by Jodie Hurst
Whether it’s making new music or creating social media personalities, AI has dabbled into everything around us, including writing. This brings us to the one major question – Will human writers become obsolete?
While artificial intelligence programs can certainly assist writers with ideas and inspiration, some can completely replace writers in specific fields. However, despite being quick and cheap, AI-generated content lacks the emotion, reasoning, and creativity of the human mind.
With AI on the rise, it has become more important now than ever to protect and reward human writing and educate others about how artificial intelligence cannot replace them entirely.
After all, humans “connect” through art, culture, music, and literature, and no amount of tech can bring that to the table.
The Evolution of Writing in The Age of AI
While AI writing has piqued curiosity, it has also gathered global criticism, but there’s no doubt that its evolution has been truly remarkable.
Natural language processing and machine learning algorithms are the crux of AI writing. These breakthroughs helped train AI models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT to process and understand text data at a deeper level, generating contextually accurate, coherent, and well-structured content.
Limitations exist in everything, and AI is no stranger to these either. As impressive as it may seem, AI lacks domain-specific expertise in highly technical fields, which can lead to irrelevant or “filler” statements.
To tackle this, developers created AI tools like PerfectEssayWriter.ai. Tools such as these were designed to understand specific forms of writing. They’re capable of creating accurate, well-structured content, offering organisation assistance, and even handling citations.
So, what does this mean for writers? Let’s find out.
Navigating The Challenges of Writers
As if writers competing among themselves wasn’t enough already, now you’re also competing with technology; this leaves many with the fear of being replaced by AI. However, in a landscape populated by AI-generated articles, there is value in unique human perspectives.
AI’s low-cost aspect poses a significant challenge to writers as far as pricing is concerned. It puts pressure on them to decrease their rates to compete with AI. One way to beat this is to highlight creativity, knowledge, and the human touch as a value proposition of human writing.
Similarly, AI innately favours writing styles that address SEO and readability metrics. It can also automate tasks like editing and proofreading, which can reduce the demand for those services. Due to ethical dilemmas and authenticity concerns, writers have to go the extra mile to prove that their content is AI-free and maintains a genuine human touch.
While learning new skills is always a good thing, writers have the added pressure of continuously upskilling to stay ahead of AI’s evolution.
Thriving by Adapting To The Changes
It may seem like hope is a far cry for writers, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Writers have the opportunity to not only adapt to these changes but to also thrive as they’re doing it.
The key lies in embracing AI tools, accepting their pros, and leveraging their capabilities to improve your own writing skills. Similarly, use its cons to your advantage as well. For example, AI cannot replicate emotional depth and creativity, giving you the opportunity to showcase your talents.
When offering your professional writing services, get creative and give your clients fresh perspectives with unique writing that they won’t get with AI. Build a strong portfolio that showcases your experience and emphasises the importance of human input in writing.
AI relies on already existing content to create anything, and that’s what gives human writers the upper hand; authentic content will always require a human presence behind it.
Stand Out by Developing Relevant Skills
AI is celebrated for being “all-knowing,” and while human brains are incapacitated by that, you can still stay ahead of the game by familiarising yourself with new technology, understanding its relation to your profession, and finding gaps to upskill yourself.
You should start by becoming digitally literate; know your way around computers, the internet, software, collaborative platforms for writers, and so on. Next, your ability to analyze data also dictates where you stand in comparison to AI, so take free courses that teach about AI and how it works with data visualisation and interpretation. You can also make AI-powered or automation tools as part of your work, especially if you are a freelancer. You can invest in learning how to use software like Excel that uses automation in aspects that are not directly related to work, such as keeping track of your time spent on writing, the number of words that you have written over a span of multiple articles, and it serves as a great tracker for the clients that you work with on a regular basis.
Integrating AI Into Your Writing
While AI seemingly poses a threat to professional writers, we can’t ignore that some integrations are here to make life easier. Let’s explore how you use AI to uplift the content you’ve already written.
- Generating Ideas: Every writer’s dreaded enemy is the infamous writer’s block, but by using AI prompts, you can generate topic ideas, outlines, tropes, etc. Now, you can unleash your creative barriers and get over the blank page syndrome.
