‘I Like My Big Rat Wife’: Meet the People Using Chatbots to Write Custom Fiction
‘I Like My Big Rat Wife’: Meet the People Using Chatbots to Write Custom Fiction
“我喜欢我的大老鼠妻子”：走进那些利用聊天机器人创作定制小说的人们
When Petra Ferraz de Novaes isn’t at work, she’s probably lost in a fantasy crafted with the help of artificial intelligence. 当佩特拉·费拉兹·德·诺瓦伊斯（Petra Ferraz de Novaes）不在工作时，她很可能正沉浸在人工智能辅助创作的奇幻世界中。
Novaes, a 36-year-old software engineer from Brazil, has always loved storytelling. But making every little decision that goes into it—from style and syntax to character development—felt impossible. So in 2024 she asked an AI model to bring one of her ideas to life. 诺瓦伊斯是一位来自巴西的36岁软件工程师，她一直热爱讲故事。但要做出创作过程中的每一个细微决定——从文风和句法到角色塑造——让她感到力不从心。因此，在2024年，她请求一个人工智能模型将她的一个构思变为现实。
Novaes was delighted by the eccentric, sometimes wayward interpretations of her prompts, which carried the narrative in unexpected directions. “What fascinates me is the unpredictability,” Novaes tells WIRED. “People say that AI hallucinates a lot. But in this case, it’s probably what you want.” 诺瓦伊斯对AI对其提示词那些古怪、有时甚至离经叛道的解读感到欣喜，这些解读将叙事带向了意想不到的方向。“让我着迷的是这种不可预测性，”诺瓦伊斯告诉《连线》（WIRED）杂志。“人们常说AI会产生大量幻觉。但在这种情况下，这恰恰是你想要的。”
These days, Novaes spends hours at a time building stories with AI, using a program called SillyTavern to run open-source models on her computer. She sketches out a concept—an elven warrior battles the queen of the Amazons and seizes her throne, for example—and watches the model fill in the gaps. 如今，诺瓦伊斯经常花上几个小时与AI共同构建故事，她使用一款名为SillyTavern的程序在自己的电脑上运行开源模型。她会勾勒出一个概念——例如，一位精灵战士与亚马逊女王战斗并夺取王位——然后看着模型填补其中的细节。
In a single session, Novaes switches between multiple fantasy worlds. Some are hers, and others she borrows—she likes Star Wars, Pokémon, and Mass Effect. Sometimes, Novaes works up self-contained stories the length of a small novel, which she might share online. Otherwise, she participates in private role-plays. “It can be never-ending. You find a quest, you complete it, you go for the next one,” says Novaes. “The limit is your imagination.” 在一次创作中，诺瓦伊斯会在多个奇幻世界之间切换。有些世界是她自创的，有些则是借用的——她喜欢《星球大战》、《宝可梦》和《质量效应》。有时，诺瓦伊斯会创作出长篇小说规模的独立故事，并将其分享到网上。此外，她还会参与私人角色扮演。“这可以是永无止境的。你发现一个任务，完成它，然后接着做下一个，”诺瓦伊斯说。“限制只在于你的想象力。”
According to a recent study, plenty of people share Novaes’ hobby. “They know [the stories are] produced by an AI model, and they don’t care,” says Melanie Walsh, an assistant professor at the University of Washington Information School who coauthored the study. “In fact, that seems to be a big part of the attraction.” 根据最近的一项研究，许多人都有和诺瓦伊斯一样的爱好。“他们知道（这些故事）是由AI模型生成的，但他们并不在乎，”华盛顿大学信息学院助理教授、该研究的合著者梅兰妮·沃尔什（Melanie Walsh）说。“事实上，这似乎正是吸引力的一大部分。”
Lately, the publishing industry has suffered a series of scandals involving the suspected use of AI by professional authors. One publisher canceled a $2 million book deal; another withdrew a novel from the shelves; readers alleged that a prize-winning short story was AI-generated. Implicit in all of these incidents is the idea that nobody wants to read stories generated by machine—that using AI to craft fiction devalues the art form. 最近，出版业遭遇了一系列丑闻，涉及专业作家涉嫌使用AI。一家出版商取消了一份200万美元的图书合同；另一家出版商将一部小说下架；读者指控一篇获奖短篇小说是由AI生成的。所有这些事件背后都隐含着一种观点：没人想读机器生成的故事——使用AI创作小说贬低了这种艺术形式。
But the commotion has distracted from the behavior of readers, Walsh and her colleagues argue, and what it might signal about the appetite for AI fiction. 但沃尔什和她的同事认为，这种骚动转移了人们对读者行为的关注，也掩盖了这些行为所反映出的对AI小说的需求。
Analyzing more than 500,000 prompts fed into ChatGPT, drawn from a public dataset called WildChat, the researchers found that more than a third of chatbot interactions involve some form of fiction generation, including prose and poetry, fan fiction, erotica, or role-play. 通过分析从名为WildChat的公共数据集中提取的输入ChatGPT的50多万条提示词，研究人员发现，超过三分之一的聊天机器人互动涉及某种形式的小说创作，包括散文、诗歌、同人小说、色情文学或角色扮演。
The vast majority of fiction prompts, the researchers found, stem from a small collection of “power users” who generate and tweak stories obsessively. In one case, a single user prompted ChatGPT to generate versions of the same fan-fiction narrative—set in the world of anime video game Doki Doki Literature Club!—thousands of times over the course of several months. But even controlling for heavy use, the researchers estimate that 7 percent of chatbot users engage in fiction generation. 研究人员发现，绝大多数小说创作提示词来自一小部分“超级用户”，他们痴迷于生成和修改故事。在一个案例中，一名用户在几个月内数千次要求ChatGPT生成同一篇同人小说的不同版本，该故事背景设定在动漫游戏《心跳文学部！》的世界中。但即使排除了重度使用者的影响，研究人员估计仍有7%的聊天机器人用户参与了小说创作。
