What is it like to read poetry, stories, or novels entirely written by a computer?
This is not a crazy question.
Legendary writer Roald Dahl created this nightmarish scenario in his unsettling short story "Someone like you" (1953). It tells the story of a massive machine capable of writing award-winning novels based on an author's work in just 15 minutes. However, this machine had not appeared before Dahl's death.
But today, it seems no longer a crazy idea. There have been many recent examples showcasing the convenience of AI in the writing field.
Chinese science fiction writer Chen Qiufan used artificial intelligence - in the form of a text generator - to create some dialogues for his bestseller. Although the machine-generated content did not introduce new ideas or take Chen's narrative in a new direction, the voice and style behind these words were very similar to the author's.
Chen stated that the AI prototype developed by Innovation Works had already written a reverse directory of his past works - a collection of over a million Chinese characters. Although the program had to be adjusted several times to achieve the best results, Chen found the idea of using AI for writing very appealing.
"Traditional literature is becoming increasingly boring and disconnected from our rapidly evolving technological lives. We need something fresh to stimulate people's thoughts and feelings," he said.
Back in 2016, The Washington Post internally developed the first AI sample, Heliograf, to help report on the Rio 2016 Olympics. This robot was able to generate short reports for readers, covering the results of various competitions, including medal awards.
Next came Quill, an AI technology that "automatically reports relevant information on a large scale." According to the company, Quill can generate relevant, targeted articles by analyzing data compiled by machines or humans (spreadsheets and blog posts), creating "insightful" narratives. According to MIT Technology Review, Quill was already writing over a million words daily as early as 2015.
Following closely is Wordsmith by Automated Insights. With financial reports, Wordsmith continues to write articles about college sports and minor league baseball. Wordsmith can interpret raw data - whether sports statistics and scores or a long list of quarterly income statistics from specific industries - and create a jazzy article in seconds.
And so on... new AI products are constantly hitting the market.
That said, the relevant question is whether AI writers will reach a level that makes human writers unemployed?
Not necessarily!
As a writer, you gain your strength by blending your life experiences, thoughts, and ideas, along with your intuition for storytelling through reasoning and empathy. While AI and machine learning are advancing rapidly, they still cannot replicate humanized writing.
What AI lacks is storytelling, which is an innate human strength.
Writers of all kinds understand that storytelling is important because it helps others remember what we tell them. For relatively simple routine tasks, such as reporting baseball scores or a company's profits, AI robots will quickly provide you with the content you read. However, if a story requires empathy, humor, and style, humans still do it better—at least for now.
The future will bring us to a collaborative writing scenario where AI handles the mundane tasks, and humans produce the essence. The writing business will become an AI collaborative event, where humans can provide creative juice and AI can offer data insights.
Here are some ways AI can help authors create better content.
In workshops and writing guides, the warning to "use fewer words" is a fundamental rule.
For users, nothing is more confusing than long, complex sentences filled with multiple phrases and clauses. Unnecessary words come in various shapes and sizes, making it difficult to categorize them. To address this issue, be stricter with your writing and consider whether each word is necessary.
That said, "bad" first drafts often undergo extensive editing. When you finish editing, you usually overlook the objectivity behind the use of complex adverbs and long sentences.
Let AI do all this heavy lifting for you.
Using AI applications highlights adverbs, recommends simpler words, and flags passive voice. Therefore, when you input your draft into the application, it will shorten the editing process by marking issues in the text, allowing you to focus on simplifying those parts.
Thus, as a writer, you can concentrate on creativity while leaving readability to AI.
Proofreading is not an extra step in writing; it is a necessary process.
It is an essential step that allows you to revisit everything you have written, read every line, and correct the mistakes you made while writing and fixing them, ensuring that your final draft is free of typos.
Proofreading is a crucial element in generating excellent written documents, requiring good knowledge and patience to effectively proofread a document. This is especially important when submitting any work.
Today, there are many AI-based software tools available to help writers proofread.
These tools can detect spelling errors, grammar mistakes, and correct them. Some software can even sync to discover errors during the writing process. The software understands the nuances of writing and alerts authors about complex or overused words. There are also tools like Grammarly that can remind authors about punctuation, grammar, style, sentence structure, and spelling.
Therefore, we can say that AI eliminates the drudgery in writing, making it a truly enjoyable experience.
All writers need to conduct research. Whether you are writing a memoir based on your own life, a story set in a community you are familiar with, a fantasy in a created universe, or a feature article, research can add depth, authenticity, and further depict characters.
AI and machine learning can assist in writing information for authors.
AI helps you delve into millions of words and understand your readers' thoughts, feelings, and desired content through powerful text analysis. By automatically running sentiment analysis and processing thousands of comments, you can clearly see trends and gain real-time insights into current sentiments.
AI collects data and helps you process it, allowing you to take action and make decisions based on facts rather than just intuition.
In short, it eliminates the uncertainty of meeting "fickle" readers' needs and helps you accurately provide the content they want to read.
AI and machine learning are excellent for automating repetitive tasks and non-judgmental decisions.
Recall how Google used machine learning in 2012 to enable a supercomputer to recognize cats in millions of YouTube video thumbnails. The computer's accuracy was 75%. But preschool children can identify cats 100% of the time. On the other hand, supercomputers can solve difficult math problems in seconds, while mathematicians take longer.
If you are producing the same type of content daily, this is not good for you as a writer. Ultimately, AI will surely replace you. Therefore, modern writers need to always be in a creatively uncomfortable mode to avoid running out of ideas.
Psychologist Vygotsky believed in 1978 that learning is most effective in the "zone of proximal development." I know this sounds like a psychology lecture, so simply put, it is a space slightly beyond the learner's current knowledge base and skill level, but still within a person's range.
In simple terms, we are talking about constructive discomfort, viewing discomfort as a means to achieve goals, rewarding yourself for enduring a little discomfort each day.
Write something every day, slightly outside your comfort zone, but achievable with a little effort. Learn and master new skills and use them in different areas. Gradually improve your writing skills day by day.
Remember, AI can only help you with part of the work, but it is not meant to replace creative individuals.
Your job is to humanize your writing as much as possible, adding creativity, while over-reliance on it will cause you to lose your job.
As psychologist Edward de Bono said:
"Creativity is the ability to break long-standing patterns to see things differently."
