I'll be honest, AI Chatbots have long surpassed many in writing ability

[panzerkampfwagyu]

In the past, tired of the Isekai Slop dominating everything and reading comments that it was so uninspired that it probably was written by AI, I made ChatGPT give me a pitch for a fantasy manga, as I found it interesting to test that claim. Result? The AI produced something more honest than any of the hacks that dominate the industry. It was a more standard fantasy manga, but the pitch promised something really solid.
Just now I made one again and... Yeah, that actually sounds interesting.

Spoiler: ChatGPT Output - Command: Generate me a pitch for an Isekai Manga, but a good one

ChatGPT: Alright — let’s make an isekai pitch that’s not just "Guy gets truck-kun’d and gets cheat powers" but something that actually feels fresh, layered, and worth turning pages for.

---

Title: The Archive Between Worlds​

Genre: Fantasy, Mystery, Psychological Drama, Isekai

---

Premise:​

Kaori Minase, a burned-out archivist in modern-day Tokyo, dies—not in a blaze of glory, but in a quiet library collapse after a freak earthquake. She wakes to find herself in an infinite, surreal library adrift in a void.


This place, The Archive, holds records of every world that has ever existed—and Kaori has been appointed its first “Field Archivist.” Her task: travel into endangered worlds, gather key events for the Archive, and try to stabilize them before they collapse into nothing.


The catch?

• She cannot alter major events unless she finds the “Thread of Origin” — the one secret tying the fate of the world together.
• The Archive’s records are incomplete, meaning she must piece together history as she lives among the people.
• Every “saved” world changes her — she takes memories, scars, and fragments of personality from her alternate selves who might have existed there.

---

Why it works:​

• Mystery over raw power fantasy: The hook is figuring out the “Thread of Origin” in each world — part detective story, part cultural immersion.
• Emotional stakes: She loses herself bit by bit. By book 3, readers might question if the Kaori we met is still the same person.
• Diverse worlds, consistent purpose: Each arc is a self-contained world with its own culture, magic rules, and conflicts — but the Archive’s looming mystery ties them together.
• Twist on isekai tropes: Instead of escaping from a dull life, she’s forced to return to The Archive after every mission. Going home is impossible; moving forward means becoming less human.

---

Sample First Arc:​

Kaori’s first mission drops her in a desert city built atop a sleeping dragon’s spine. The city thrives on the dragon’s heat but faces collapse when its “heartbeat” begins to slow. As Kaori investigates ancient records, she learns that the heartbeat slows every time the ruling council censors the city’s history. The more the truth is erased, the closer the dragon is to death.


To save the city, she must risk violating the Archive’s prime directive: Never destroy a record.

---

Series Theme:​

Every world has a story worth preserving — but at what cost to the storyteller?

---

If you want, I can also mock up volume 1’s cover concept and chapter titles so it feels like a real manga pitch ready for a publisher. Would you like me to do that?
Alright — here’s the full pitch package for The Archive Between Worlds, ready to hand to a manga editor like we’re serious about serialization.

---

Volume 1 Pitch Package​

Title: The Archive Between Worlds​

Genre: Fantasy · Mystery · Psychological Drama · Isekai
Target Audience: Seinen/Josei crossover

---

Cover Concept (Volume 1)​

• Foreground: Kaori kneeling on a suspended bookshelf in the void, holding a lantern whose light spills into the darkness, revealing fragments of floating books and scrolls.
• Background: A massive shadowy silhouette of The Archive, its shelves curving into infinity. Some shelves are on fire, others vanish into mist.
• Tone: Muted colors (sepia, dark teal) with gold accents for the lantern glow.
• Visual Hook: The light from Kaori’s lantern is also forming the spine of a sleeping dragon — a hint at the first arc’s world.

---

Volume 1 Synopsis:​

When archivist Kaori Minase dies in an earthquake, she awakens in an impossible library — an endless vault holding the records of every world. Tasked as the first Field Archivist, she must travel into unstable worlds to retrieve their final stories before they collapse into nothing.


Her first mission sends her to the desert city of Sah-Draal, built atop a sleeping dragon’s spine. The city thrives on its warmth — but the dragon’s heartbeat is slowing. The ruling council blames magic decay, but Kaori’s investigation reveals something more insidious: the erasure of truth from history itself.


To save the city, Kaori must break the Archive’s greatest law — and in doing so, begin to lose the pieces of herself that made her human.

