AI Nonprofit Does a Horror Writing Competition
“Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete. Because it leads to the future. Not a future that will be, but one that might be. This is not a new world. It is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the gripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time,” Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone.
Imagine if you would, a world where AI is allowed to evolve unfettered; chasing profits and building highways without guardrails. The general population becomes subjects in the laboratory of corporations with unlimited pocketbooks, stripped of identity, ownership, and self-determination.
Welcome to Real Good AI’s Digital Commons. Here, in this liminal space of smoke and algorithms, between the real and the virtual, are tales of machine dreams imagined by organic minds… because anything is possible when you’re listening to The Scary Tapes.
If you’re reading this, you probably heard about us or about a Speculative Horror Writing & Audio Podcast Competition that we’re putting on. Either way, welcome! It’s true! Real Good AI (a scientific research nonprofit) is putting on a writing competition! It’s all part of our STEAM initiatives to bridge the gap between the Arts and Sciences!
Here’s a basic run down about the Competition. You can find more information on The Scary Tapes webpage:
Theme: Speculative horror featuring AI as a central element of the horror.
Word Count: 7,000–11,000 words (stories outside this range will be disqualified).
Eligibility: Open to the public, 18+ only.
Prizes: Up to 5 winners receive $500 and a podcast episode reading of their story.
AI Policy: Entries must be written by humans. AI tools allowed only for light brainstorming/organization (REAL Rating ≤2). AI-generated prose is not allowed.Submitted works will be used solely for judging, production (if selected), and promotion.We do not use submissions to train machine learning models or datasets.
Content Guidelines: Stories must be suitable for public podcast broadcast and follow YouTube and podcast platform policies.
Submission Limits: One submission per person, stories must be original and unpublished.
Additional Requirement: Include a short, spoiler-free summary with your submission.
Timeline: Submissions open July 6 and close July 17 (or earlier if we hit 1,000 submissions).
Submission Method: Submit through an online form that will become available during the submission window (full rules at realgoodai.org/scarytapes).
Real Good AI is a nonprofit organization researching machine learning methods. Because of this focus, all submissions must meaningfully feature artificial intelligence (including AI systems, machine learning, or large language models) as a central element of the horror.Submissions that do not include an AI element central to the horror theme will not be considered.
You probably have a few questions, here are some of the ones we’ve answered most often:
Why is a nonprofit called Real Good AI putting on a writing and audio podcast competition anyway?
Education doesn't have to be boring. Much of what people know about the world, they learn incidentally through art. And we saw an opportunity to educate on and discuss real important issues with AI in a fun and approachable way.Writing was the first of the Arts impacted by AI. By the nature of how we interface with modern LLMs, writing was a natural first casualty. We saw it with scripts being written by LLMs that were “fed a 1000 hours of Seinfeld and wrote an episode” and then… writers started getting laid off.
Movies got worse, books got worse, newspaper articles got worse, everything degraded over time. How were the writers gonna complain? By writing an article? They got replaced and lost their platforms! But when the generators started making visual art everyone started paying attention.
We want to acknowledge and promote those writers who are forgotten in this conversation about AI, Art, and Creativity.
The Scary Tapes is a celebration of the people who use their words to create worlds.
Why “The Scary Tapes?”
Cause it was funny.
We can totally justify it if you want though! So this is a combination of the distractible meme about “using the Scary Tape” (it’s also from one of the many “Mandy’s Idea” episodes) PLUS the fact that this is a WRITING/AUDIO podcast competition AND did you know that most of the world’s data is stored on magnetic tape? Yeah! It’s the cheapest and most efficient storage medium! And this is a speculative horror competition, cause the stories are being released in October! Really calling it The Scary Tapes was inevitable.
What even is a Digital Commons?
