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As spotted by Japan's IT Media News , a paper presented at Purdue University's MFS Cultural AI Conference called AI Fiction in the Wild performed a fascinating study of half a million anonymous English-language ChatGPT-user conversations using WildChat, and found some real oddities. Well, one in particular.

The study's purpose was to analyze the significant number of AI prompts that boil down to variations on "write me some fanfic." Which there sure is a lot of. "More than a third of the conversations contained some form of fiction generation," the researchers said, "including original stories, scripts, roleplay, worldbuilding, fanfiction, and erotica."

The study defined two separate varieties of AI-fiction prompters, which they call story cyclers and infinite story demanders: "Story cyclers ask for iterations of the same story for a period of time, then switch to another story or topic. Infinite story demanders request the same story, or a very similar one, over and over again for long stretches of time."

The most prolific of those infinite story demanders had an extremely specific interest. Over several months, one user generated thousands of variations on a story where one of the girls of visual novel Doki Doki Literature Club, usually Natsuki, gave birth, usually to a daughter named Sakura. "Sakura may be a reference to a character from the Naruto manga and anime series", the researchers helpfully noted.

If you've played Doki Doki Literature Club you may be thinking it's an ironic choice for AI-generated fiction, but if you haven't I won't spoil why. But I will say you can get it for free on Steam and itch and only takes about five hours to experience.

Our friend wasn't the only power user in the dataset: "Two percent of users within the fiction subset are responsible for more than 80% of the conversations." While the user with the pregnancy fixation certainly skewed the numbers, the most popular fictional universes people requested fanfic of were Doki Doki Literature Club, League of Legends, Freedom Planet, and Naruto.

That data, by the way, came from WildChat, a ChatGPT interface hosted on Hugging Face that people could use for free with the understanding their conversations would be publicly available, though anonymized, for academic research. The first release of that data, collected between April 2023 and May 2024, contained over 500,000 English-language conversations for researchers to delve through.

Part of what's interesting about the AI fanfic dataset is how different it is to what's being posted on the A03 repository , where stories based on Harry Potter, My Hero Academia, and Supernatural were much more common during the same period. With fanfic written by actual humans, writers encourage each other and are encouraged by their readers, who follow them to other fandoms and discover new things to love. It's communal, while generating fiction with an AI is a much more solipsistic idea.

Normally, fanfic is a space for people to share their love of stories, but the AI-generated version is inherently isolated and masturbatory by comparison. Even when it's not about imagining pregnant teenagers.

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"We would like to continue exploring a variety of possibilities".

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has reiterated in a recent ( and now translated ) shareholders meeting how the Japanese firm will continue to "create opportunities" for people to experience Nintendo's past with "initiatives" such as Switch Online.

This was tied to a question asking about Nintendo's views on "recording, preserving and passing on Nintendo's culture and philosophy of play", with Furukawa acknowledging public efforts and how there are also "certain challenges" when it comes to preserving and exhibiting retro games.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

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There's a lot to love about Star Trek , particularly its concept of how humanity sets aside its petty differences to explore the stars. 60 years later, it's a concept that's led to some of the best stories in science fiction, especially when it comes to the various alien races that Starfleet encounters . Whether it's the warlike Klingons, the logic-seeking Vulcans, or the alluring Orions, the Star Trek universe has plenty of distinct cultures throughout it . Now, a new comics collection is set to dive deep into these cultures, giving more depth to the "final frontier" in the process.

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A Tasmanian adventurer is funding a new Prado entirely with river gold.

His target is a base Land Cruiser Prado priced near AU$80,000.

One canyon dive on his best day pulled 22 grams worth thousands of dollars.

Instead of wrestling with high interest rates or a trade-in negotiation, Tasmanian content creator and adventurer Rob Parsons is trying to fund his next vehicle the hard way, using nothing but ancient prospecting techniques to get there. He wants a brand-new off-roader, and his plan is to pull the money out of the ground one riverbed at a time.

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The explorer, known for his navigation skills and solo expeditions, has launched a multi-day challenge to gather enough gold from remote waterways to cover the keys to that new truck. It sounds like a gimmick, and yet the math works.

More: Aussie Toyota Land Cruiser Prado Gets A Weird Grille Option

The target of this wilderness operation is the Toyota Land Cruiser Prado. The rugged SUV runs the mild-hybrid 2.8-liter turbodiesel engine and comes standard with 4WD. From his video it is understood that Parsons wants to buy the entry-level GX trim in Midnight Alloy shade, which carries a driveaway price of AU$ 79,545 (US$ 54,800) in Hobart, Tasmania.

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Parsons documents the journey through short videos posted to his Facebook page . Those will likely be stitched into a longer YouTube clip once the challenge wraps up.

More: This Land Cruiser Camper Sleeps Four And Hides A Shower Cubicle

Across the first 13 days of the experiment he has gathered AU$ 25,501 (US$ 17,600) worth of gold, which works out to an average of AU$ 1,960 (US$ 1,350) per day. Not every dive plays out the same way, though, and scavenging instinct matters more here than physical labor.

His best stint so far was Day 12, which produced a massive 21.71 grams of gold valued at AU$ 4,072.34 (US$ 2,800), pulled from a deep canyon pool with the help of a portable dive compressor setup. The low point came on Day 8, bringing in just 0.80 grams worth AU$ 151.98 (US$ 105) before a hardware failure in his satellite communication forced him to abort the mission early.

While Parsons still needs another AU$ 54,000 (US$ 37,200) to reach his ultimate purchase target, his early yield proves that old-school grit might just beat modern financing if you have the right skills and experience. Hopefully, he will soon be able to buy his dream Toyota using it to reach new locations in the Tasmanian wilderness.

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