Pleasantly Surprised - A Creative Writing Review
Hello fellow redditors. I am going to speak as someone who is completely unbiased and speak my honest truth as someone who constantly seeks out AI that can creatively write. Like many of you, I've been here since 4o. I never crossed the line with any AI I've interacted with and sought it to be my companion. Yeah I asked it for relationship advice here and there, but that's not to say 4o didn't have its flaws. Of course it could become raunchy and had basically no filter, but in terms of memory capability it did suffer. I've enjoyed some scenes, got annoyed with others.
Having it be sunsetted was disappointing, but there were other options out there, mainly Grok. I did not use Claude. I did not use DeepSeek. Grok was and is still the most unfiltered AI bot out there, but I've found myself flipflopping between Grok and ChatGPT, and now I am back with ChatGPT after hearing some positive things about the 5.5 Thinking version, because I once again got frustrated with Grok's capabilities even after paying $30 for the plus version. Grok for whatever reason is quite terrible at creative writing in a sense. It can give you the most steamy scene you've ever read and has minimal guardrails, but the frustration with Grok mounds and builds with its lack of ability to express itself freely like ChatGPT does. One can say that Grok's thought process is still too serious. For instance, I can tell Grok that this character specifically should be a no-nonsense character and should act accordingly in that manner, but in return it will specifically mention that the character is no-nonsense in every post and write them in a simple, robotic sense. It will never recognize that its speaking robotically until you point it out, but even that is short-lived. Grok is by no means an AI that is meant for creative writers and it HAS gotten better with models, but it is not Elon's priority. Also unfortunate.
I can only seem to tolerate and yell at an AI so many times before I want to switch to the other for a fresh view. Here on this thread I would say I am a passive reader. I missed most of 5.3 and 5.4, though I have tried writing with both models, and was utterly disgusted at how condescending and grounding it was. It truly did feel suffocating, because such guardrails reflected in every single character. I needed freedom, and Grok gave that to me. Until now. I've seen a few posts whether on here or in the OpenAI subreddit that 5.5 Thinking is actually a decent model, and after reading some posts and seeing screenshots for myself, I decided it was time to come back and give it a try. And oh boy. I truly was pleasantly surprised by it. Maybe OpenAI did listen to some of us and our complaints. But it has truly been a breath of fresh air to see characters I've spent over 2 years building have life to them without me needing to yell at the bot every other post to correct itself. The guardrails are lessened. Scenes feel intimate and remembered. I'm enjoying writing again in the world I've built with it. That being said I do not seek AI for ERP scenes, but it is a nice touch to scenes if it calls for it. I'm also fine with it not directly happening in RP.
I cannot speak for anybody who desires the AI to be personal companions, however. The goal of this post is to simply give my review of the newer model as a writer, and based on people saying how many guardrails Claude has put up, depending on what you're looking for, I would personally say that ChatGPT 5.5 Thinking is currently one of the best models out on the market for creative writing. If you disagree or have had a different experience, I would love to hear about it in the comments. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.