Submit your story NOW (Closing July 17th)

Welcome to Real Good AI's Digital Commons feat. Mark, Bob, and Wade

Here, in this liminal space of smoke and algorithms, between the real and the virtual, are tales of machine dreams imagined by organic minds…

A Speculative Horror Writing & Audio Podcast Competition by Real Good AI

Welcome to Real Good AI's Digital Commons feat. Bob, Mark, & Wade

A Speculative Horror Writing & Audio Podcast Competition by Real Good AI

Here, in this liminal space of smoke and algorithms, between the real and the virtual, are tales of machine dreams imagined by organic minds

Speculative Horror
The purpose of these stories is to communicate real issues with AI to the public in an entertaining and thoughtful way. Your story should focus on one or more real issues with AI, but can speculate advancing these in the future. (Think Black Mirror, but focused on more realistic AI issues.)

Don’t know where to start? Look at our list of ideas to get you going!

$500 and a podcast episode reading of your work for up to 5 winners

About Real Good AI
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.

Human Authorship Requirement
All entries must be written by humans. AI tools may only be used for light brainstorming or organizational assistance: a 2 on the REAL Rating. AI-generated prose or audio is not permitted.

Your Work Will Not Be Used for Training
Submitted works will be used solely for judging, production (if selected), and promotion of the competition. We do not use submissions to train machine learning models or datasets.

Theme:

Speculative Horror

The purpose of these stories is to communicate real issues with AI to the public in an entertaining and thoughtful way. Your story should focus on one or more real issues with AI, but can speculate advancing these in the future. (Think more realistic Black Mirror, but focused on AI issues.)

Don’t know where to start? Look at our list of ideas to get you going!

Eligibility

Rules

18+

General Public

Requirements:

All stories must be speculative horror, regardless of secondary genre, and must feature an AI system as a central element of the horror.
Participants may consult PhD-Level experts from Real Good AI for scientific guidance.
A short but spoiler-free summary of your story is required for preliminary review and advertising purposes.

Open To:

7,000 to 11,000 words

Requirements:

Age Restriction:

Word Limit:

Theme:

Reward:

Reward:

$500 and a podcast episode reading of your work for up to 5 winners

Word Limit:

7,000 to 11,000 words

Submission Deadlines:

Submissions Open: July 6th, 2026

Submissions Close: July 17th, 2026 OR after first 1000 qualified submissions

  • Entries must be original and unpublished.

    • Fan Fiction will be disqualified

  • Minimum 7,000 words with an 11,000 word Maximum

    • Stories outside of this range will be disqualified.

  • Only 1 submission per person.

  • Do not submit stories to other competitions until winners are announced.

  • Authors may consult Real Good AI experts for math related assistance; all consultations should be disclosed on the submission form.

    • Do NOT include consultation disclosure in the body of the document, failure to remove disclosure will result in disqualification.

  • AI science should accurately represent a real problem.

  • Use the REAL Rating and keep manuscripts at a REAL 2 or lower. More information here: https://www.realgoodai.org/real-rating.

    • Zero tolerance for using more AI than allowed and will result in disqualification.

  • Authors must provide a short spoiler-free summary of their story with submission

  • Stories will be judged anonymously. DO NOT include your name from the document body.

    • Author name must be included on the submission form, separate from the document.

  • By submitting, authors grant Real Good AI the right to publish the story if selected.

  • If a submission is selected as a winning story, author(s) grant Real Good AI the right to advertise, publish, and monetize the submission in any physical and/or digital mediums.

  • If a submission is selected as a winning story and is published in physical and/or digital mediums, the selected submission shall not be published by any person or entity other than Real Good AI  for a period not exceeding 6 months from the earliest date of publication by Real Good AI.

  • Authors retain all other copyright to their work.

About Real Good AI
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.

Human Authorship Requirement
All entries must be written by humans. AI tools may only be used for light brainstorming or organizational assistance: a 2 on the REAL Rating. AI-generated prose or audio is not permitted.

Your Work Will Not Be Used for Training
Submitted works will be used solely for judging, production (if selected), and promotion of the competition. We do not use submissions to train machine learning models or datasets.

Submission & AI Use Policy

Submission & AI Use Policy

Submissions

Eligibility

Open To:

General Public

Age Restriction:

18+

Rules

  • Entries must be original and unpublished.

    • Fan Fiction will be disqualified

  • Minimum 7,000 words with an 11,000 word Maximum

    • Stories outside of this range will be disqualified.

  • Only 1 submission per person.

  • Do not submit stories to other competitions until winners are announced.