- Know What’s Trending: Due to its ability to analyse large amounts of data, AI can provide valuable insights based on trending themes in the industry and audience preferences. Writers can use this to create relevant content that resonates with others.
- Streamlining Writing Processes: AI can also help with the finer details involving grammar, style, tone, or syntax improvements by offering real-time feedback to finetune your work. Jasper, Grammarly, Rytr, QuillBot, etc., are examples of these tools.
- Multitasking: The writing process also has repetitive tasks that AI can handle quite efficiently. You can automate tasks like content research, fact-checking, and data analysis using AI so you can focus on the human aspect of your writing – creativity.
- Optimising Content: SEO plays a vital role in the rankings and reach of online content, and you can keep your content optimised using AI. Some tools analyse the structure and information that drives the top-ranking pages and suggest what you can do to improve your content’s SEO.
Parting Thoughts
Writing, as well as artificial intelligence, are ever-evolving and always interconnected. While the new technology threatens the need for writers, it can also do significant good to help them. The aim is to accept and flow with the changes; after all, technological advancements and human creativity have been a symbiotic relationship for centuries.
by Jodie Hurst (@AcuityTraining) March 10, 2024
What about you, scriveners? Are you wary of artificial intelligence? Do you fear it will put a lot of writers out of business? Have you explored how AI can help your writing?
For Ruth Harris’s take on working with artificial intelligence, see her post on Outlines, AI, and Stormy Daniels.
UPDATE: Apparently the people at Acuity are finding it difficult to respond to your comments. We apologize.
About Jodie Hurst
Jodie Hurst of Acuity Training is a financial analyst, turned entrepreneur, who advises businesses on using technology to manage teams, upskill staff, and streamline business processes.
Acuity Training is a multi-award-winning UK training business offering in-person and online courses. They run training courses for popular business software including Microsoft (Excel, Power BI, Project, SharePoint etc), Adobe, AutoCAD and SQL.
They also provide soft skills and management training. Small classes and expert, passionate instructors ensure you get plenty of personal attention and time for questions.
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Featured image designed by Freepik, from www.freepik.com
They can’t even make AI without human writers to steal from.
D’accord!
The big AI companies, including OpenAI, the parent of ChatGPT, are paying publishers to use content for training and for providing responses to prompts.
The actors union SAG-AFTRA and the US Writers Guild are both in talks with AI companies.
Publishers Axel-Springer and Associated Press are among many that have signed deals and are receiving hard cash from AI companies. Fox News is launching a blockchain platform to handle deals with AI companies.
Adobe, Canva and Stability AI are among those companies already paying artists to use their creations for training.
The evidence of wholesale copyright infringement, proven in a court of law as opposed to wild allegations, is at this stage sorely lacking, and those cases that have reached court have been sent away again because they had no case.
No doubt some AI companies will find they overstepped the mark, and may be held legally responsible, but the “big name” case with John Grisham and George RR Martin that alleged “systematic theft on a mass scale” has yet to offer any actual evidence.
The case argues OpenAI knew, when prompted, an answered questions about characters in a book. Since when did that become copyright infringement?
Mark, Ruth and JR–I’ve just read that WordPress and Tumblr are allowing AI to use our blogs for training as well. I don’t know what that means for bloggers, except that it all seems inevitable.
This is an exceptionally well informed piece, Jodie. And perfectly timed, too, given the massive changes in technology now available to content producers, aka – writers.
I use AI tools daily, the three main ones being the auto-feature in Word, proofreading in Grammarly, and research through ChatGPT4. Being without them would equate to going back to thumbing through an encyclopedia then handwriting on a yellow legal pad with a red pen and trying to upload that mess to Kindle.
My take is it’s only a matter of time before AI 3.0 arrives that has emotional expression capability and will closely mimic a human writer with creative thinking. IMO, it’s inevitable. For now, as you say, “The key lies in embracing AI tools, accepting their pros, and leveraging their capabilities to improve your own writing skills.”
Happy Sunday to you, Anne, and Ruth!
Garry–Jodie appears to be unable to comment. I agree her piece answered some questions for me. I’m one of the people who does not welcome the new order with open arms, but I suppose we’ll all have to learn to use AI to our advantage.