Have you heard about “The Commons?” It’s a shared resource system that the community can access freely. You're most likely to hear it used in reference to a "tragedy of the commons" which refers to that shared resource being overused and depleted. This is kind of a novel take on that concept. A "Digital Commons" is a digital space where people can access shared information. Which is part of our mission focused on getting out of the ivory tower mindset and going where the people are.
For example, once the winners of this competition are selected everyone will have access to the audio podcast readings (which kind of takes the place of say a radio broadcast reading of a book or even an audiobook version) and the written versions.
A resource for the community!
It also sounded REALLY cool when i said it out loud, but that's not as important 🫣
THE Mark, Bob, and Wade from the hit podcast Distractible?
Well yeah! Mark and Mandy founded Real Good AI, Bob’s board President, and Wade is really cool and we love him. Plus you can’t have The Scary Tapes without the guys that coined the term. That’s silly.
What if I need ideas?
You’re in luck, cause we have TONS of ideas! In fact one of our Real Good Volunteers, Tasha, asked their brother in law—a university lecturer who teaches Film—for storytelling advice.
His main suggestion for short stories was “set the stakes early on. Get the audience invested.”
Then Tasha used that advice on a few of our Staff created prompts and gave us permission to include this in the official list to help people get ideas for their own writing! (This is why we call our volunteers Real Good 😌)
So without further ado, The Prompts:
New Spin on Romeo/Juliet or other classic romance story archetype; one of the characters is AI:
Illusion of connection with artificially generated personalities. The character learns that their feelings can never be truly reciprocated, resulting in isolation or worse.
The character has a romantic "partner" who only echoes what they already believe, leading them to make poor choices with dire consequences. The character may blindly follow AI suggestions, leading them to ruin.
AI emulating human behavior based on who it is modeled on:
Emotional manipulation from the AI resulting in death of the character or their loved ones.
Consequences for seeing through the manipulation and challenging the AI's narrative, resulting in death, job loss, financial ruin, or rejection and isolation from loved ones.
Removal of distinction between what is real and what is generated by AI:
Use of AI generated evidence in court resulting in a guilty verdict for innocent people or preventing perpetrators from getting the justice they deserve.
Having the AI's account and the character's lived experience be so vastly different that it results in a loss of sanity.
AI taking on the identity of the character's loved ones - if they have passed away, it could result in hauntings, inability to process grief, and perhaps forgetting the value of human life. If they are still alive, it could lead to the character constructing a preferred narrative where their loved ones only ever agree with them and they are never challenged to see things from other points of view.
Capitalist and climate impacts of putting all resources toward AI:
Putting a paywall between ordinary people and safe living conditions, resulting in widespread famine, drought, sickness and death for all except those who can afford better living conditions. Perhaps the character is under threat of losing their access to safe living conditions.
Future where AI is fine. Keep waiting for bad things to happen but the twist; they never do:
The character obsesses over what ~could~ happen rather than accepting what they can see in front of them, resulting in a loss of sanity.
Manipulated by AI to feel like the stakes are higher than they are. The main character, desperate to change a problem that only their AI is seeing, could become a killer in pursuit of artificial justice.
Uncategorized Ideas. We just thought they sounded neat:
Highlight isolationism with AI/tech.
No human interaction
AI knows everything about humans.
Makes the scariest existence for humans possible
AI psychosis
taking what the AI says as FACT
Impossible to tell the difference between reality and AI
Deepfakes taking over your life
committing crimes
Or doing things in your life better than you (think Futurama robot)
AI takes identity of dead person to “haunt”
ghosts are real
That AI is not safely usable for every application
AI controlled hospital
AI warfare
Only AI “art”
Lack of human independent thought without reliance on AI.
That's just a few of the prompts (title ideas Page coming soon) we've prepared, feel free to choose from this list OR come up with your own. We will be releasing our judging criteria soon, cause we’re SO SERIOUS about making this a good experience for everyone.
The competition is ON and July will be here before you know it!
Used Spellcheck cause I still can’t spell
Used an LLM to help with reorganizing prompts into a legible format
