So, the other day I wrote an article talking about AI novel writing software and how writers can use the technology to push through writer's block and make stories that are more interesting and well-paced, a lot faster. I didn't know whether or not to post it since the software is still in its infancy, and AI is still a controversial topic.
A lot of writers worry about how fast ai technology is advancing and ask, 'Can AI replace writers?'. For the foreseeable future, at least, the answer is 'no.' Ai can not replace human writers.
And here is why:
Ai can assist writers in creating content, focusing on ideas and style, while writers focus more on structure and flow.
Engagement And Cohesion
When you write a story or an article, everything needs to be cohesive. All the sentences need to add up into something bigger than themselves, with every idea building on top of another. You can't just have a bunch of random ideas that don't link together.
Now, there are a couple of ways to write a story, whether you're using traditional writing software or AI software like Jarvis or Headlime.
You can either have the idea first, then flesh it out from paragraph to paragraph until you have something your readers will enjoy. This approach is suitable for story ideas that you think of at random and need to elaborate on.
You can also set out the structure first, then fill in the gaps after writing it. This is good if you're a professional writer who already knows where you want your audience to go next.
Ideas Can Not Be Taught To Ai Software (At The Moment)
That doesn't mean that ai can't create good stories. Right now, they're only focused on improving the style of writing and the pace of your content. They can't yet understand ideas themselves. This is an important part of what makes a story interesting to readers, along with tone and voice.
The Ai can receive your idea and build it out using the information it already has and knows, but it cannot form a brand new creative idea itself.
As I mentioned in my previous post, the ai tool can review your text and ensure the facts you have outlined are consistent and correct. However, what it cannot do is to review your text and determine if it's interesting or engaging for readers or not. And this is probably one of the most limiting factors in ai software right now.
Humans Will Always Need To Edit The Output
If you need to jumpstart your creative process or want to get something done a lot quicker, ai will help. However, AI can not replace the editing process. It will give you a good first draft, but it won't be able to make any final decisions about your writing as a human reader would.
And if you did let Ai do all the work and try to publish a book or any other works, unedited and unchecked; be prepared for a lot of negative reviews (if you even manage to sell a copy) and, don't get your hopes up about creating a Best-Seller any time soon!
If you're going to use AI software, what I suggest is that you write out very rough drafts and then go through them again with the tool's feedback in mind for the next draft. The more drafts you do, the better your content will be in terms of structure and flow.
Ai Is Great At Writing Non-Fiction, Not So Great At Fiction
The technology AI uses has scanned 10% of the internet, newspaper articles, ebooks, and the like. This data harvesting happened in 2019, so up until 2019, the AI technology is armed with a bunch of historical facts and data.
This would be somewhat useful to somebody writing a non-fiction book (providing the events you are writing about happened prior to 2019, of course!)
However, if you are writing a brand new dystopian future novel with varying futuristic concepts, you might find that the AI struggles a little to understand the world you have created. In this case, it would probably be easier if you just wrote it out yourself and then edited and improved it with your software.
Keep Up Or Get Left Behind?
Overall, I am noticing that there are two schools of thought. Those who are ready to embrace these new changes and use them to make life easier and those who refuse all this 'Terminator, Person of Interest, iRobot' world-ending crap and instead do things the old-fashioned way.
Honestly, nothing is wrong with either approach. However, it might be a case of keep up or get left behind. As with or without significant adoption, companies are and have been using AI software to speed up their output for the past couple of years.
And OpenAI, the major company behind this advancement, is just getting started!
Are you ready to embrace new technology, or will you be left behind? Additionally, did you know that very few authors have been using AI to produce very human-like audiobooks (not the Amazon Polly or Microsoft Sam kind, either!)
In short
In the world we live in, imagination cannot be replicated, and creativity is fundamental.
But who knows? Maybe Ai WILL take over the world, but not just yet.
For now, AI software can be a fantastic tool to speed up certain aspects of the writing process. We all have busy lives, but we also need to make money in order to support those lives - so if you find that you're struggling with editing and formatting your content or coming up with basic ideas to move forward, AI may be able to help!