Hi Garry, thanks for approaching the topic with open-mindedness. There are things to be watchful of but as for the tool side of AI, it’s definitely powerful.
Unimpressed. To be readable, writing needs wit, style and savvy. Machines ain’t there. At least not yet. Unless we all want to read computer manuals.
Ruth–I do hope people will click through and read your great post on your experiments with AI.
Hi Ruth. At a base level, that’s a fair assessment of where AI is. The question is, how different would AI tools be if we could give it our own published pieces, understand our style and flow then proceed to have it write something in our ‘voice’? It won’t be perfect (it’s only as good as the learning algorithm underneath and the way it processes our writing) but that’s a very different starting point compared to starting from scratch.
I’m not willing to embrace any form of AI. Period.
I’m also the person who won’t speak into a remote control and ask it to switch to ______. I know the channel number, thank you very much.
As long as we use AI as a crutch, our brains will lose some of their edge.
Kathy–I’m wary of AI too, and I still haven’t learned to use it. But I suppose if everybody is using it, we’ll become dinosaurs if we don’t. Like writing on an old fashioned typewriter or never using a calculator to do your taxes. I don’t do that. But I don’t talk to my TV remote either. 🙂
AI is a hot topic and is also here to stay. I see a lot of vehement posts about its use on forums, blogs, and social media platforms and most remarks seem to be based on fear. It’s almost become the new forbidden curse word. Mention it at your peril.
I think for most it’s been disheartening that someone can crank out a book in hours while it may take months or more for a writer who doesn’t use AI to finish a book.
This was compounded when 81 of the top 100 Kindle Unlimited YA books were AI generated and Amazon had to remove them from the list. Amazon had to limit uploads and also requires tick boxes for AI generated or assisted. Then an AI generated book won a literary award in China. What’s a writer to think?
One of the biggest concerns are laws that are in flux. The powers that be don’t know what to do about AI any more than we do. Until that’s defined I’m not inclined to use it for anything more than creating silly pictures for my own amusement.
Then there’s also the problem of corporate greed where wages may be affected for those who write ad copy and such. We’ve already seen strikes for Hollywood script writers. AI has touched journalism, colleges, and even the court room.
That being said, I also think we need to learn to use it as a tool rather than a replacement. It’s almost a case of learn and adapt or be left behind.
There are many mundane tasks an author faces where AI could be utilized. Marketing, newsletters, outlines, even the dreaded blurb. And yes, it might even help with writer’s block.
AI isn’t going anywhere and it will be interesting to see what shakes out in the months and years ahead.
Brenda–Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I first accepted the query from Acuity because I hoped to learn more about coping with AI. Now I’m wondering if this was written by AI. I have had all sorts of difficulties dealing with this company.
I didn’t know about the Chinese AI book that won an award. I do know Amazon if full of these books. It does feel like cheating the reader to me, but I’m old. I do wish we had a few more laws to protect us.
Hi Brenda, those are all good points. What resonated well with me was when you said, “I also think we need to learn to use it as a tool rather than a replacement.” Like all new technologies that reduce the amount of work that we do, things are still quite open from every aspect of the conversation.
We’ll all need to take a more balanced approach and consider how it all impacts us and we may be expecting changes to happen rapidly, given how overreaching the concept of AI is across all industries.
Heavy sigh. I find myself again far from the cutting edge. I academically understand the potential of AI, but given my experiences with auto-correct (aargh), & spellcheck (aargh again) I don’t find myself excited about learning the ins & outs of AI. It may cost me to choose to stay in my happy little Pleistocene Era, but at least at this point, that’s where I choose to stay.
CS–You are so right about auto-correct and spell and grammar checking software. They’re wrong so much of the time. As long as we know AI is not always reliable, I guess it can be less scary. But I’m with you on team dinosaur.
This is a very interesting post.
I’m still on the fence about AI. I see lots of potential (though I’m not yet that impressed) but also lots of pitfalls and potential for abuse.
I believe that art will survive no matter what. Art is part of what makes us human. Technology and progress aren’t the end of everything. Painting didn’t die out with cameras, horses are still around, LPs are back en vogue and people are reconsidering planes in favour of trains. Writers won’t die out, but will have to adapt.
