Models have proclivities, and many people use the same model.
Imagine all books on earth were written by just 5 people - and worse, they could not remember what they had written yesterday. You would quickly get tired of reading the same flourishes and patterns over and over.
Whatever style models currently in use have, that's what people are going to be tired of, and it's what they're going to recognize as "AI".
The most difficult thing in doing it yourself is knowing what to ask for. I can ask my model to talk like a caveman or like a Baltic pirate. But asking for something more nuanced, in the range of regular speech, requires the correct lingo
I'm sure it's trivial for somebody who has studied communication or contemporary linguistics, just as it's trivial for me to ask an LLM for tenant-isolation using row-level security in an app
You could try taking a body of your own writing and asking it to characterize it/come up with a prompt (or fine tune if you can) describing your style and quirks.
This is usually what I've had luck with. I've given it samples of my writing and told it to emulate my style. It did help, but it took some charistics of my speech and cranked them up to 10. I guess in hindsight I could have mentioned for it to take my writing quirks it finds and only apply them in moderation.
Reading what I did get out of it was just a bit uncanny valley strangely enough. Very much had some "hey there fellow kids" energy.
> I'm sure it's trivial for somebody who has studied communication or contemporary linguistics…
But you know what you like, and you know what bothers you, and the good news is that you don't have to one-shot a solution. You can create a skill and refine it over time. As you test and/or use it, identify copy you don't like and tell the LLM what you prefer instead, and ask it to distill and generalize that feedback into the skill.
I don't understand why this is a feature and what it brings other than shout "you are being watched by random others".
Exited the site before ending the first block.
for https://slopwash.com I’ve started approaching this more as an eval problem than something to go post-training for. I’m excited to be trying these new Jev-type models in more of a harnessed approach. maybe some heavy LLM to measure preservation of intent
Why kill the em dashes? They are a legitimate mark — one that I have been using for years. On a Mac, you quickly get used to pressing shift-option-hyphen. Em dashes are typographically correct and should be used.
Side note but the multi-user cursors was a super cool feature, not sure it was relevant to this article but would love to see it on more interactive pieces (a la The Pudding, etc.)
The tell tell sign for me is that it's still incredibly hard to read. AI tend to write in a style that I'm unable to easily read (humans does that as well sometimes). I constantly have to go back and re-read the previous sentence, because the text simply doesn't register.
A next step I'd suggest is asking the LLM to use shorter words when available.
Why would you support this sort of projects?
LLM text should be spottable for as long as possible, otherwise human communication and expression on the internet will be killed.
In what sense will it be killed? I don't plan to stop writing my own messages or notes, just because AI can write, and I seriously doubt many other people who prefer their own voices will change either.
I stopped using reddit entirely because it's bots talking to other bots on threads posted by bots, I stopped making posts at the start of this year because I no longer know if a human being is ever reading them. I then deleted the account.
I am increasingly feeling that way about HN, too. If this is all the equivalent of a videogame conversation with an AI, why am I bothering to put the effort in?
Is it still capable of writing an essay about AI writing tics or has the very means of producing said tics, even when the model is asked to do so to demonstrate, now abitterated?
Applause earned. Neat results especially out of such a small model.
Separately we have overlap between AI slop styles and right for the situation writing styles which this highlights.
Using the new CRM example, the clean version looks like a millennial student who rambled on a page, and the AI slop version looks like a draft I could send for PR to corporate managers. I buy the former looks more real, but it also looks sloppy and doesn’t work for most of my use cases.
When I was in school, the structured essay style of the “slop” examples was encouraged and I see it continue to resonate in corporate. The cleaned up versions here def have use cases - reviews for example.
Main point - different styles for different situations and our AI slop versions vs humanized versions both overlap different areas of the “ideal” we continue to look for.
Models have proclivities, and many people use the same model.
Imagine all books on earth were written by just 5 people - and worse, they could not remember what they had written yesterday. You would quickly get tired of reading the same flourishes and patterns over and over.
Whatever style models currently in use have, that's what people are going to be tired of, and it's what they're going to recognize as "AI".
I predict by the end of the year they'll have a style/voice selector for responses.
You can already do that in your agents.md file, of course, or ask for a re-write and dodge the sameness.
The most difficult thing in doing it yourself is knowing what to ask for. I can ask my model to talk like a caveman or like a Baltic pirate. But asking for something more nuanced, in the range of regular speech, requires the correct lingo
I'm sure it's trivial for somebody who has studied communication or contemporary linguistics, just as it's trivial for me to ask an LLM for tenant-isolation using row-level security in an app
You could try taking a body of your own writing and asking it to characterize it/come up with a prompt (or fine tune if you can) describing your style and quirks.