---

Chapter List (Volume 1)​

1. A Silence in the Stacks — Kaori’s death and awakening in the void library.
2. The Thread of Origin — The Librarian’s rules, and the first assignment.
3. A City on the Dragon’s Spine — Arrival in Sah-Draal.
4. Heartbeat of Ash — First signs that the dragon is dying.
5. The Censors’ Quill — Evidence of altered histories.
6. The Forbidden Shelf — A missing record the Archive never received.
7. Dragon’s Truth — The choice between preserving law or preserving life.
8. Return to the Void — The first price Kaori pays.

---

Long-Term Series Arc:​

Each new volume takes Kaori to a new world:

• Vol. 2: A drowned kingdom where the sky is a ceiling of water.
• Vol. 3: A forest where time grows on trees.
• Vol. 4+: Hints that someone else is erasing worlds on purpose — and they may be another Field Archivist.

Over time, Kaori’s personality, voice, and memories begin to fracture, making the reader question whether the “Archivist” is even Kaori anymore.

---

If you want, I can also make a mock manga cover illustration for Volume 1 so you can actually see what it would look like on a shelf.
Do you want me to design that next?

I would say that, if a Mangaka actually would write based on this pitch, they would produce something that blows the Front page Popular Section out of the water, heck, I would read this.

And no, this does not mean that actual Manga Writers can pack up and that they are obsolete, or whatever the AI fanatics are saying.
It is more, that the bar of what is considered acceptable has got way too low. I know that it was since ever that every creative medium in existence is more or less 90% garbage, but it kinda has become that garbage is gaining publicity, which I find honestly damaging to the medium more than AI is.

I guess the verdict I pull from this is that there should be a culture shift where slop creation is less tolerated and there is no "Oh, I read this trash anyways" anymore.

 

[GipoScribantino]

Contrary to popular belief, "surpassing many in writing ability" takes very little and is not a remarkable achievement.

 

[Manko-sensei]

4.Heartbeat of Ash — First signs that the dragon is dying.

StOp KiLlInG dRaGoNs!!! - some scally radical sectarian from this forum would have said.
It's obviously picking stuff from real books and videogames but yes, an AI could do it better than these human copycats. But remember, the main culprits in all this shithole are not the authors (they don't know how to do better) but the publishers that accept all kind of trash because they can make it sell.

 

[panzerkampfwagyu]

Contrary to popular belief, "surpassing many in writing ability" takes very little and is not a remarkable achievement.

Yeah, the problem is that it surpasses those that are the ones that dominate the market

StOp KiLlInG dRaGoNs!!! - some scally radical sectarian from this forum would have said.
It's obviously picking stuff from real books and videogames but yes, an AI could do it better than these human copycats. But remember, the main culprits in all this shithole are not the authors (they don't know how to do better) but the publishers that accept all kind of trash because they can make it sell.

The publishers are the main culprits, but I would say that the WN Writers who sell these works are partly guilty. I accuse them of being pure trendchasers that write copypaste plots in order to make easy cash.
Writing bad self-indulgent works isn't what I criticize, it's them spreading them with a profit motive. In my eyes, they are also responsible for this mess.

 

[Mangamoz]

I honestly think some of these recent copy paste (insert fad here) manga/novels ARE made by AI in some part and the authors just don't say it.

 

[Angry_Panda]

One issue I will raise - given that LLMs seem bound and determined to ignore copyright, I would suggest that turnabout is fair play, and none of what is in the output you gave above (or any output of any AI that was trained on works under copyright without procuring permission from those rights holders) should be eligible for copyright. This ends up leaving a rather large hole in the middle of the rights for a work deriving from this pitch, and seems less than ideal for the 'author' of that work.

 

[Manko-sensei]

The publishers are the main culprits, but I would say that the WN Writers who sell these works are partly guilty. I accuse them of being pure trendchasers that write copypaste plots in order to make easy cash.
Writing bad self-indulgent works isn't what I criticize, it's them spreading them with a profit motive. In my eyes, they are also responsible for this mess.

I had to search what WN Writers were and... well, I didn't know there was a freelance site like that. I have no idea what kind of impact that online place can make, but I know to what extend a publisher can influence in reading habits and of course big retailers. No matter how badly executed a work is, banning it from selling just because of that is censorship, so I can't support that. In comparison, editors and publishers have the responsability to decide what gets finally released and share both the merit and the blame that those works can be read.

One issue I will raise - given that LLMs seem bound and determined to ignore copyright, I would suggest that turnabout is fair play, and none of what is in the output you gave above (or any output of any AI that was trained on works under copyright without procuring permission from those rights holders) should be eligible for copyright. This ends up leaving a rather large hole in the middle of the rights for a work deriving from this pitch, and seems less than ideal for the 'author' of that work.

