This project is quite different from what I’m describing here, but illustrates another interesting angle brought up obliquely in the Consuming vs. producing AI thread. There aren’t many people who enjoy reading AI writing, but there are a lot of people who enjoy doing AI writing, even just for their own personal fun. In a sense, it’s the perfect combination of “I wish I could read a book about ____” and “I want to write a book about ____” but with a fraction of the work. In fact, I would argue that the process of guiding an LLM to write the story you want to read is its own kind of IF experience in the same way that playing a TTRPG is.
For a certain kind of person, it’s a ton of fun (although the potential to be amazed by a twist ending is, obviously, limited). There is a huge (although mostly hidden) market for this kind of experience, as illustrated by the success of services like Character AI and the many AI-writing-tool startups, the vast majority of whose output is never intended for publication.