Academic researchers studying the use of artificial intelligence for fiction creation have identified an unusually prolific user who repeatedly prompted ChatGPT to generate stories featuring pregnant characters from the visual novel Doki Doki Literature Club. The finding emerged from an analysis of the WildChat dataset, a collection of over half a million anonymized user conversations with ChatGPT, compiled with user consent for research purposes.
The study, titled “AI Fiction in the Wild” and conducted by researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Colorado Boulder, highlighted this user as a clear example of an "infinite story demander." This individual consistently generated fanfiction narratives within the Doki Doki Literature Club universe, with a common theme involving Natsuki, one of the game's characters, becoming pregnant. Many prompts detailed Natsuki unexpectedly going into labor, often cutting off mid-sentence to prompt the AI to continue the narrative.
While Natsuki's pregnancy is not canonical to the original 2017 visual novel, it has been a recurring subject in fanfiction and fan art. The user identified in the study appears to have a particularly intense focus on this niche.
Researchers noted that while this user is an outlier, repetitive prompting is common among prolific users. On average, fiction-generating users entered repetitive prompts 42% of the time, a rate that increased to 85% among the top 10 most active users.
Overall, the research indicated that over a third of the WildChat conversations, approximately 195,271 out of 573,453, were dedicated to fiction generation, encompassing original stories, scripts, fanfiction, and roleplay. Fanfiction constituted the largest portion at 49%, followed by erotica at 29%. This suggests a significant volume of content catering to specific user preferences and niche interests, leveraging ChatGPT's ability to provide immediate responses.
Within these fiction-generating conversations, 10% were flagged as explicit and 17% as toxic, indicating a substantial amount of content featuring sexual or taboo themes, as identified by OpenAI Moderation or Detoxify tools.
The study also revealed that AI-generated fiction is heavily influenced by a small group of highly engaged users. The top 2% of fiction-generating users accounted for approximately 80% of these conversations, implying that around 200 individuals were responsible for roughly 150,000 fiction prompts.
Among these super users, the researchers identified "infinite story demanders," who consistently request the same specific narratives with minor variations, sometimes for extended periods. They also observed "story cyclers," users who repeatedly generate variations of a story before shifting to a new topic.
The most frequently cited sources for AI-generated fanfiction within the WildChat dataset were video games and manga, including popular titles like Naruto, League of Legends, and Freedom Planet, alongside Doki Doki Literature Club.