Since they lack any kind of creativity, all their output is essentially a plagiarisation. And the worst part of a plagiarisation is not being a theft, but a redundance.

 

[panzerkampfwagyu]

One issue I will raise - given that LLMs seem bound and determined to ignore copyright, I would suggest that turnabout is fair play, and none of what is in the output you gave above (or any output of any AI that was trained on works under copyright without procuring permission from those rights holders) should be eligible for copyright. This ends up leaving a rather large hole in the middle of the rights for a work deriving from this pitch, and seems less than ideal for the 'author' of that work.

Certainly. I don't believe that generated content itself should become sellable, either. At most, I consider it only for personal use of what it makes. Though, with this pitch itself, making a work based on it with no direct LLM output would be pretty much normal content. If I had the AI write the story, that would be like what you said. The pitch itself meanwhile is pretty much fair game.
And any author that decides to make a story based on AI pitches could simply not share that pitch, not that I believe pitches are projected themselves.

I had to search what WN Writers were and... well, I didn't know there was a freelance site like that. I have no idea what kind of impact that online place can make, but I know to what extend a publisher can influence in reading habits and of course big retailers. No matter how badly executed a work is, banning it from selling just because of that is censorship, so I can't support that. In comparison, editors and publishers have the responsability to decide what gets finally released and share both the merit and the blame that those works can be read.

I'm not talking about banning their works, but more having a cultural shift that such 08/15 content doesn't get far on the market by having people simply decide against consuming that content. Like, just have it be that slop is no longer profitable, so anyone that wants financial results needs to put in creative effort. Not disallowing it, but have it be not rewarded.

And, tbh, the slop works kinda do be creatively equivalent to plagiates, as there is no creative thought involved in them

 

[Manko-sensei]

I'm not talking about banning their works, but more having a cultural shift that such 08/15 content doesn't get far on the market by having people simply decide against consuming that content. Like, just have it be that slop is no longer profitable, so anyone that wants financial results needs to put in creative effort. Not disallowing it, but have it be not rewarded.

A cultural shift is only possible though education and therefore a long-term result. Even if posted in the frontpage, an educated individual would ignore and it'd become non-profitable pretty quickly, without any need to do anything else. Why this good-for-nothing literature sells? Because people without cultural referents buy it, they aren't able to realise that it is bad or it is plagiarised. In addition to that, they're written so even poor readers can understand it and with that little gratification let them think they're intelligent or something. Why do you think Dan Brown sold all those books despite being non-pop culture topics? Because they were written for people who doesn't read, and it's the same reason why all those best-selling authors remain as such.

 

[CrimsonSix]

One issue I will raise - given that LLMs seem bound and determined to ignore copyright, I would suggest that turnabout is fair play, and none of what is in the output you gave above (or any output of any AI that was trained on works under copyright without procuring permission from those rights holders) should be eligible for copyright. This ends up leaving a rather large hole in the middle of the rights for a work deriving from this pitch, and seems less than ideal for the 'author' of that work.

The question here is why? AI models don't store what they're trained on, only the patterns, and there's no definition that would make the output of AIs a breach of copyright without also making the work of many human creators a breach of copyright. Human creativity is the reason I often see mentioned... except that AI output that's actually sold does tend to be modified by humans.

 

[Angry_Panda]

AI models don't store what they're trained on, only the patterns

Some certainly do, but the examples that have been shown of verbatim regurgitation of passages makes me think this is either not universally true or that the 'patterns' are far too specific.

there's no definition that would make the output of AIs a breach of copyright without also making the work of many human creators a breach of copyright.

Sure there is - was the work generated by a legally recognized human? US copyright only protects works created by humans (Thaler v. Perlmutter, citing from the Copyright Act of 1976), so for the moment the question has been decided here.

At any rate, an AI can't get woken up in the middle of the night by an idiot neighbor, or go climb a hill and watch a sunset, or get frustrated trying to deal with customer support, or fall into or out of love, and then fold those and thousands of other experiences into their works. It can't write a passage and then read it and think 'this is crap' and wad it up, or finish a section and be particularly proud of what it's just accomplished. It just matches patterns. There's no understanding or actual thought.

Even seemingly 'random/thoughtless' works, e.g. the splatter paintings of Jackson Pollock, have some thought behind them as they're being prepared. Not so with the output of an AI, since computers can't think in the way we use the word think when we talk about human thought. And since art and literature are uniquely human conceits, it stands to reason that an entity that cannot think like a human cannot create those types of works. They can simulate them, but that's all they are - simulations. Which isn't to say they can't be entertaining, but there's no deeper meaning beneath the surface as there is with a lot of art and literature.