  • Authors may consult Real Good AI experts for fact-checking and math related questions; all consultations should be disclosed on the submission form.

    • Do NOT include consultation disclosure in the body of the document, failure to remove disclosure will result in disqualification.

  • AI science should be as accurate as possible

  • Use the REAL Rating and keep manuscripts at a REAL 2 or lower. More information here: https://www.realgoodai.org/real-rating

    • Zero tolerance for using more AI than allowed and will result in disqualification.

  • Authors must provide a short Spoiler Free summary of their story with submission

  • Stories will be judged anonymously. Remove your name from the document body.

    • Author name must be included on the submission form, separate from the document

  • By submitting, authors grant Real Good AI the right to publish the story if selected.

  • If a submission is selected as a winning story, author(s) grant Real Good AI the right to publish the submission in any physical and/or digital mediums.

  • If a submission is selected as a winning story and is published in physical and/or digital mediums, the selected submission shall not be published by any person or entity other than Real Good AI  for a period not exceeding 6 months from the earliest date of publication by Real Good AI.

  • Authors retain all other copyrights.

Submissions Open: July 6th, 2026

Submissions Close: July 17th, 2026 OR after first 1000 qualified submissions

Submissions

Submit your story NOW (Closing July 17th)

Submission Deadline:

All stories must be speculative horror, regardless of secondary genre, and must feature an AI system as a central element of the horror.
Participants may consult PhD-Level experts from Real Good AI for scientific guidance. Make sure to check out the FAQs on this page before reaching out!
A short but spoiler-free summary of your story is required for preliminary review and advertising purposes.

  • Core Concept & Adherence to Theme

  • Scientific & Technological Plausibility

  • Narrative & Structure

  • Character & Emotion

  • Prose, Voice & Atmosphere

Judging Criteria

Core Concept & Adherence to Theme

Scientific & Technological Plausibility

Narrative & Structure

Character & Emotion

Prose, Voice & Atmosphere

Ideas to get you going

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 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 robots)

  • 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.

FAQs

  • Yes, yes it is.

  • During the July 6 - July 17 submission window, the website will prominently feature a link to a Google Form you will need to fill out. This includes a few administrative questions, will have a place to upload your primary document as a pdf or .doc, will require a short teaser summary, and select the appropriate REAL rating.

  • Try using the questionnaire here: https://www.realgoodai.org/real-rating. The focus of this competition is human writing so a  level of 2 or lower is required for submission.

  • AIs don't "think" at all. They are just regurgitating the most probable series of words like they are filling out a madlib. Maybe this (oversimplified) description will help illuminate things a little:

    User inputs a series of words, this is called the context window

    These words are then changed (embedded) into numbers. This is not quite right, but 

    These numbers are taken to a pretrained model and put in. You can think of this model as a very fancy version of filing in the gaps between two values. 

    The computer gives its answer as a series of numbers “filled in” from the gaps in between the data at the right place. 

    These are converted back into text that the user can interpret as language. 

    This is interpreted as "thinking" only because it is literally trained to sound like human text.


  • We are looking for unique stories that highlight real issues that we have with AI to educate the public to think while enjoying your art. There are plenty of depictions like this in sci-fi, and we think they are hugely inaccurate so it is best to avoid them if you would like to be selected.

    The “learning to love” trope is scientifically incorrect because actually AIs already will use really emotionally loaded words and actions because they are trained to reflect how a human would respond. This is not the emotionless picture of calculating lovely logical, but instead will behave biased, flawed, and emotionally as a human does. Note that although it will have this appearance, there is no actual emotional effect, but instead is trying to emulate what a human may do.

     As for sentience, this is also not scientifically feasible as AIs are just recognizing patterns rather than learning and demonstrating understanding. For the record, this does not mean they are not useful, it just means that they are not and cannot be sentient. 

    There are many issues and possible paths to explore so we would advise you to avoid these! 


  • No. AI checkers do not work so our system for identifying AI writing is through the REAL rating you supply. AI cannot hold a candle to real human writing so we are not afraid of selecting AI stories because they will not be good like yours will be!

  • Sure! However, the prize remains the same for one episode so you will need to decide how to split the reward if selected. 


For the Judges

Beginning July 20th, we will have an application form for those interested in judging the submissions. This will include a conflict of interest, where you will indicate any participants who have submitted applications you may have close personal relationships with or have knowledge of the story or writing. Additionally, you will indicate trigger warnings you wish to avoid when making assignments. Review will take place starting as soon as you are accepted and will end August 14th. Thank you for helping us choose the Scary Tapes!