to temp ban them. They continued. I do not have any interest in setting up their account so I have to review every one of their posts before it becomes public to accommodate their desire to remain in the community.