April 26, 2026

"Like many journalists, I have a bunch of unpublished fiction lying about, so I tried Claude on the first chapter of a romance novel that I started almost 20 years ago..."

"... during the hysterical, mawkish phase of a particularly bad breakup. 'Megan McArdle,' said Opus 4.7, after a few seconds of thought. Fascinated, I kept feeding it smaller and smaller passages to see how little prose it needed for identification. The answer, apparently, was 1,441 words."

Writes Megan McArdle, in "Will AI end anonymity? I tested it. Artificial intelligence can echolocate authors through their prose. Your digital fingerprint is at risk" (WaPo).
Posted by Ann Althouse at 5:18 PM
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5 comments:

mccullough said...

In college, I had a class where we had to write a passage in the style of Faulkner, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald. It was tough not to devolve into parody.

4/26/26, 5:30 PM
n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
4/26/26, 6:19 PM
n.n said...

J.I.

4/26/26, 6:19 PM
Enigma said...

Back in 1996, Joe Klein was outed as the author of "Primary Colors" because of a few characteristic phrases. You don't need AI if the human interest is substantial, and indeed, all the big authors are relatively easy to spot or satirize.

AI surely will out mid and low tier authors, and also distinct social media users. Some people are so intellectually generic that they'll hide behind "Smith", "Jones", and "Gonzales"-like ordinariness.

4/26/26, 8:09 PM
Steve Austin Showed Up For Work. said...

Says Jane Galt. I figured that one out myself before it was known. Her style is distinctive.

4/26/26, 8:35 PM

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