This is usually what I've had luck with. I've given it samples of my writing and told it to emulate my style. It did help, but it took some charistics of my speech and cranked them up to 10. I guess in hindsight I could have mentioned for it to take my writing quirks it finds and only apply them in moderation.
Reading what I did get out of it was just a bit uncanny valley strangely enough. Very much had some "hey there fellow kids" energy.
> I'm sure it's trivial for somebody who has studied communication or contemporary linguistics…
But you know what you like, and you know what bothers you, and the good news is that you don't have to one-shot a solution. You can create a skill and refine it over time. As you test and/or use it, identify copy you don't like and tell the LLM what you prefer instead, and ask it to distill and generalize that feedback into the skill.
This is not the first deslop. The true pioneer is this dude: https://huggingface.co/sam-paech/gemma-3-27b-it-antislop. This model is a perfectly usable, full size not-toyish model.
What's with the very distracting cursors of others?
I don't understand why this is a feature and what it brings other than shout "you are being watched by random others". Exited the site before ending the first block.
The ancients brought us "reading mode" in browsers as an escape hatch for exactly this kind of cruelty
Exactly. I was interested in the article but I don't have time for that nonsense.
Agreed. In the upper right corner there's a "hide" button that I immediately clicked. Then read (ok, skim read) the article.
Agreed. Just because you _can_ do a thing, doesn't mean you should.
All it is missing now is a chat and a friend/follow feature.....
There's a "hide" button in the top right corner
Nobody knows what it means, but it's provocative. It gets the people going
going... away?
for https://slopwash.com I’ve started approaching this more as an eval problem than something to go post-training for. I’m excited to be trying these new Jev-type models in more of a harnessed approach. maybe some heavy LLM to measure preservation of intent
Why kill the em dashes? They are a legitimate mark — one that I have been using for years. On a Mac, you quickly get used to pressing shift-option-hyphen. Em dashes are typographically correct and should be used.
Because no one knows what those are, and they're a major indicator of AI writing.
Or at least match the pre-llm human usage frequency.
A total, artificial lack of em dashes can in itself be perceived as another sign of AI writing.
Side note but the multi-user cursors was a super cool feature, not sure it was relevant to this article but would love to see it on more interactive pieces (a la The Pudding, etc.)
It's definitely a slight improvement, but it is still rather obvious that the output is AI-written :(
The tell tell sign for me is that it's still incredibly hard to read. AI tend to write in a style that I'm unable to easily read (humans does that as well sometimes). I constantly have to go back and re-read the previous sentence, because the text simply doesn't register.
A next step I'd suggest is asking the LLM to use shorter words when available.
Did you check this? https://huggingface.co/sam-paech/gemma-3-27b-it-antislop
The q4 loops after 16k tokens generated. Great idea though, hope to see more models like it. Thanks. https://huggingface.co/erikkannike/qwen3-4b-deslop-v4/discus...
Why would you support this sort of projects? LLM text should be spottable for as long as possible, otherwise human communication and expression on the internet will be killed.
In what sense will it be killed? I don't plan to stop writing my own messages or notes, just because AI can write, and I seriously doubt many other people who prefer their own voices will change either.
I stopped using reddit entirely because it's bots talking to other bots on threads posted by bots, I stopped making posts at the start of this year because I no longer know if a human being is ever reading them. I then deleted the account.
I am increasingly feeling that way about HN, too. If this is all the equivalent of a videogame conversation with an AI, why am I bothering to put the effort in?
Well, imagine that 90% of the comments on HN are generated and it's very hard to spot it. Would you read them?
Are they interesting, well thought out, well articulated, and insightful?
https://xkcd.com/810/
Imagine that 90% of the comments on HN are generated and it's very hard to spot it. And you read them.
Have you released the detector?
Is it still capable of writing an essay about AI writing tics or has the very means of producing said tics, even when the model is asked to do so to demonstrate, now abitterated?
Applause earned. Neat results especially out of such a small model.
Separately we have overlap between AI slop styles and right for the situation writing styles which this highlights.
Using the new CRM example, the clean version looks like a millennial student who rambled on a page, and the AI slop version looks like a draft I could send for PR to corporate managers. I buy the former looks more real, but it also looks sloppy and doesn’t work for most of my use cases.
When I was in school, the structured essay style of the “slop” examples was encouraged and I see it continue to resonate in corporate. The cleaned up versions here def have use cases - reviews for example.
Main point - different styles for different situations and our AI slop versions vs humanized versions both overlap different areas of the “ideal” we continue to look for.
I saw those moving dots and snap-closed the page.
Now can I have a model with the AI writing tics trained to the max?
I want my boss to know I'm a Good Boy using AI.
You can definitely get far with skills and personal instructions. That is my estimate, not research.
(*defeated chuckles and gazes towards my Claude session*)
Impressed how little hardware is needed to train this.