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That’s a bleak blog title, and this post is going to get bleaker before it gets better, but come with me if you want to live.
Not long after ChatGPT was widely unveiled I asked the artificial-intelligence program directly what AI means for writers, and I wrote about its responses and my impressions in this post.
I conjectured that given the speed of machine learning, it was inevitable that sooner rather than later, AI would be able to create credible facsimiles of human-generated writing, and indeed that’s already happening. While the work can still be riddled with errors, biases, or just plain bad or basic writing and storytelling, and while the program is not creating so much as collating data and replicating and predicting common patterns, it’s not that far-fetched to believe that as artificial intelligence gains ever more data to “learn” from, it will get better and better at writing at a frightening speed.
Here we are four months after I wrote that post, and AI has already gained more than a toehold in our business. There are already an untold number of books for sale on Amazon generated by artificial intelligence—as in this piece (gift link so you can access the article) about a writer who discovered another work not only on his same narrowly focused technical topic but with his same title that dropped just weeks before the release of his own version he spent a year working on the old-fashioned way: like a human.
Writers feel, not without reason, that they may be an endangered species.
The article cites 49 news outlets, including major ones like CNET and Buzzfeed, that are regularly incorporating AI-generated articles into their content. And both these companies have recently made significant staffing cuts, which they profess not to be related, but it’s hard to think that they’re not.
As I write this, Hollywood writers have gone on strike partly because they want a guarantee that AI-generated work won’t impact their compensation and credits—demands that production companies refuse to commit to.
Writers feel, not without reason, that they may be an endangered species.
We Live in a Bottom-line World
I’ve seen a lot of articles averring that no matter how good AI gets, how quick and cost-effective and competent, artificial intelligence can never replace the human spirit, and people will always want stories written by humans.
That’s a lovely thought, and it may even be true. But tell me whether you use anything mass-produced in your day-to-day life that was once created by a craftsperson or artisan. Ceramics like our dishware and coffee mugs, metalwork like our utensils, or furniture, fabrics and the clothing made from them, and myriad other mass-produced machine-made products that are an everyday part of our lives. All of them, to at least some degree, were once handmade.
Part of human creativity and ingenuity is in creating ever more efficient ways to accomplish things—including art. Craftspeople have been losing their jobs and even their whole industries to machines for years: farriers, carriage makers, typographers, tailors and seamstresses, woodworkers, and the list goes on probably since the first caveperson whose job was lugging things around got put out of business by the invention of the wheel.
I’m going to say the scary thing that none of us wants to think about: It’s not out of the realm of possibility that the publishing industry as we know it will become far less dependent on human creators.
That doesn’t mean there will be no such thing as human writing and creativity. Just as there are still skilled craftspeople who make handmade items that people will pay a premium for, I do think handmade, human-made art will always carry more currency. But I also think there may be less of a market for it as machines become more adept at generating the kind of content we may not consume to illuminate our souls, but simply to garner information or for easy entertainment.
It’s already happening in news and other media. How much of a leap is it to think that AI could generate credible stories that are good enough to market in genres that rely heavily on common tropes and reader expectations, like romance? How hard do you think it will be for it to generate a sitcom or action movie that follows a successful formula? Hollywood has already demonstrated that they prefer the tried-and-true bankable trope to anything new and artistic. No offense to the writers of Top Gun: Maverick, which I finally watched this past weekend, but if my own tiny human brain’s predictive text could guess most of the dialogue from line to line before each actor uttered it, based on how many of this type of movie I’ve seen already, I’m guessing a machine that’s a whole lot smarter than I am could easily have done so based on potentially infinitely more source materials.
We have to consider that there is nothing special or sacred about what we do as writers relative to what any skilled and artistic craftsperson has ever done in a long line of them who have successively lost significant chunks of their corner of the market.
I know you don’t like to hear any of this, and I don’t like to say it. But it’s reality. It’s already happening. And accepting that hard truth will be the difference in whether as creatives we continue to find meaning and fulfillment in our work, or give up in discouragement and despair.
