Is AI A Writer’s Best Friend, Or Worst Enemy?
It’s an oversimplification to say ChatGPT and other generative-AI tools are bad for professional writers. Much of the writer’s work requires heavy research that could literally take years, even using modern tools like Google. This is especially true for science, technology, and historical themes but not, apparently, with fiction.
“AI is only a help, a tool to be used,” says historical fiction author GL Simon. “In the artistic world, whether it be applied art, dramatic arts or liberal arts, the artist is always the interpreter, not the AI robot.” Other writers agree.
Screenwriter Matt Nix (Burn Notice, The Gifted) says he uses ChatGPT mostly for highly specialized research. “It’s not good at generating stories — it can give you something story-like, but it tends to be derivative of the stories it was trained on,” he said. “It really shines at filling in details. If you’re writing an action scene, you can ask what parts of a 2001 Pontiac GTO is most vulnerable to a shotgun blast and why. It would be great at telling you what songs a heartbroken 14 year old Oklahoma girl would have listened to in May of 1952.”
“I’m encouraged by AI,” said Simon, author of the historical fiction trilogy, Der Flechtemann’s Chronicle. “but it is just a tool, same as the typewriter, computer, internet, and any number of devices and databases available now or in the future. I have used AI to give me ideas for dialectical dialogue and cover art. I then take what is given and rewrite it or adjust it to my artistic taste. It is never the end all with the art of the work concept.”
“AI can give suggestions in multiple ways for possibilities for responses. The artist writer must then weigh how the suggestions fit into the conceptual nature of the artist’s needs,” says Simon. “I cannot see a scenario where AI will ever take over the artistic world completely. Using AI will give suggestions to its users, but the user always has the artistic final say on the work itself.”
Two of non-fiction writers’ biggest fears are potential job losses and spam books. When Kara Swisher’s Burn Book was published earlier this year, a dozen “biographies” and derivative books were published to steal sales from the actual book. “Every new book seems to have some kind of companion book, some book that’s trying to steal sales.” Mary Razenberger, CEO, Authors Guild, told NPR in May. These spam books aren’t good books, but for the purpose of book scammers, they are good enough.
A colleague of mine, who works for a major tech news publication, told me that the newsroom has already been impacted by AI. She asked that her name not be used, as her publication forbids the use of AI in its journalism. “I feed my interviews, notes, press releases into Google Gemini, and I get a pretty decent first draft. I have to touch every word but, in the end, it takes half the time.” I have had the same experience. Clearly, our kind of writing jobs are going to shrink.
“AI is the most fearsome tool since the invention of the typewriter,” Simon says. “But it’s still a tool like Wikipedia, like Google. AI is not going to make art. It’s going to help artists do more. It’s not going to write a good story. It’s not going to create compelling characters.”
No-one I spoke with thinks AI will create art. Fiction writers are among those who will benefit from its power. For nonfiction writers and journalists, AI makes the work better and faster. This is not because it knows things we don’t. It’s because AI can retrieve and organize information faster. It makes me a better, faster writer, but in the back of my head, I wonder if I’m also training my replacement.
