The creative work of a human being must not be replaced by the output of a machine.
Key Principles
Human Authenticity
Empathy, emotions, and human behavior can only truly be expressed by humans — even if machines are increasingly trained to imitate them.
Stories on OutaStory are written by people, for people. The richness and authenticity of human experience is what gives literature its power, and no algorithm can authentically replicate that.
Community Integrity
In our community of writers and members, real people should communicate with each other — not bots.
Every comment, review, and message on OutaStory comes from a real human being. We prohibit automated accounts and bot-generated interactions to protect the integrity of our community.
Responsible AI Use
A human must always make the final decision about a text, a solution, or a recommendation.
We recognise that AI tools can help structure complex tasks and improve efficiency. However, the final judgement — the meaning, the voice, the decision to publish — must always belong to a human being.
Practical Application
OutaStory uses AI selectively and transparently, and we name the specific services involved so you always know what is at work:
- Text-to-Speech narration — Optional audiobook generation for published stories. Our built-in pipeline uses Azure Speech HD voices; ElevenLabs is offered as a flagged premium alternative for writers who choose it. The text remains the author's own work — only the voice is synthesised.
- Cover artwork — Optional cover images generated on request via Azure OpenAI gpt-image-1.5, when a writer has no artwork of their own.
- Story descriptions and audio markup — Draft story descriptions and the SSML markup that drives narration are produced with Azure OpenAI gpt-5. These are assistive drafts; the author reviews and decides what is published.
- Safety screening — Azure Content Safety screens comments, chapters, and cover images for harmful content before they reach the community. Human moderators make the final call.
- Platform Optimisation — AI-assisted tools for search ranking and recommendation algorithms that help readers discover stories.
In all cases, human creators remain at the centre of the OutaStory experience. AI is a tool in service of writers and readers — it does not replace them.
AI should help us become faster and better. It will not dominate us; it should serve us.
Write your stories without AI — for real people who read and listen to them.
Your Choices as a Reader
If you would rather not see AI-generated content, you can switch on the "Hide AI-generated content" preference in your profile settings. With it enabled, stories and covers produced with AI assistance are kept out of your feeds and recommendations wherever we can identify them.
Prefer a human voice?
Synthesised narration is always optional. For a fully human alternative, OutaStory's speaker marketplace lets writers commission professional human narrators rather than machine voices. Learn more on For Speakers, and see the Speaker Terms for the details.