Know What Is Not Within Your Control
Let me assure you that few people hate change and particularly technological change more than I do. My husband loves to tease me because when we met I had no cable and a dial-up modem, and this was in 2007, friends.
As someone who is an early adopter of any form of tech, though, my husband stays on the cutting edge of all of it and finds it stimulating and exciting. I can’t say his outlook has infected me, but as a practical person making my living in the publishing field, I do accept the reality that technology is changing my industry, and I can change with it or remain a dinosaur and become irrelevant.
Around the time that electronic editing and publishing started to become popular, for instance, one CEO at a major Big Six publisher I worked for at the time swore that the company would never adopt it. That publisher and countless others were left playing catchup in Amazon’s wake because they refused to admit the reality of what was coming. Thanks to my husband I saw the writing on the wall and I was an early adopter of electronic editing in a way that kept me in demand as an editor, and my business not only didn’t suffer; it flourished.
I don’t know that I’m going to land on my feet quite so easily with AI. I’m comfortable that right now editors may be more important than ever, given the unevenness and unreliability of what AI is generating, but will that always be the case?
And I concede that writers are facing a more immediate threat than editors may be—not just those of us who write books, but particularly freelancers who contribute content and make their living that way. As one outlet points out in the article I cited above, they can now publish 10,000 articles with the resources it previously took to publish one. Capitalism being the holiest god of much of society, what company wouldn’t take that into account? It would be fiscally irresponsible not to.
But where does that leave writers?
The idea of much of the story we consume being AI-generated feels as if we are stripping away another piece of our humanity bit by bit with every technological advance, and I don’t know what it means for what society becomes.
But I’m confident that every other out-of-work craftsperson over the years felt the same way. It’s incredibly hard to earn a living as a creative already. It always has been.
AI could make it even harder.
We can’t change facts of the market that are beyond our control. We have to find ways to adapt within them. Change or die.
We have to ask ourselves tough questions like, What if we can’t? What if an even smaller percentage of writers are able to earn a living wage from their craft?
We can’t change facts of the market that are beyond our control. We have to find ways to adapt within them. Change or die.
I don’t devalue art, by any means. I actually think it’s among the most important things in life—for human connection, for understanding ourselves and each other and the world around us, for the sheer love and celebration of the beauty and complexity of life, for the legacy of humankind.
But if how I value it isn’t congruous with how the market values it, I have to operate within that reality. That might eventually mean not just adjusting how I work, as a person who makes a living in the creator economy, but maybe finding a new line of work altogether.
The thought makes me agonizingly sad.
Lest we get lost in the bleakness, let’s shift the vibe around here. Things are getting pretty dark.
Know What You Can Control
It isn’t the market, and it ain’t the machines, that’s for damn sure, as countless dystopian-future stories have taught us. But I am by nature a pragmatic and optimistic soul, so let’s look at ways this doesn’t have to mean the apocalyptic end of authors and of story.
First up, and my number one approach for pretty much every challenge in life:
Accept reality.
This is happening, kids, and no amount of wishing or telling ourselves otherwise is going to change that. The monkey is out of his cage and the poo is already flying. If you want to avoid the shitstorm, duck, run, or grab an umbrella.
Find a niche.
My nephew has spent the last seven years of his life studying, planning, and preparing for a career as an auto mechanic with his own business–just as every major automaker is beginning to phase out internal combustion engines in favor of electric ones. He has no interest in that, and he’s confident and optimistic (ah, the young) that he can still pursue his dream for the reduced percentage of consumers who will prefer gas engines, just as some people still prefer vinyl for their music.
Ask yourself if it’s important for you to earn a living from your creative efforts. If so, start thinking now of ways to do it in this new world order.
This past weekend, a friend of mine invited me to a private show of an artisanal fabric and clothing maker whose designs are unlike anything I’ve seen. She sells her art online and in intimate shows like this directly to consumers who don’t mind paying a premium for unique handcrafted clothing. Maybe you will sell one-of-a-kind handwritten artisanal family histories to wealthy members of the oligarchy who made their money putting you out of business.
