I know most creative people are against the use of artificial intelligence for writing, and with good reason. AI has the potential to outproduce and outwrite every author on the planet.
There’s a lot of debate around what safeguards should be put around AI to prevent it from taking over the arts, but I don’t believe AI will ever entirely take away the creativity of humans. In fact, I can foresee many people refusing to buy AI-written content to support the arts, much like how people still buy painted work despite the existence of moving pictures (TV).
And the truth is, AI is not going anywhere. It’s here to stay, so we will have to learn how to live with it even if we hate it. And there are many ways authors can utilize AI to improve their writing without having to hand over their work.
Here are a few ways you can make AI a helpful tool rather than your enemy:
Have AI help you overcome writer’s block. Not sure how your characters will get out of a sticky situation? Let AI try to solve it. It may take a few tries, but AI is a great brainstorming tool to help you come up with new ideas. Ask it to give you some options and then pick your favorite and adapt it to your story.
Picking a catchy title can also be hard, but AI can give you some ideas. Just tell it a little about your book and ask it to come up with titles. You might be surprised by what it tells you.
AI can also act as a grammatical editor for complicated sentences or punctuation. Ask it to act as an editor, using the Chicago Manual, and to make the following sentence grammatically correct. It can instantly give you feedback and generally works better than some built-in AI tools like Grammarly.
AI can also help you come up with unique names. You can ask it for names that have a certain meaning, come from unique locations, and so much more. The possibilities are endless.
AI can help you outline a book idea. Have a bunch of messy notes and struggling to get your hands around the structure to make an outline? Ask AI to do it. Provide it with the info and ask it to form an outline using the ideas and your preferred plot structure. It may not get it perfect, but it’ll give you a much easier place to start.
Use AI as a business consultant. AI is an especially powerful tool to utilize as you build your brand and business. You can ask it to help you create logos, taglines, headlines for blogs, common keywords to include, images, and more. This is especially helpful to writers on a budget who cannot pay a professional for these services.
Use image-generating AI to help you envision characters, locations, and book covers. There’s a lot of controversy around this idea as well, and although I don’t think you should publish your story with generative AI images, it can be helpful when you’re trying to visualize a character or location. Plus, you can also put images into AI and ask it to describe the image to you, which is a great way to inspire descriptions for your book.
AI is a powerful tool and it’s not about to go anywhere. In fact, it’s likely going to become more and more common as the technology improves until one day, there may not be a job for editors because AI can do the work faster and more efficiently. It’s a sad future for many in the creative arts, but with the right regulation and frameworks to keep AI from stealing everything, it’s also a bright future for writers around the world.
If you’re nervous about using AI, that’s okay, but I would encourage you to at least be familiar with what it can do and what it sounds like because chances are good that you are already reading and interacting with AI-generated content. I am finding more and more fake profiles on social media that use AI to comment on posts, to write books, blogs, and more. If you don’t know how to identify AI, then you might be fooled by someone with ill intention.
Plus, those who use AI may end up having an advantage in speed over those who don’t. I do not mean in writing AI books, but in improving their business, their blogs, their writing structures, or editing. AI can kickstart the process for many people who didn’t have the time or skill before.
There’s a lot to think about, but consider all the pros and cons and decide for yourself what the best course of action is.
Comments