Your Text is Human Written? - Testing Deep Seek 🐋🐳

Of course I was going to try Deep Seek, the deep rational language model out of China. We had just watched a YouTube talking about it's capabilities and I had to give it a shot. Although the Internet was buzzing about security concerns and every other concern about anything coming out of China, I wasn't really bothered. The AI cat is out of the bag and now it's just a race to some crazy future that's probably only a week away.

I mean hell, why don't I get the AI model to sum up concerns? Why am I bothering if AI can do it for me?

Since its launch, DeepSeek has faced scrutiny over data privacy practices, with critics highlighting potential risks of mishandling sensitive user information. Concerns about algorithmic bias have also emerged, raising questions about fairness and accuracy in its outputs, particularly in high-stakes scenarios. Additionally, some users report a lack of transparency in how the platform’s models are trained or updated, complicating accountability. Fears about job displacement in sectors reliant on human-driven analysis and creative roles have sparked debates, alongside calls for clearer ethical guidelines and regulatory frameworks to address misuse risks. These issues underscore ongoing tensions between innovation and responsible AI development.

Hm. So the same concerns with any other company in the world allowing AI to develop itself. Choose your surveillance position: America or China.

So I downloaded it onto my phone. What better way to test it than get it to write a story?

Was it going to be better than Chat GPT? Because every time I've asked for a fiction from that LLM it's been cliche at best. It's easy to tell it's AI generated.

Image based on my Prompt in Peakd AI image generator

So, Deep Seek. I first gave it a prompt, not thinking too hard, just riffing off the book I was reading (Barbarian Days by William Finnegan) and adding a couple of specific details. I wasn't really wanting to spend a lot of time on it, just a quick prompt to see what it was capable of.

please write a 1000 word story about a guy travelling to tavurua to explore surfing in the 1970s. there's an undercurrent of anxiety and threat in the style of the novel Leave The World Behind - it's unclear what has happened outside the islands but it is definitely an apocalyptic vibe.

The first attempt was okay but very formulaic and missed a lot of what I was trying to achieve. Sure, there was the BASIS for a story but it lacked depth and interest. So I told it as such, thus redefining the parameters:

it's too repetitive and simplistic, and you overdo the emotions eg he felt uneasy. instead, use the landscape to create feelings of unease in the reader. Also, there's no indication of the era, and perhaps add flashbacks to add depth and motivation to the central character. The guide also lacks any depth - I'm not convinced.

Admittedly, I was harsh. I was already bored. Deep Seek couldn't do any better at what Chat GPT could do. And like Chat GPT, it was going to get all tangled up in itself and start getting further from the goal I'd directed it towards. Creative my ass.

But this is the point things got pretty awesome. It started rationalizing. It's thinking was revealed in the chat, as if it was a write redrafting, musing, reflecting. I'd love to copy that here, but I can't - a screenshot of the beginning will have to do:

This continued for some paragraphs, each one a dissection of my comments with ideas of how it could revise it. Then, it came up with the new version, not just better than the dull and formulaic first version, but much, much better. I've included it below, so feel free to skip it if you like.

An AI generated image via Peakd with my prompt

The Waves of Tavurua

---

The Cessna’s propellers thrummed like a migraine. Jack dug his fingernails into the armrest’s cracked vinyl, breathing in the cabin’s gasoline stink. Through the grimy window, the Pacific stretched endless and metallic. The pilot—a sun-leathered Aussie with a ZZ Top beard—adjusted his aviators and spat into a Folgers can. The dashboard radio, a Zenith transistor model from the late ’60s, sputtered static.

“Tavurua,” the pilot grunted.

The island materialized: a green-black molar rising from the sea. Postcard shit, but Jack’s palms slicked. The radio hissed—no music, no emergency broadcast tones. Just white noise, the kind that had filled his apartment for weeks after Danny’s funeral.

---

The landing strip was a cracked tongue of asphalt. A Fijian man leaned against a Jeep Wagoneer, its CB radio antenna bent like a question mark. Denim cutoffs salt-bleached to gauze, a shark-tooth necklace gleaming against a faded Allman Brothers tee. His smile was a flicker. “Jack, yeah? Makoa.”

The Jeep’s radio buzzed as they drove—“…communications down in Nadi…military advising caution…”—before Makoa killed it. “Tourists don’t care ’bout news,” he said, too casual.

The jungle loomed. No birds. No cicadas. Just the creak of palms. Jack noticed the trunks—ridged with gashes, too precise for storms.