Marketing expert Dan Blank recently wrote about ways artists can thrive in an AI world. Indie pub maven Joanna Penn wrote about how she’s using it in her business. Author Elisa Lorello talked about using it as a brainstorming tool. Figure out where the opportunities lie in these changes, and lean in.
Pivot.
A dear friend of mine made his career as an illustrator of children’s books, but retired when graphic design took over the industry. He could have chosen to learn to illustrate that way, but he didn’t want to, and he spent the last years of his life happily pursuing his creative writing full-time as a self-published author.
Maybe you aren’t in a position to retire, and you may have to find ways to earn a living that may not utilize your skills, like the coal miner who still has to support his family even as the world transitions to clean energy, whether he prefers coal power or not.
No matter how much authors may want and deserve to be paid for their art, you can’t sell what they’re not buying. You can make yourself miserable over that, or you can accept it and find another way to meet your needs.
That means it’s more important than ever to understand on a core level what we value in life. I knew a fellow actor when I was pursuing that career in New York who was perfectly happy crashing on friends’ sofas so that he minimized any work distractions outside of his art. Good for him, but my value system is different and I knew I needed more stability, security, and financial freedom than that.
I have pivoted my career any number of times. When I realized acting wasn’t going to be a viable way to make a living (and that nor did I want to wait tables forever), I learned copyediting. When that went electronic I jumped on the bandwagon. As soon as I saw the burgeoning self-publishing movement I realized how important developmental editors would be, and I pivoted my business again. When the pandemic came I immediately pivoted to include more online presenting and teaching.
We do what we have to do to survive. So far I’ve been lucky to continue to make a living in my creative field, but I always know that could change. I joke with my husband that if I ever have to wait tables again, I’m not too proud. But I suspect I could find other ways to use the skills I have. Will I find them as fulfilling and creatively satisfying as what I get to do now? Likely not, but if the reality is that I cannot make a living doing what I choose to do, then I have to find a way to do it with what I can do. And then I’ll have to find other outlets for my creativity, ones that may not, in fact, generate income.
Know why you write.
That brings us to the last way to handle these unwanted advances in our field: Remind yourself why you wanted to do this in the first place.
For most of us, it probably wasn’t dreams of making a fortune, or if it was we were quickly disabused of that fantasy, given even the current realities of the business.
If your creativity is a part of who you are, if it feeds your soul, if it helps you understand and make sense of the world or connect with others, all those things are still valid. Perhaps now more than ever in the face of technology rendering so much of humanity obsolete.
If your creativity is a part of who you are, if it feeds your soul, if it helps you understand and make sense of the world or connect with others, all those things are still valid. Perhaps now more than ever in the face of technology rendering so much of humanity obsolete.
Dr. Viktor Frankl wrote most of his masterwork, Man’s Search for Meaning, in his head while imprisoned in Nazi death camps during World War II. Not only did he have no reason to believe he would ever publish it or make a dime off of it, he couldn’t have known whether he’d even survive to write it. But working on it helped him make sense of the atrocities he was living, to hold on to his humanity in the face of inhumane conditions, kept him sane.
Anytime you hear yourself bemoaning the straitened conditions we find ourselves in as creatives, think about Frankl to put things in perspective: We can still pursue our art from the purest place it springs from. No matter what.
Change marches on. You can’t stop progress.
How will you handle it?
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50 Comments. Leave new
You make so many great points here, Tiffany. You remind me of the ways I’ve adapted before, such as starting a desktop publishing company to design and write communications for businesses and nonprofits in 1995, a wave that ended in 2003, once less expensive software like Microsoft Publisher made a graphic designer out of everyone. Luckily, a creative spirit always finds a way to live its story, even when, as protagonist, you feel boxed in with no clue how to emerge. Desperation—oops, I mean necessity!—is the mother of invention, after all.
