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Original poster

'Calling out' AI -really necessary?

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WarmthAndDepth · 09/03/2025 08:21

Can we not be so quick to 'call out' posts which appear to be AI generated, reporting them and more often than not getting them deleted?

I am no fan of AI, but understand that many people now use it for many things, apparently also to create and respond to posts on MN.

It may be tedious and impersonal, but if someone feels more confident constructing an argument or organising their thoughts in an opening post using ChatGPT, is that really so bad (providing the poster is a person and not a bot)?

It seems contradictory that a woman asking for advice about something deeply personal in mangled syntax and a smattering of spelling mistakes, omitting to use paragraphs or basic punctuation basically gets eye-rolled into oblivion with trite remarks like "Couldn't understand a word of that!" while posts which appear to display the hallmarks of AI (a certain slickness coupled with grammatical structures straight out of a Govian SPaG paper) get reported.

To be clear, I think casual use of AI is environmentally irresponsible and would much rather it wasn't 'a thing' but calling out its use on a site like this where a cohort of posters repeatedly shit on others whose erudition isn't deemed up to scratch isn't constructive or inclusive.

@MNHQ On threads where there have been 'accusations' of AI generated posts, and MN closes the thread 'to take a look'; what actually happens?

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MNHQ

HebeMumsnet · 09/03/2025 21:37

Hi there @WarmthAndDepth (and others). There are a lot of points here so forgive us if we don't answer them all, but in brief, we hope this answers the main issues.

We tend to treat posts that are reported as using AI (which of course doesn't mean they ARE using AI and it can be hard to differentiate) as we would any other post. That's to say that if they seem genuine and from a genuine user, we've no problem with it, whereas if AI has been used to deliberately troll, misinform etc, we would delete it and possibly take further action too.

We know that people use AI for many reasons, as Warmthanddepth has pointed out, not least that people with dyslexia, sight difficulties or other issues that mean they find getting the written word down tricky find it to be incredibly helpful, and we don't see any problem with that. There are plenty of potential problems with AI but that must surely be one of its positives. We regard those sorts of posts as genuine and don't think that use of AI makes them any less so.

When AI has been used nefariously, it's usually very obvious from our end, and we would deal with that appropriately.

TLDR is if you have concerns, just let us know. We never mind checking a post out and usually it's very easy to sort the wheat from the chaff. We don't mind at all if people get it wrong and we appreciate that it can be hard to tell when someone is genuine or not from a user perspective, and that's what we're here for.

Hope that helps.

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