Who's Who of AI

Melanie Walsh

190 trust researcher @mellymeldubs.bsky.social · 5,078 followers
AI research Policy & governance
Why they matter

Researcher with public evidence across AI research, Policy & governance.

AI signals
2
past 30d
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distinct domains
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past 30d
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19d ago
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Assistant Professor @ University of Washington, Information School. PhD in English from WashU in St. Louis. I’m interested in books, data, social media, & digital humanities. They call me "Eyre Jordan" on the bball court. 🏀 https://melaniewalsh.org/
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We situate AI-generated fiction within a longer trajectory that includes self-publishing & fanfiction. We also discuss our concerns about AI fiction, including, among other things, the loss of a human other & the development of “solipsistic reader-writers.” Preprint here: arxi…

AI Fiction in the Wild arxiv.org
AI Weekly's analysis →
  • A new arXiv preprint analyzing over 500,000 anonymized English-language ChatGPT conversations finds more than one third involve fiction generation.
  • The behavior is dominated by power users the authors call 'infinite story demanders,' who repeatedly request and revise variations of similar narratives.
  • Users gravitate especially toward fanfiction and erotica, favoring generic forms, repetition, immediacy, and niche combinations of story elements.
Read full analysis →
View on Bluesky · ♥ 25 ↻ 2 ↩ 2 · 2 from the directory shared this · 34d ago

If you liked Bears Will Be Boys, you might enjoy our new FAccT paper! We prompted LLMs to complete 24K stories about animal characters where gender is unstated. We found that.. bears are *still* boys. And female animal characters disappeared while "neutrality" increased. arxiv…

Neutrality Bites: Gender Representation in AI-Generated Animal Stories arxiv.org
AI Weekly's analysis →
  • Across 23,800 AI-generated stories, feminine animal characters appeared in just 2.2% versus 40.6% masculine.
  • Models avoided assigning any gender 19% of the time on average; gender-neutral 'it/its' pronouns appeared in 38.2% of stories.
  • The authors argue AI neutrality can erase marginalized identities rather than protect them, challenging a common alignment assumption.
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View on Bluesky · ♥ 50 ↻ 17 ↩ 1 · 2 from the directory shared this · 47d ago

More “microdrama“ news, this time from Character.AI. They’re trying to make storytelling TikTok-sized, infinite, and interactive. techcrunch.com/2026/07/09/c...

Character.AI enters the microdrama arena with its own productions, but there's a twist | TechCrunch techcrunch.com
AI Weekly's analysis →
  • Character.AI debuted three original microdramas whose characters users over 18 can chat with, question, and roleplay into alternative storylines.
  • The rollout is studio-led first, with creator tools promised so users can eventually produce and share their own series globally.
  • Character.AI users spent more than 950 minutes on the app each month in the first half of 2026, per Sensor Tower.
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View on Bluesky · ♥ 17 ↻ 5 ↩ 1 · 2 from the directory shared this · 19d ago
↻ Melanie Walsh reposted
@cadaeic.space

reminded of www.chinatalk.media/p/ken-liu-on... "AI is a desire-fulfilling machine, but it’s only able to do that for you, and only you would find it interesting. [...] doesn’t mean people who love this will stop appreciating fiction written by humans that’s not meant to fulfi…

Ken Liu on AI and Freedom chinatalk.media View on Bluesky →
↻ Melanie Walsh reposted
Daphne Keller @daphnek.bsky.social

This paper about the publicly available data that is missing from Meta's and TikTok's research tools/APIs, by Luka Bekavac and Simon Mayer, is super interesting. And this graphic is a doozy. arxiv.org/html/2601.12...

Auditing Meta and TikTok Research API Data Access under Article 40(12) of the Digital Services Act arxiv.org
AI Weekly's analysis →
  • An audit from the University of St. Gallen found vetted researchers can pull only about 75% of TikTok and 50% of Instagram posts shown to users.
  • Of the posts that come through, only 17% of TikTok and 42% of Instagram metadata parameters reach researchers, with moderation context systematically stripped.
  • The paper concludes current research-access implementations fall short of the DSA's intended oversight function because removed and downranked content rarely survives in researcher datasets.
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 View on Bluesky →

The original WildChat authors made a website where you can explore all their ChatGPT-user conversations: wildvisualizer.com We made a viewer for only the fiction conversations so people can study how real users are generating fiction: ai-fiction-wild.com Heads up: it is very N…

AI Fiction in the Wild ai-fiction-wild.com
View on Bluesky · ♥ 21 ↻ 3 ↩ 2 · 2 from the directory shared this · 34d ago
↻ Melanie Walsh reposted
@ischool.uw.edu

Ph.D. student Imani Finkley, Informatics grad Yuanxi Li and Assistant Professor Melanie Walsh’s presented their paper Neutrality Bites: Gender Representation in AI-Generated Animal Stories was part of the ACM #FAccT2026 in Montreal. Congrats to the team! Read the paper: dl.acm…

dl.acm.org View on Bluesky →
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Excited to share this. @neel2112.bsky.social, @mariaa.bsky.social, and I analyzed 500K anonymous ChatGPT convos (shared w/ consent from WildChat) to see if people were generating fiction. We found tons of stories, fanfiction & erotica. Many users iterated on the same stories for days and weeks.

View on Bluesky · ♥ 151 ↻ 46 ↩ 5 · 34d ago
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