Ha–both desperation and necessity, yes? It does help to think about how we’ve adapted to changes before–there have been MANY in our industry in recent years, and it’s shifted foundationally in the three decades I’ve worked within it. Like many of us, I fear change…but damned if I won’t grit my teeth and walk straight into it, because that’s what you have to do to stay relevant and survive. Love hearing how you’ve done the same.
I use ChatGPt for brainstorming even for concepts that don’t exist like dragon berries.
Great tot hear that you use it as a tool.
I’m hearing a lot of writers are doing it–Joanna Penn’s piece I linked to and Elisa Lorello’s have some good ideas about ways to do it, and there are a host of articles out there about phrasing prompts to get the best results. Thanks for the comment.
I hear a lot of writers saying this lately! That’s a good use for it, I think–a virtual assistant/handmaiden. 🙂 I’ve started experimenting with that too, once I got over my resistance because it felt like “cheating.” But I’m still mindful that it’s going to change how our industry operates, and trying to surf that wave instead of getting swept under by it.
Sure, throughout history the incoming/outgoing tides can wash away many dreams. Years ago, the realization that the writing and publishing space is no different, regardless of the challenge, forced me to reach inwardly and decide what my MVP (Mission-Vision-Purpose) was in committing to a successful author and self-publishing career. AI will no doubt reach unprecedented levels of intrusion. I agree that AI will force many writers to “put things in perspective”. And, as you also said, “We can still pursue our art from the purest place it springs from”. Know your MVP and stay true to that. If benefiting financially is part of that, then take practical steps to protect your art. For me it’s treating indie author/self-publishing like a business (a move Joanna Penn would wholeheartedly endorse). That means trademark/copyright protection, business structure (LLC is a good place to start) an experienced intellectual property rights lawyer/law firm in your corner and become a fearless defender of all you create. No one else is going to show up and do it for you. Thank you for going there, Tiffany.
Great observations, Mac–I’m a realist at heart, but an optimistic one–and like you, a practical one. It’s smart that you navigate your own course with your career, and educate yourself on how to do that effectively and how to protect yourself. If more writers treated their writing careers like a business in the ways you describe, especially defining their “MVP,” I think they’d feel more sense of control over it, inasmuch as we have any in a subjective industry like art. And I think you’re right, too, about maintaining our dreams, but balancing it with our values and our lives. As I often say, think of approaching your writing career not as “What will make me happy?” but rather “What can I be happy with?” It’s a subtle shift from defining success externally to defining it internally that I think can offer much more fulfillment, satisfaction, and longevity to creatives. Thanks for the comment.
Thank you, Tiffany. Since you expressed my thoughts better than how I wrote them, you may have an internal AI program running you’re not aware of. Having spent nearly a decade observing all the moving parts as self-publishing evolved, I get a sense that more perspective, concerning AI, is needed by everyone in the creative space. No question regarding the positive impact AI will continue to have on technology and medical fields…just to name a couple. However, what if we learned that all of Michaelangelo’s art was a collaboration between numerous artists and not entirely his? Or da Vinci’s creations were actually done by subordinates. Or that all the Dr. Seuss books were written by Theodor Geisel’s niece. Wouldn’t that negatively impact people’s perception and emotional connection? And isn’t the emotional connection truly at the heart of the matter? Personally, I’d prefer anything I create to stand on its own and to truthfully say, “No AI was involved.” Essentially, I refuse to eat green eggs and ham. 🙂
Oh, boy, you bring up some good, thought-provoking points, Mac! Those are hard questions to answer. I mean, there’s already conjecture that Shakespeare didn’t actually write all his works…but that doesn’t seem to have impacted his popularity. Then again, the same thing pretty much tanked Milli Vanilli’s career (sorry, showing my age!). I don’t know the answer here–it feels related to the old question about judging the art independently of the artist. I don’t know that answer either. I remember being outraged when Elton John came out as gay (dating myself again!) and people swore off his music over it. But have I done the same with artists whose behavior I found abhorrent? I have (and obviously I know that’s not the same as being open about one’s sexuality–just looking for parallels).
