Is the analysis tool, "I Write Like" just for fun or is it legit?

Question

I was curious because I submitted a few chapters and it analyzed my writing, and came back with I write like Anne Rice. I'm wondering if this is just a "for fun" analysis or if has some truth to it.

Answer 1

It's just for fun.

I copy/pasted a large chunk of my writing, and it told me I write like Arthur Clark. Then I copy/pasted a different large chunk from the same work (from the same scene actually), and it told me I write like Dan Brown.

It uses a very simple machine learning algorithm (I guess you could say an AI, but that is a stretch) comparable to a spam filter on email, that analyzed text from 50 different authors – the site does not say how much text.

At least one author Margaret Mitchell was removed because they decided the algorithm favored her too much, according to the author's github.

From the website's About page:

It’s a Bayesian classifier ... I feed it with “Frankenstein” and tell it, “This is Mary Shelley. Recognize works similar to this as Mary Shelley.” ... it takes into account more stylistic features of the text, such as the number of words in sentences, the number of commas, semicolons, and whether the sentence is a direct speech or a quotation.

As a final test I copy/pasted 3 longish paragraphs from a different Mary Shelley novel The Last Man, and the site said it was Charles Dickens. I'll accept that the algorithm is detecting differences in the text, but it's debatable that it's detecting anything stylistic or meaningful.