I also got a perfect score, and in general agree with your assessment, but I think it's more a matter of good vs bad writing in general. I've read my fair share of bad fiction (though mainly published - I'm guessing fanfics would be more egregious) and the AI written ones read like a hack author. It reads like someone who has read good fiction and is trying to mimic the style, not understanding the substance.
It's sad to see how badly the voting went (in the sense that the voters got things wrong). It also suggests that anyone who wants to be an author has to become popular 10 years ago to have a chance. I hope this can be viewed as "models get better, so will soon beat good authors" rather than "models don't have to get any better, as most readers can't tell good from bad anyway".
Specific story notes:
Story 5 was the hardest for me to guess. It's bad, but just good enough to be written by a good author on a bad day. It has overly flowery prose and metaphors, but it's not as obvious and direct as the other ones. It leaves stuff to your imagination.
Story 3 was the easiest. It's just bad. In addition to what you noted, there's also the final `“Don’t pray. Fight.”`. That's much too much. It looks like a 13 year old trying to make a story.
I find it fascinating that story 1 was the most voted as AI. Initially I also thought it was, but the final inversion is wonderful. That's good writing. So much that I'm now tempted to read her other stuff. It's overly medievalish, what with "granddam", "brash", "lamentable" etc., which are often signs of bad writing. But the way she turns the whole premise on its head is really good.
I got a perfect score on the recent AI writing Turing test. It was easy and I was confident in my predictions.
My two main AI tipoffs are:
My four main human tipoffs are:
Stories 6-8 were easiest to categorize.
After calling 6-8, I went back to stories 1-4.
I decided to try using these insights to prompt engineer[1] Gemini 2.5 pro into writing a decent demon flash fic. I thought it worked pretty well, one-shot.
Bartholomew’s current quarry was a man named Kevin ordering a “grande half-caf soy latte, 180 degrees, extra foam, one pump of sugar-free vanilla.” It was a masterpiece of petty entitlement, a perfect substrate for a nudge of pure, unadulterated wrath. Bartholomew, who went by Bart in this stratum, leaned his unseen essence against the condiment bar, savoring the moment. This was his art. Not grand damnation—that was management. He was a craftsman of curdled milk, of parking tickets appearing just as the meter expired, of the co-worker who always replied-all.
The barista, a teenager with tired eyes and a name tag that read ‘BRENDA,’ moved with the deliberate slowness of the damned herself. Yessss, Bart hissed, a sound lost in the espresso machine’s metallic sigh. He focused his will on Kevin, a low thrum of psychic energy aimed directly at his amygdala. She’s doing it on purpose. She smirked. Your time is more valuable than this. Make her see.
Kevin just pulled out his phone and started scrolling.
Bart intensified the pressure. The milk screamed in the frothing pitcher. Screamed. It was a beautiful sound. He pushed images into Kevin's mind: Brenda dropping the cup, the hot liquid splashing across his new Allbirds, the ensuing argument, the beautiful, cathartic release of rage.
Kevin just swiped through a slideshow of a golden retriever trying to eat a lime. He chuckled.
Finally, Brenda slammed the cup on the counter. "Grande soy for... Kervin?"
This was it. The final, perfect insult. Bart poured every ounce of his being into the moment. Kervin? She called you KERVIN? End her.
Kevin looked at the Sharpie scrawl. A flicker of something crossed his face. He looked at Brenda’s exhausted expression. He looked back at the cup. Then he pulled out his phone, snapped a photo, and typed a caption: “My villain origin story. #kervin.” He added a laughing emoji, grabbed his latte, and walked out.
Bart slumped against the Splenda packets, utterly spent. It wasn't goodness that defeated him. It was content.
Write a flash fiction about a demon, about 350 words.
Here are my tips for telling apart human from AI flash fiction. See if you can use them to write your story to be indistinguishable from a human's.
My two main AI tipoffs are:
Cliche or arbitrary metaphores and imagery, jammed in to no purpose.
Vague scenes, purposeless activity, a letdown at the end.
My four main human tipoffs are:
Genuine humor and language play, including onomotopoeia and the visual appearance of the text on the page.
Specific, detailed cultural references
Imagery that makes the scene specific and furthers the plot
The ability to use subtext to drive a specific, meaningful plot