I don’t know any of these answers. But I do enjoy (in a slightly terrified manner) puzzling over them, so thanks for the thought fodder.
[FYI and more thoughts to add to the fodder. No need to spend time replying]
As a Boomer, my three grown sons enjoy pointing out when I’m “dating myself”. Milli put out some good tunes. I find I forget the source when their hits songs are aired. I also remember the tempest around Elton. And yet, most of us readily accept that much of his work was the music of a generation. The same probably holds true in most cases; the art can supersede the artist. The same could be said concerning Shakespeare. On that subject, a close family friend did his doctoral thesis on Marlowe. Apparently, Willie owes him much credit. 🙂
Hi Tiffany, great article! I myself use chatgpt as a kind of tool to rewrite my text. I enter pieces of text I’m not happy with, and ask chatgpt to reformulate it. There are then words/phrases that I think are indeed better, and I then integrate them into the existing text. I think that as a writer you still have an important role when you use chatgpt, because you still have to be able to detect your own style flawlessly from the sentences presented to you. In choosing, we again see the personality of the writer/artist shine through. Choosing is also an art. (sorry for my English, I am Dutch speaking)
Thanks, Greet. Your way of using AI is interesting–it’s one I haven’t heard before, though related to the authors who say they use it as a brainstorming tool. I admit I’m wrestling with how I feel about incorporating ChatGPT into my own workflow on a creative level. Right now I’m using it mostly logistically: to generate recommendations of books with craft elements I’m working out for courses and the like–for instance, “Can you give me a list of current bestsellers written in deep-third POV?” And I’ve asked it to generate writing I am wanting to be deliberately deficient so I can use them as “before” examples of how to improve writing with the theories I’m teaching (otherwise I have to write all the “before” myself, which feels like an unnecessary make-work task). I’ve even asked for outlines now and then, so I can compare them to my own to make sure I’ve hit main points I should hit (and to prove to myself that I have something unique to offer, more original ideas than it does, if I’m honest!). I’m not ruling out using it for more, but I feel a little squicky about it still.
I “allowed” myself to do the above tasks because I reminded myself that I don’t have to reinvent the wheel in every aspect when developing ideas and theories about writing–I can use it as a brainstorming tool, as you and others describe.
But I worry about [everything] blurring a line between human and machine “creator” (I know AI isn’t creating anything at the moment), and what that means about art. Then again, I mention the changing field of illustration in the post–I don’t regard graphic design as “cheating” or “machine-made art.” I still see the human artistry of that. Maybe this is similar.
Food for thought. Thanks.
Thanks Tiffany, tot your reply. Indeed, good tot thought!
I use it all day long to ask simple, in-the-moment questions to get a detail correct while writing.
Yesterday, I asked it: what’s that houseplant that can grow really long; do they splint a seriously broken arm immediately after surgery or put it in a cast; what’s the difference between pelo and cabello in Latin Spanish…and many more.
It’s way faster than sifting through websites or forums that result from normal search, trying to determine which source is authoritative. The questions are generally simple enough that they don’t require me to verify them with more research, but if they do, I now have the terms to formulate a very specific search query.
When it comes to rewriting, I haven’t done that yet. But is there really a difference between ChatGPT and Pro Writing Aid? Not really…
OMG, I love that–AI as memory jog, as real-time interactive Google search. “Who was that guy in that thing that time…?” 😀 I love the idea of using it as a research tool!
I can’t weigh in on Pro Writing Aid–I’ve never used it. Did I mention I resist tech? 😉 Thanks for the comment.
I think the most-relevant thing I’ve absorbed from listening to hours of analysis about generative AI is this: It trains on existing material, so it can’t create what has not previously been created.
Could it write a Nancy Drew story? Easily, now. Could it have written one before Nancy Drew existed? How could it, if such a thing had never been done before?