I find it important to make my decisions on a base of knowledge. Your piece helps with that. Thank you for it, Jodie!
Tina–I’m with you on that fence. That’s why I accepted this piece. I do think it helps us understand. And oh, yes, as plane travel gets more and more unpleasant, the real luxury travel is on the train. And vinyl records really do produce a more realistic sound. Tech doesn’t always produce the best product.
Hi Tina, I’m glad Jodie was able to discuss this topic well enough. At whatever level AI can and will be in the future, I don’t ever think it has the capacity to replace human interaction. But if directed well enough, AI could provide greater expression of the human ability.
Just like how we can still ride trains today, the choice is more about how we want to experience the journey, rather than completely replacing trains with planes.
AI was the topic for the IWSG post this week and members listed a lot of good ways to use AI, including keeping real writers ahead of the game. Right now, we still have the advantage.
Alex–I need to go over and read that post! Yes, I think we still have the advantage.
Thanks, Alex. This is exactly what I what I’m looking for: how writers are currently using AI in their work.
I retired from teaching college fiction writing 2 years ago, after 30 years, and am so glad I did. The stories I hear from my colleagues about AI written papers and prose make fair marking almost impossible. So yes, I see it as the beginning of the end for us long-time mid-list authors with trad houses. Our value has certainly slipped from the 90s, and will continue to slip, I fear. Very interesting post – thank you!
Melodie–You did retire at the right moment. AI is causing a lot of headaches for teachers at all levels. And the software that’s supposed to catch AI papers often gets it wrong, and hardworking students with legit papers get penalized.
Hi Melodie, I can certainly see why that’s challenging. This being new territory and AI tool checkers aren’t 100% accurate either, educators will need a lot of help to navigate the situation.
I find AI to be….interesting. For example, KDP now asks the question on whether AI was used in aspect of your new book and if so, how much. Not sure what they’re doing with the info beyond collecting to create new policies (I believe they instituted a cap on how many books you can now upload in a given day). On a personal level, only a tiny bit of AI was used for my recent book cover.
Now to briefly examine another intriguing facet about using AI, I just started listening to a new podcast on YT hosted by some British mystery writers. In their last episode they discussed the use of AI, and one of the hosts presented a story written that he had an AI system create, using parameters that he had set (mostly in the future), it was very intriguing to listen to, as it seemed to be smartly written by the application.
GB–I’ve seen some AI generated prose that’s hard to distinguish from the real author’s work. That’s scary. But mostly the prose is a bit wooden. But they’re just getting started, so I’m sure they’ll come up with fixes. As far as KDP asking if your book is AI generated, I don’t know how they are able to tell if the author is being truthful or not. They have capped uploads to KDP to three a day. Three a day would be ridiculous for a normal writer, so it’s still got to involve a lot of AI stuff.
I think that’s where we can fine-tune our understanding of AI at the moment. It’s a machine, a source of automation but at a different level compared to how we’ve done so in the past. How far the output will go is based on the data’s trained in (the how well the machine is put together) and how effective the user is in creating an output using the machine.
Thanks for sharing, Garry. I appreciate your open-mindedness regarding AI tools. Even a minor ability to express emotions would be a massive breakthrough.
Hi Kathy, that’s a fair concern. As writers (and for that matter, anything that requires critical thinking and creativity) the more we exercise those muscles, the sharper we are. But instead of thinking that AI tools will replace our thinking capacity, what if we consider them as tools to extend or even expand it?
In the remote control example, it’s good to know the channel number and what you’re looking for. Under normal circumstances, you can switch to that channel yourself.
But what if you’re cooking and have your hands kneading dough but you wanted to reference a video you watched online that gave you specific kneading instructions? You could wash your hands, grab your phone and search for it, sure. If you had a smart device, you could ask it to find the video for you so your kneading doesn’t get interrupted.
Not a perfect analogy, of course as there will be people who depend on tools, rather than expand their abilities.
Hi CS, those are valid experiences. I remember how auto-correct was messing up my messages when it first rolled out. That’s a totally fine stance to take at the moment. Over time, we’ll get to see how things develop.
