Realmspace AI Statement

This document is for anyone reading Realmspace, and is interested in the part AI plays, if at all, in its creation.

To begin:

Realmspace is not made by AI. The story is my own, the characters are my own, and the documents are written with my own keyboards. I don't prefer works if I know they're made by AI. AI is not able, without immense computational power, to keep track of all lore, details, and character personalities and writing quirks that a human writer could after a brief reading of supplemental material, nor is it able to make anything new. This, however, does not stop me from using AI for inspiration and iteration. This is why I felt the need to write this document.

How is Realmspace your own?

I have been developing Realmspace since I first concepted Copper Steel as a character, then called Copernium, in mid 2024. Even back then it was in collaboration with AI, maybe more so then than now, since back then since it was literally me playing a character against an AI chat bot. Since then, I have taken Copper and Amethyst, and expanded so much on them that you could say that they aren't even the same characters as when I started. Back then, the majority of the characters didn't even exist yet. The current cast of characters were fully concepted, written for, and refined by me.

I've learned that, in each of my characters, there's a hint of myself. It's like I shattered and each character got a shard of Eli. Like, Cobalt has my closed-off-ness, Amy has my inquisitiveness, Copper is my personality thinly veiled, Shelia has my pop-culture references, and Zinc has my sarcasm and shares my joking attitude with Shelia. Of all my characters, I find Cobalt the easiest to slip into character. I've written a couple things as Amethyst (definitely has happened with the others too) that I had to take a step back and say "that's not Amy."

How do you use AI "for inspiration"?

Often, when I get done writing a segment, block, exchange I really like, or finish an act, I'll paste it into an AI and, with liberal use of retries, gather viewpoints I may have not seen, find errors that I didn't intend(typo, etc.), or ideas that could be used later down the line. I'm going to be honest, 90% of the AI's "continuation ideas" are garbage, but sometimes there's an idea or part of an idea that sparks "hey...I could totally see that in Realmspace!"/"with some refinement, I like that!" in me. None of these ideas, however, ever make an entire act. The acts are my ideas entirely. I'll also bounce my own ideas off of the AI from time to time. It's, in that case, more-or-less to keep track of them.

How can you say that Realmspace isn't made by AI?

I feel like I can say this because I've never copied something directly from the AI. Realmspace is a Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V free zone when it comes to AI. I've obviously used copy and paste multiple times with my own writings, that's how you have Amethyst's Experiment Logs, Cobalt's Field Journal, and Act 3 as separate files in the same folder, even though Act 3 IS Amethyst's Experiment Logs and Cobalt's Field Journal.

Why not just consult actual people?

That one's multifaceted. I'm not in any communities that would offer the feedback that I use, and to get the amount of feedback I like I'd need to be in a rather large community, but those tend to scare me off. I don't really want too badly to bug the few online friends I do have. I'll drop small parts of Realmspace here and there, and elaborate if they want, but I'm not going to drop a 500+ line doc in a discord chat and expect them to write a book report on it.

What's an example of you using AI?

Most, if not all, would be vignettes. Like I said, the AI almost never makes it into the acts. Like, John's world building notes started as cleaned up and polished versions of my messages to the AI explaining the world of realm 04. He eventually gained this kind of "academic-adjacent" voice, and I find myself slipping into him whenever explaining the physics or metaphysics of Realmspace to the AI. Even in the vignettes, which aren't complete acts, but might be worked into the acts later on, aren't written by AI, but sometimes written in response to the AI.

The two times that I can recall using AI for the acts was help setting up the 2d6 dice tables for Cobalt's runs in Act 3, and getting an idea of what Amethyst would ask for the documentary in Act 3.5, but even then I generated like 20 for each character and walked away with maybe 4 to 6 per character. Then I completely rewrote the questions to maintain momentum, voice, and smoothness.

One time, since I defined Cobalt's mannerisms as "sometimes almost catlike," it tried to give her ears and a tail for a good while. Like, "no, she's just a humanlike kni. Although she'd 100% play a beast race in RPGs."

What are you trying to prove?

I'm not really trying to prove anything to anyone else, I'm mainly just trying to convince myself that using AI like this is fine, and that it doesn't "taint" Realmspace. I've seen what people online do with people who do use AI, and I would like nothing more to steer clear of that mess.

To end off:

Realmspace exists in my brain. Not the AI. Every event, character, and setting are my own. I use AI to catch things that I otherwise would've missed, but it does not do the creation. That job is mine alone.