Same goes for Harry Potter. There’s a gigantic mass of fantasy for it to train on now, so it could easily push out more of the same, just as it could do for romance. But back when publishers were rejecting Harry Potter as unmarketable because it didn’t have any comps? Again, how could it conceive of it? The “boarding/magic school” plotline hadn’t been done before.
AI can extend a concept from an existing base of creative work, even coming up with compelling plots, but they will hardly be TRULY unique. Can it twist a plot in a way a plot has never before been twisted?
Maybe a sort of golden age of being an author is coming to an end, an era when there was room (if not money) in the market for high-quality-but-not-necessarily-groundbreaking content, works that could be created by skilled-but-not-visionary writers.
Maybe we’re entering a new “Hemingway era,” so to speak, a time when it requires extraordinary talent to write what an ever-more-competent AI cannot because it can never be uniquely creative. A world where there is a role for the pathfinder, but not for the rest of the people following in their footsteps, attempting to emulate them.
I think you have points about AI making writing more competitive–fewer “human art” slots to fill, perhaps. And about it only regurgitating info right now, not actually creating anything.
But I have a couple of thoughts on that, devil’s-advocate style: One, as AI has more and more data to draw on, it’s not that big a stretch to me to imagine it could come up with the kinds of stories you mention–recombining the DNA of other stories could easily yield something fresh. That’s really all any story is now–truly nothing genuinely new under the sun this many millennia into the human experience and the history of written story.
Two, and please feel free to make fun of me for this, I cannot rule out that machines will eventually develop something that, if not actual sentience, is close enough to pass a Turing test. And a facsimile of life that is indistinguishable from life must be life, right? And at that point, who is to say it can’t write circles around us–both style and content?
Listen, I want to be wrong really hard. I hope I am.
But if not…I’m kind of glad I’ll probably be dead before I have to endure too much of that nonsense. Though I think these advances will come fast and furious, and my Luddite, tech-resistant self may have to deal with my worst-case scenario of a VR world.
*Ducks away to find a vat of ice cream to drown anxiety inside of…*
Honestly, none of us really know how any of this will turn out in the end. Short-term predictions are fairly easy because they’re already happening. Longer term…?
Here’s something else, though, that I wonder, even for Turing test-level AI:
Is the creativity that could come out of a machine that knows the grand total of all human experience (so far as it has been recorded) better than…
…the creativity that could come from one (extremely talented) individual who has spent decades navigating a particular, unique path through life, struggling, overcoming, failing, etc.
Mixing all the colors of experience together just turns it all brown, perhaps, but I suppose an AI could start by reconstructing a life second-by-second up to a certain age, then trying to figure out what they might write about.
Or, more likely, they could construct a set of characters up to a certain point, then put them together and let each of them Turing test each other as they create a unique story that way, throwing random events at them and causing them to react until something good comes out of it.
For the next several years at least, I think that writing prompts for AI that could elicit high-quality, novel concepts will be more difficult than actually writing those concepts. After that, I guess we’ll see.
I don’t KNOW, dammit, Scott! And this is what troubles me! I hate not knowing what may happen. Uncertainty SUCKS.
I think you’re right that it will take some time for AI-generated writing to truly measure up, to be indiscernible from human-created art. But how long? The advances in tech happen frighteningly fast, especially with machine learning, and I feel like we’ve crossed a threshold.
On the other hand…when CGI first debuted I remember actors lost their minds, prophesying that computer-generated “people” would render actors obsolete. So far, so good–CGI human facsimiles still seem vaguely off and “creepy” to most people. But then again, look at where we are with deep fakes, which are becoming terrifyingly convincing. Who can say?