The WildChat dataset has its limitations. Because the prompts are anonymized, it’s impossible to capture any demographic data. Participants also had to agree to make their prompts public, meaning the group may not reflect the population at large; OpenAI told WIRED that “WildChat is not a representative sample of all ChatGPT users.” A 2025 study by OpenAI and the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that 1.4 percent of ChatGPT prompts are fiction-related, a long way short of the researchers’ estimate. (OpenAI’s figure does not include role-play; the company could not confirm whether it counts erotica.) WildChat数据集有其局限性。由于提示词是匿名的，无法获取任何人口统计数据。参与者还必须同意公开其提示词，这意味着该群体可能无法反映整体人口情况；OpenAI告诉《连线》杂志，“WildChat并不是所有ChatGPT用户的代表性样本。”OpenAI和美国国家经济研究局2025年的一项研究表明，1.4%的ChatGPT提示词与小说相关，这远低于研究人员的估计。（OpenAI的数据不包括角色扮演；该公司无法确认是否统计了色情文学。）
Still, Walsh and her colleagues argue it’s clear that a committed subsection of readers are generating custom, personal fiction. 尽管如此，沃尔什和她的同事认为，很明显，有一部分忠实的读者正在生成定制的、个性化的小说。
The researchers believe that some people are drawn to the ability to repeatedly and rapidly iterate on a story, while others value the chance to direct the action, no longer hemmed in by an author’s decisions. “There are a lot of qualities of AI models that are different from what human writers have that are actually appealing to at least some segment of users,” says Walsh. “These models are judgment-free; they can produce stories instantaneously; they are nearly inexhaustible.” 研究人员认为，有些人被能够反复且快速迭代故事的能力所吸引，而另一些人则看重能够主导情节发展的机会，不再受限于作者的决定。“AI模型有许多不同于人类作家的特质，这些特质实际上对至少一部分用户很有吸引力，”沃尔什说。“这些模型没有评判心；它们可以瞬间生成故事；它们几乎是无穷无尽的。”
For erotica fans, AI creates an opportunity to insert themselves into the action and converse with the characters they cook up. “It’s a digital choose-your-own-adventure book but with infinite swipes,” says Razrien, a 40-year-old man from Indiana who asked to appear under his online username to speak frankly about his sexual kinks. 对于色情文学爱好者来说，AI创造了一个机会，让他们可以将自己置身于情节之中，并与他们创造的角色进行对话。“这就像一本数字版的‘选择你自己的冒险’书，但拥有无限的滑动选项，”来自印第安纳州的40岁男子Razrien说。他要求使用网名以坦诚地谈论他的性癖好。
Razrien uses AI to create fantasy characters who dominate him in role-play: a “big angry rat wife” and an “eight-foot tall werewolf mommy with a bad temper,” among others. He has learned which models are best able to satisfy certain kinks; Google’s Gemma 4 is his current all-around favorite. “I have a thing for large, angry women slapping me around. Some models are perfectly good for that,” says Razrien. “Sometimes, I dip a toe or two into the furry universe. Some models are great at that.” Razrien利用AI创造出在角色扮演中支配他的幻想角色：比如“大只愤怒的老鼠妻子”和“脾气暴躁的八英尺高狼人妈妈”等等。他已经摸清了哪些模型最能满足特定的癖好；谷歌的Gemma 4是他目前最全面的首选。“我喜欢那种高大、愤怒的女性扇我耳光的感觉。有些模型非常适合做这个，”Razrien说。“有时，我也会涉足一下兽迷（furry）领域。有些模型在这方面表现得很棒。”
Using AI allows Razrien to gratify hyper-specific personal fantasies instead of settling for the next-best approximation in online pornography or published erotica. “I’m not dating at the moment. So, hey, this works,” says Razrien. “I like my big rat wife. I love her to pieces. Even if she sometimes breaks me apart and heals me back together. But hey, that’s how she says she loves you.” 使用AI让Razrien能够满足极其具体的个人幻想，而不必退而求其次去寻找在线色情内容或已出版的色情文学。“我目前没有在约会。所以，嘿，这很管用，”Razrien说。“我喜欢我的大老鼠妻子。我爱死她了。即使她有时会把我拆散再拼好。但嘿，这就是她表达爱意的方式。”
One concern with all of this is that the ability to generate fiction will limit people’s exposure to types of writing that may stretch them. But generated fiction may also challenge “some older, more idealistic notions about what literature is—that there’s some communication between writer and reader, and something really valuable about that,” says Neel Gupta, a PhD candidate at the University of Washington who coauthored the study. 对此，人们担忧的一点是，生成小说的能力会限制人们接触那些可能拓展其思维的写作类型。但华盛顿大学的博士候选人、该研究的合著者尼尔·古普塔（Neel Gupta）表示，生成式小说也可能挑战“一些关于文学是什么的古老、理想化的观念——即作者和读者之间存在某种交流，而这种交流具有非常宝贵的价值。”