What does artificial intelligence mean for the writing community?

I recently asked a chatbot to write a review of Blue Tide Rising.

This is what it came up with – in about seven seconds.

“Blue Tide Rising by Clare Stevens is a novel that combines mystery, magic realism and personal growth. It tells the story of Amy, a woman who escapes from her abusive ex-lover and finds refuge in a Welsh eco farm called Môr Tawel¹². There, she meets Jay, a man who is investigating the death of his brother, who drowned in the sea near the farm. Amy and Jay are drawn to each other, but they also have to face their own demons and the secrets that haunt Môr Tawel²³.

“The novel is a captivating and emotional read, with vivid descriptions of the Welsh coast and its folklore. Stevens explores sensitive themes such as mental illness, suicide and child abuse with compassion and realism²³. The characters are complex and relatable, and their journeys are inspiring and hopeful. The plot is well-paced and full of twists and surprises, keeping the reader engaged until the end²⁵

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good mystery with a touch of magic and romance. It is a book that will make you feel, think and wonder about life, death and everything in between⁵. I give it 4.5 stars out of 5.🌟🌟🌟🌟🌠

Sources

The helpful bot even produced a list of sources, before I had time to wonder where it got the information.

In those seven seconds it drew from Amazon and Goodreads reviews, a piece in the Nottingham Post, a review in The Hindu newspaper and an interview I did with Nottingham Writers Studio.

It even seemed to have made some elements up – like the bit about the book including Welsh folklore. It doesn’t.

But chatbots don’t make things up, they draw on and mimic what’s already out there. Including mis-information.

Dire warnings

Artificial intelligence is big news at the moment, as the leaders of one tech giant after another have issued public warnings about the monster they’ve created.

Barely a day goes by without an apocalyptic headline on the subject.

This stuff is dangerous, the narrative goes. It seeks to annihilate the human race. It’s the stuff of science fiction. Doomsday scenarios abound.

Should we be worried?

Is it too late to rein in the robots, or have we already unleashed them to do their worst? is the genie well and truly out of the bottle?

Thankfully, it’s not my job to come up with answers, so I’ll try not to worry about it.

How does AI affect writers?

What does concern me, along with many others in the writing community, are its implications for those of us who write for a living.

Will the robots render us redundant?

My day job involves writing blog posts, press releases and social media content. Could a robot do my job?

Putting the bot through its paces

In a recent meet-up with copy-writer friends, we played around with a chatbot, asking it to create some social media posts.

To be fair, it did a decent job, producing something useable with just a few tweaks.

I also asked it to write a press release, which it was less good at. It got the structure wrong and what it produced was bland and boring.

I breathed a little sigh of relief. Not quite out of a job. Yet.

 But as someone pointed out. It’ll learn.

Useful tool or existential threat?

Being able to string a sentence together in writing has for throughout my adult life kept me in work. Work that lets me use my skills and engage my brain.

That gives me a sense of achievement and pride in my craft. A craft I honed bashing out stories on a manual typewriter in a pre-digital age.

That’s all very well for me as I’ve already had a career, but what does the future hold for younger people?

Generation AI

According to a recent poll commissioned by the i newspaper, more than half of 18-24 year olds fear AI will do them out of a job. Despite that, people in that age group mostly see advances in tech as a good thing.

It certainly has its uses. If you rock up at the office with a migraine, or the mother of all hangovers, and your brain’s too fuzzy to function, but you’re on a deadline to produce coherent copy, the bot will have no such problems.

It can sift through the relevant information and do the hard work for you.

The human touch

And once you have a draft, you can then add your unique touch to make it human.

Copywriters I know are using AI tools to give them ideas, and to get them started when they’re low on inspiration.

It seems inevitable that this stuff will eventually do us out of jobs. But in the meantime, we might as well use the technology that exists to make our lives easier. And where’s the harm in that?

Tech-pessimism

A 20-something friend who describes himself as a ‘tech pessimist’ said: “People won’t be writers any more. They’ll be AI minders. So no one person will be able to say they’ve created something.

“It’s similar to when Gerald Ford pioneered the automotive assembly line, so no one person could say ‘I made a car.’

“It’ll be like that for a lot of people who work in the creative industries. So the quality of everything we read and watch will go down. And the people who control it won’t care about the outcome.”

What does AI mean for the publishing industry?

So, corporate copywriting could well be a dying art. But what about weaving words in fiction? How creative can a chatbot be?

Can publishers tell if a novel is computer-generated?

Earlier this year, leading Sci-Fi magazine Clarkesworld closed submissions for short story entries because of the deluge of AI generated material it received.

The magazine, which pays authors for stories, states: “We are not considering stories written, co-written, or assisted by AI at this time,”

In a blog post earlier this year, the magazine’s editor Neil Clarke described the threat posed by AI as ‘existential’ because it plagiarises established authors and impedes emerging ones.

While governments grapple with regulation, publishers struggle to know what to do about it.

Can AI really write books?

There are now hundreds of AI-authored books listed on Amazon and probably many more that don’t openly admit to it.

It used to be obvious when you were dealing with a bot. But they’ve got much better at mimicking humans. And they’re learning all the time.

The race to regulate

And although tools exist to check whether something is computer generated or written by a human, those systems need to keep pace with the fast evolution of AI itself.

Just as detecting fakes in the art world requires intimate knowledge of the techniques used by individual fakers, AI detection needs to align to the the hallmarks of each particular AI.

Keep writing!

I’m not alone in finding the rapid evolution of AI part fascinating, part terrifying.

One thing is certain, we can’t just sit back and wait for it to happen. The industry needs to get its act together and decide how to address this thing.

For now, those of us who write, should carry on writing. Before the robots rob us of our craft.

What are your views on the uses of AI in writing? Do you see it as threat or opportunity? Let me know in the comments!