For now I’m going to go eat brownies and try to forget all of this. I’m willing to face reality, but I’m also willing to indulge moments of willful avoidance for my peace of mind. 🙂
Thank you Tiffany for this thoughtful look in the mirror at AI and how it reflects on a writer’s future. It’s been a concern of mine, and not just because AI already copies my abilities with its “errors, biases, or just plain bad or basic writing and storytelling.” 🙂 Writing a novel is a relatively new creative endeavor for me and AI’s intrusion makes me think of tossing in the thesaurus and returning to other creative endeavors still out of AI’s reach. For me it’s all about creating. I’m inspired by those who have found a way to use AI to enhance their creations. Perhaps it’s time for me to learn. It’s not what they do to you, it’s what you do with what they do to you that counts.
I don’t think anything will be out of AI’s reach for long! One of the articles I’ve been reading–maybe the WaPo one I linked to, actually–said that if you do an image search for the artist Edward Hopper, one of the first images to come up is an AI-created phony…!
The thing that scares me most is what AI means for what truth is. Since it iterates exponentially the data that feeds it, enough misinformation will eventually start to be presented as actual information–and tracing the truth back to its root may prove all but impossible at that point. And then facts are totally devalued (instead of just mostly devalued, in some circles, as they are now), and we live in chaos and anarchy, ruled by fear.
Oh, wait…that’s sort of happening.
Feh. I don’t know. Ask me on a different day and I may feel less bleak about the future of humanity. But I tell you what–the one place I do find consistent solace? Is in my own creative efforts, and connecting with others who are pursuing theirs. So that’s where I’m focusing my attention, even as I pivot. Eventually things may get so bad that I’m just going to join those violin players playing on as the Titanic sinks, but for now…we sail on! Thanks for being on the ship with me, friend.
Great article Tiffany. I recently did some testing to see how well a couple of the AI’s wrote (Jasper and ChatGPT). I was surprised at how well they did. I wasn’t knocked off my feet with any astounding words, but the writing was pretty decent. It was an eye opener for me.
Well, that is unpleasant but not unexpected news. 🙁
As I mentioned in another comment, I use it to generate deliberately flat or lackluster passages of writing so that I can use them as “before” examples with craft techniques I’m teaching–but I’m generally a bit surprised by how basically competent it is. I’ve certainly seen similar in manuscripts I’ve worked on.
Thanks for another brick in my wall of anxiety. 😉
I was super hesitant to even check out this stuff but I’m now on OpenAI’s webpage, doing a little exploring. I think it helps fears to face them, and I didn’t have the courage to do that until I read your post. I just wanted to stick my head in the sand, and pretend it won’t affect me. But I think you’re right about waxing our boards now, and turning to paddle for that wave instead of letting it crash over us.
I’m right there with on wanting to ostrich up and avoid these unpleasantries–but I push myself to face the marauding hordes, because if your head is stuck in the sand you’re leaving yourself in a prime position to get your ass kicked. It helps to have a techie husband to help demystify things a little and keep me ahead of the oncoming charge.
I’m glad the post encouraged you to try the program out. Know thine enemy, right? 🙂 And I’m trying to heed those who say maybe it’s a friend–a virtual assistant to do your bidding.
(But most of me goes, “That’s exactly what the machines WANT you to think as they send you to the Matrix!”) 😉
Hmmm. After reading the article and everyone’s comments, I wonder this: do you think publishing will be an industry with a select few people whipping up AI novels, and then sending them off to print? Or would it be us at home telling AI what we want to read and how many pages, and then AI writes it for us to read? Also, those Amazon novels you mentioned… how would we know if they are AI? What pen names would be used?
Good questions. I can envision a lot of different (doomsday) scenarios, including the ones you mention. I definitely see it adding even more titles to the mind-boggling numbers of them already on the market–which means stiffer competition for readers’ eyes, more work to break above the noise. Likely it’ll be as democratic a system as the digital publishing revolution made the publishing industry, which is to say much more so than it used to be, excepting the budget and reach the big pubs may have.
Regarding authorship, according to the WaPo article (the gift link I offered in the post), it sounds like these AI-created stories already on the market are simply using people’s names–made-up or not. As for whether we’ll be able to just tell which are AI-created, or if there will be some disclaimer–I’m betting not. News outlets are already balking at the idea of identifying what is artificial intelligence and what’s not. I’m also foreseeing new legislation being required to govern some of it.