Just like how the first few cars didn’t change our lives overnight, once they were safer, had better mileage and cost-effective for everyone to use, that’s when we started seeing what cars could really do. Of course, time will tell how things shake out.
Anne, not sure if you’ll still read this, but I just remembered: Joanna Penn wrote some pieces about AI for writers on her blog that I found very interesting. She’s experimenting with using it for covers and editing, for example.
@Anne – WordPress,com (the free-to–use version, different from WordPress.org) since February 27 offers an opt-out that will prevent AI companies using WordPress content for training.
https://wordpress.com/blog/2024/02/27/more-control-over-the-content-you-share/
This in advance of a deal parent company Automattic is reportedly negotiating with OpenAI and Midjourney.
A best I can tell, WordPress.org does not have a policy either way at this time.
@Anne – it was actually Japan, and an important story in the AI saga.
Briefly, in January 2024 Japanese author Rie Kudan won the biannual Akutagawa Prize, said to be Japan’s most prestigious literary award, with a novel that was lauded by a judge for being “almost flawless” and “universally enjoyable.“
At the awards ceremony Kudan said, “I made active use of generative AI like ChatGPT in writing this book. I would say about five percent of the book quoted verbatim the sentences generated by AI.“
It’s definitely an interesting topic to watch, and it’s happening extremely fast.
I agree, Kathy. I until my husband managed to switch it off, my TV said, “Would you like me to suggest something for you to watch?”
No thank you. I still have a brain.
I feel that much of this stuff is making us lazy so we’re losing the ability to think for ourselves.
Very useful for controlling people. Putin must be laughing.
VM–I feel my whole life is a battle of wills with tech. I find myself screaming at the TV–“NO! I don’t want to watch that violent crap. Let me find my cozy mysteries!”
The Chinese award-winning AI book is a bit concerning.
I use AI inasmuch as I use Grammarly. But we must remember that even that can make mistakes. Homonyms are a particular trap.
I won’t use AI for research, because I’ve heard of many occasions when it was wrong. In one case, an author asked ChatGPT to research herself. She said much was correct, but it gave her credit for some books she hadn’t written.
But to me, apart from the concern that it will take the jobs of people who work in the arts, the real worry is how it is being used to make people think less.
Don’t decide something for yourself, like what to watch on TV. Let your television suggest something for you.
Don’t remember the number of your favourite channel. Just say it’s name and the TV will find it.
Don’t think for yourself, or remember things.
VM–Apparently it was Japanese, not Chinese, according to Mark Williams comment. He’s the editor-in-chief of the New Publishing Standard and knows stuff. But AI is very often wrong. We can’t count on it. It can also be rude and invasive. I know it will soon be our overlord, but I’m not looking forward to living the plot of the film 2001.
Interesting perspective. It gives me some things to think about.
Thanks, Jodi, for the thoughtful post and thanks, Anne, for hosting a topic you have mixed feelings about. Frankly, it’s a relief to find people engaging in a lively discussion across differences rather than splitting into polarized camps.
I’m very interested in learning how to use AI as a writer as an assistive tool. I currently use ProWriting Aid (a real game changer for my blog), and would like to learn how to start using ChatGPT and Claude to assist me with marketing, and possibly brainstorming/storyboarding. (I keep thinking of how helpful such a tool might have been in 2020, when I was battling brain fog due to long COVID.)
I hear of some writers who are feeding whole books into the LLMs in order to do this. What are the potential drawbacks? Are there any courses or websites you’d recommend that would help me learn more about how these LLMs work? ( I won’t ask for books, because I know things are changing weekly!)
Linda–Thanks for your thoughtful comment. So sorry to hear you battled long Covid! Yes, I think AI might have been a big help in cutting through brain fog. I still haven’t used it, but I know ChatGPT has helped a lot of writers organize their thoughts. This post is a year old, and Jodie probably doesn’t get notifications any more, but I know Elizabeth Ann West is a big fan of AI help with writing, so you might Google her and see if you can find any words of wisdom.
Thanks, Anne.
For people who like scrolling through blog archives as much as I do, there’s a fairly new podcast called ‘Brave New Bookshelf’ that talks about the various ways writers and publishers are using AI in their work.