A 2026 study analyzing 61,000 AI and human-written stories could detect AI fiction at 93% accuracy from narrative structure alone (not even getting into tone/word choice).

AI stories over-explain, favor tidy single-track plots, and flatten moral ambiguity. Humans are messier, more complex, and more willing to leave threads open.

I’m interested to see how these kinds of findings evolve over time. The more AI-written content people consume, the more human preferences and writing patterns drift toward AI.