“Driftwood,” Makoa said, accelerating.

Jack’s thumb grazed the edge of his Timex watch, its band frayed. Danny’s last gift before shipping out. “For timing the big ones,” he’d said, grinning. The memory hit like a rogue wave: Danny adjusting rabbit ears on their Zenith TV in ’68, Nixon’s voice warping through snow. “—assure the American people, containment remains our—” A beer can arcing toward the screen. “Bullshit. They’re playing with it. Sound that cracks steel.”

---

The resort was six bungalows on splintering stilts. Empty. Tevita, the bartender, slid Jack a warm Steinlager. “No ice. Generator’s fucked.” His eyes darted inland.

Jack’s bungalow reeked of kerosene. The smell hooked him—Danny’s Zippo, 1970, flickering as they passed a joint behind their mother’s shed. “They’re weaponizing sound, Jackie. Low frequencies. Break a man’s mind before his body.” Jack laughed. “Conspiracy shit.” Danny stared at the flame. “You’ll see.”

At dusk, he walked the tideline. The waves left debris—not shells, but shards of blackened metal. A Zenith radio, its guts spilling corroded wires. He pressed PLAY. Static, then a man’s voice, distant: “—protocol Blue Labyrinth is not to be discussed—” The tape snapped.

---

The first scream came at 3 a.m.

Not human. Not animal. A sound that bypassed the ears and vibrated in the marrow. Jack stumbled to the window. Moonless dark. The ocean churned, luminescent.

Makoa found him at breakfast, cleaning fish with a bone-handled knife. “Heard the vau last night.” He didn’t look up.

“The what?”

“Old word. Means… hollow ones. They live in trenches. Deeper than submarines.” A scale glinted on his blade. “Fishermen say they’ve been rising since the quakes.”

“What quakes?”

Makoa gutted a mahi-mahi. “Three weeks back. Cracked the seabed. You didn’t feel it in California?”

Jack’s coffee went cold. He had. Woken to his dresser mirror split diagonally. Found himself staring at the fracture for hours.

---

The break was perfect. A-frames peeling like God’s own zipper. But as Jack paddled, the water thickened. His brother’s board—a 1968 Jacobs Gun with a peeling Yellow Submarine sticker—dragged, as if something gripped the fin.

He caught the wave.

The barrel arched, sunlight fracturing through the lip. Then—movement below. A shadow unspooling, vast and wrong. Not a shape. An absence.

Danny’s voice: “Never look down.”

Jack looked.

The scream tore through the water. He wiped out.

---

That night, the Zenith radio crackled.

Jack froze, mid-sip. A voice, shredded: “…nuclear ambiguity…Moscow denies…”

Makoa’s Jeep tore past his bungalow, headlights strobing the jungle.

By dawn, the beach reeked of rot. Dead fish, their scales sloughed off. Jack paddled out anyway.

The shadow rose.

Not beneath him. Around him. The water darkened, ink blooming. Pressure crushed his sternum.

Danny’s voice: “End of the world, Jackie.”

He laughed. Salt on his teeth.

---

Makoa intercepted him at the tree line, machete in hand. “They’re here. The vau.”

“Who’s they?”

“Not who. What. The deep’s pissed. Cold War games woke it.” He nodded at the Zenith radio in Jack’s grip. “You heard the broadcasts. You know.”

The Jeep’s CB blared suddenly—“…radiation spikes…all vessels avoid Zone 7…”

---

The final scream split the sky.

Jack ran. Not from the water—toward it. Danny’s board under his arm.

The wave wasn’t water. It was a maw. Blacker than space. The drone hit first—subsonic, gut-churning. Then the smell: burnt copper and rotting kelp.

Danny’s voice: “Ride it, you pussy.”

He paddled.

---

The Zenith radio, abandoned on the beach, gasped its last transmission: “…no survivors…repeat, no…”

Then the wave took him.

---

Weeks later, a fisherman found Danny’s board washed ashore, the Yellow Submarine sticker bleached ghost-white. He crossed himself, muttered about vau, and left it there. The tide carried it back out at dusk, as if the ocean had unfinished business.

peakd AI image based on my prompt

Okay it's not perfect - I could still tweak it. I don't like the ending. There's some great lines in there though and the IDEA is there. But even spookier? I put it into Zero Chat GPT, which I know isn't always the best, but it does a decent job when I copy and paste what I SUSPECT to be AI on Hive. And guess what? Cue shivers down the spine.