The AI Inquisition

He stretched, arms raised to the ceiling, adjusted his glasses, and gave a satisfied nod.

This was it. Another good story.

He read the lines again. Yes. Everything made sense. Every sentence did exactly what it needed to do. The prose was simple, but polished. He would publish this contentedly.

A frown crept in.

He had written a nice story—but it all looked too clean.

He exhaled. “Pfff.”

The Inquisition would come for it. He was sure of it.

Disappointed, he pushed his chair back, stood, and walked to the window. A cup of coffee rested on the sill, forgotten, yet still warm enough to drink.

“Stupid Inquisition,” he muttered.

He picked up his phone, made the face that unlocked it, and scrolled to the website. A place meant for amateur writers who—supposedly—were there to have fun.

“Yup,” he whispered.

The comments were already there, beneath his last short story.

This is A.I., one said.

Clearly written by a program, another.

He skimmed the piece. A decent story. Well written. Good prose.

The remarks and hateful comments always came from the same few people. Enough to make him stop reading altogether.

He walked back to his computer.

The new story waited on the screen, proud and pristine.

“Hmmm,” he said.

Also well written. Decent prose. The same style.

Again, it would be commented on, insulted, and condemned by the Inquisition.

***

He put his glasses back on and reached for his notebook and pen. Scribbling remained preferable to computer notes.

“Let’s see,” he said to himself.

I can remove the em dashes.

He considered it, then looked at the story again.

They added something. Something important. Pauses in reading.

He removed one with the keyboard. Then immediately added it back — Alt 0151.

“No.”

Em dashes were used in the books he enjoyed most. It was only natural they appeared in his own work. “The thing is more than two hundred years old,” he muttered, grumpy.

He shook his head. Writing was fun. This—this was just annoying.

He crossed the line out in the notebook.

What else?

He wrote bold and italics. Hm. He did not really use them much. Italics for thoughts or unspoken quotes were common enough. Bold for hard statements, occasionally. Should he remove them too, just to be safe? Just to avoid looking like AI?

He shook his head and crossed that out as well. This was getting on his nerves quickly.

What else was there?

He scanned his notes.

Adverbs ending in -ly.

He read it again. It really said that.

Peculiar. A smile formed. Peculiarly enough, those words were simply part of ordinary English.

“This is getting stupid,” he muttered, taking another sip of rapidly cooling coffee.

One last item remained.

He read it. His face tightened. He read it again.

The use of semicolons.

“Wait—what?”

He looked at the story on the screen. “I am not removing the semicolons. Without semicolons and em dashes, there is nothing left.”

He sat still for a few seconds, deciding.

“Let’s do this the other way around,” he said, already thinking about fresh coffee. The cup beside him was on the brink of no longer being coffee.

***

“Let’s see.”

Steam curled from the mug in his hand as his pencil moved across a new list.

The Inquisition. A perfect name. They did not care whether the accusations were true. They only wanted to burn people.

The A.I. Inquisition, the notebook read. Who are You?

Usually anonymous. Of course they were. If he were making accusations of cheating, plagiarism, or other personal claims, he would want to hide as well. Preferably under a bridge.

They always claimed expertise. Employment at some untraceable software company. Affiliation with a university or intellectual institution that either did not exist or could not be verified because of anonymity.

They always claimed access to tools. Programs. Software that “proved” their allegations. They never named them.

Because they could not.

He knew this very well. There was no program that could do what they claimed. No software existed that could determine whether a piece of writing was generated or assisted.

It simply did not exist.

***

“So, basically trolls,” he said aloud, voicing what he already knew.

He had once written an excellent piece for a troll on another platform—the Phantom Troll. His mouth curved into a smile again. That had been fun.

Of course there had been backlash. Bad ratings. Threatening comments. Comments he had refused to remove. Ratings he no longer cared about.

The bad ratings seemed to pull readers in rather than push them away.

In the window, his reflection shifted. He sat upright again.

A smirk stretched from ear to ear.

“Let’s own this.”

***

On his screen sat a new piece. Not so much a story as a complaint in story form. It was littered with em dashes; semicolons; and, for the sake of it, a few italics and bold statements.

He nodded to himself while sipping his coffee. The smirk remained.

The people claiming to be professors, software developers, or NSA agents would likely stay far away from this one.

Still, he hoped it would reach someone else. A writer who felt insecure. Bad. Attacked by the Inquisition. Someone who might read it and remember:

There are no programs that are one hundred percent accurate at detecting AI. Not ninety percent. Not fifty percent. They do not exist. Anyone claiming otherwise is either lying or has been lied to.

People who claim expertise without credentials you can verify are not experts. Real experts use their own names. They make themselves checkable.

Em dashes. Semicolons. Italics. Adverbs ending in -ly. Clean grammar. Consistent tone. Controlled prose. None of these are proof of AI.

The Inquisition was exactly that—like the inquisitions of old. A small group of like-minded individuals, paranoid, conspiratorial, or simply malicious. Some genuinely believed computer programs would take their lives and jobs. Others were just trolls, waiting anonymously under a bridge for someone they could harass with baseless claims or illegal accusations of cheating or plagiarism.

Anyway, if there was only one thing to remember from all of this, it was this:

Never adjust how you write to appease lunatics.

Never err on pupose.