As someone who writes and edits for a living, I get asked a lot about AI for writing purposes and whether it spells imminent doom for my job. It doesn’t. But it does change things quite a lot. This has been driven home to me when I reluctantly took on a full time job as an editor recently (more on that in a second). There are some good things about AI, but as things stand, I strongly advise against using AI for writing. (And art, for that matter.)
What AI is great for:
It’s fine as a tool, for research, generating ideas and so on.
I use several tools for writing and AI is occasionally one of them. I have used them to help me create titles, for example, as I am utterly useless at that. Or at least I tried. I have since fallen back to a mix of title analysers and bad headlines because the options offered were dull. I may have asked the AI in the wrong way or something, so it might be great if you know what you are doing. I also use Grammarly to spot mistakes and Notion to take notes and so forth. Writing tools can be great.
So far, the main use I have found for AI has been for research. For example, I was recently commissioned to write about the rise of game development in Africa. So I opened Chat GPT and asked it to get me some links, and also a brief summary of the articles they are linking to. It was mostly helpful. A couple of the links were rubbish, but I got several good links, quotes, and informative pieces from it. Facts are somewhat lacking though. It feels like the AI is so eager to please it will just make stuff up.
Why it’s not so great
The moral issue…
This is one of the more important points. AI isn’t Holly from Red Dwarf or some kind of godlike beneficial being helping people. It isn’t, at present, even AI. It is an incredibly intelligent algorithm that samples what creative and talented humans have done and then turned their output into a series of algorithms and sampled work. It is not an intelligent digital brain that comes up with stuff, it is a smart copying machine. There have already been problems and court cases resulting from AI ‘ingesting’ books without the author’s consent. There have also been multiple issues with AI art essentially copying work and just reformatting it.
There is, happily, some fightback against all this digital skullduggery, but it is hard to do and is arguably not going to be all that successful. AI programmes will simply get better at disguising what they are doing. I know from my job that there are AIs that can write decent articles about crypto, but then there are also programmes that can detect AI written pieces. But there are also now programmes that can rewrite AI stuff that can fool the current AI detection programmes. It’s like an arms race. Just an arms race that is set to destroy and punish creativity and talent.
The problem with AI for content
As I said at the start, I was somehow persuaded to take on a full time job recently. (I say ‘somehow’, it was good money.) I can’t say who I’m working for, but I’m overseeing a young team who are writing about crypto and, coincidentally, AI. I noticed that some of their content is flawless, while other bits were utterly useless. I soon realized that they were, somewhat ironically, using AI for writing their content. As a result, the articles were either bland but grammatically perfect, or poorly written but fairly interesting.
The problem with this, is that they will never learn or improve. Like most skills, and I don’t care what people say, writing can be learned and it is mostly just a matter of practice. Obviously, the extra dash of genius is what makes people famous, but anyone can be a good writer if they keep at it. The team under me will never get that practice. So it begs the question – why do they actually want to be writers? Is it just part of hustle culture?
Another issue is the constant looming threat of Google penalizing sites for using AI. This has been rumored to already be the case, but from what I can tell, it isn’t yet. But it could happen, and with the current state of AI writing – mostly bland and easy to spot – it could feature in the future. So why risk it? Imagine Google changing its algorithm and suddenly nearly all content on your platform is penalised. Why risk it?
If you’re creative, or want to be, why use AI for writing or art?
I’m mostly a professional journalist who makes a pittance on the side writing fiction. I am also learning how to draw and do digital art. I became a journalist because it is a fascinating job and I enjoy writing. I write fiction and am learning art, because I absolutely adore it. Creating things incredibly satisfying. If I could make even vaguely similar money, I would swap an enjoyable job in journalism for an adored job as a novelist in a heart beat. But if you are using AI to create, I guess you aren’t getting the same enjoyment, and never will.
Which I suppose is fine. My life’s most depressing job title (so far) has been ‘Senior Content Writer’. Writing ‘content’ is hardly a dream. But people, companies, and websites need content and some just want literal ‘word matter’ that takes up space – no matter how bland or generic. I think this is sad, but unfortunately I am not in control of such things.
Why writers, companies, and websites should avoid AI for now
I guess my point is, from a writer’s point of view, why use AI? If you respect creativity, again, why use AI? And if you are a business – be aware that everything could change with one algorithmic update. It is quite a gamble, just so you can have more content.
AI is here to stay and we are still working out how it will fit in to our daily lives. I think it is an incredible advance and will reshape how we do a lot of things. It is on an internet level of change.
But for now, just be wary.