Take all this with a grain of salt–I know literally just about nothing about all this. I’m just conjecturing, and regurgitating some of what I’ve read (kinda like AI, actually). And humans are unpredictable, so what we might do with this new technology is anyone’s guess.
It’s a wild damn world out there, isn’t it? I always found it remarkable to think of all the enormous changes and advances my parents’ and grandparents’ generations saw within their lifetimes, but I’m starting to think ours may be even more staggering.
I have to admit this whole AI thing is one more reason I’m glad I’m an old gal and won’t be around to see much more of the future. It doesn’t, I feel, bode well. So I’m also glad I don’t have children or grandchildren, but I feel sad for those who do and who will have to suffer through it. There will be other new technologies, too, birthed without even common sense and with no end to human hubris.
And right now for writers, there are other things to worry about as well. I read today about a writer who was contacted by a publicity agent about a book he’d discovered by her–only she hadn’t written it. She went to Amazon and found the book, with her name as author and even a bio about her. But she didn’t write the book. No one did. But someone was making money from its sales, and it was affecting her career and reputation. Ugh. Not good!
Girl, at the risk of outing myself as a cranky curmudgeon, I FEEL YOU. I frequently think I’m grateful to be the age I am, grateful I’ve enjoyed what seem in hindsight to be “glory days” of the world and my industry, and yes, grateful not to have children, because I worry what we’re leaving to younger generations.
That said, I’m also counting on them to fix some of this broken mess we’ve created for them. (Sorry about that, kids.) I actually have great hope and optimism and faith in these younger people (AGH, when phrases like this come out of your mouth you are officially in dinosaur territory). From what I see they have more awareness, involvement, and perspective than I remember having at the same ages.
I see a lot of scams like the one you describe. Do you read Victoria Strauss’s Writer Beware feature at SFWA? She is magnificent at staying on top of a lot of these in our industry and warning people about them. They infuriate me especially because writers are so vulnerable in so many ways, and it’s already so hard to make a mark with your writing without someone trying to undermine or cheat you out of it.
Buckle up, though–AI is moving so fast (all tech seems to) that I think you and I will see plenty of effect from it before our time comes. I’ll stand with you screaming into the void all the way down, though. 😉
Now that the simple definition of creativity — finding a way to make something new out of two or more seemingly unrelated concepts or things — is becoming more widely known because of the publicity surrounding AI, I’m hopeful that ordinary people will realize they’ve been doing creative thing all of their lives. I’m also hopeful that everyone will feel empowered to create even more, now that they know it’s just a way of thinking about yourself and not a magic trick. Fingers crossed. That said, the AI invasion is just one more reason I’m grateful not to be a 20-something anymore…
I love that perspective, Claudia. I’m a big believer that creativity is a universal human instinct–and need. I think some people just get the creative impulse battered out of them by criticism or ridicule or dismissiveness or just lack of validation.
And yeah, I hear you–I never thought I’d be so grateful to be middle-aged! 😀
What a fascinating post and comments! Thanks – so much to think on, but for now, I’m sticking with the comment: if you mix all colours you get brown 🙂
Ha! Well, I don’t how this applies to AI, but brown is among my favorite colors…. 😉
Outstanding article. But it doesn’t consider that people need and want community more than ever, and passionate community of fans will sustain writers no matter who publishes them. I think now is the best time ever to be a writer, but as you wrote, the more formulaic a genre is, the easier it will be for AI master it.
Great point, and I hope you’re right. I worry sometimes that technology and social media are changing us in such profound ways that people may not fully realize the need for community–so much of our interaction has become automated. But–as it sounds like you are–I find I am a die-hard optimist at the core, and I hope humanity will find its way through this newest challenge. Through the many of them we face right now. Thanks, Michael, for the comment.
Umm…have you actually READ any fiction produced by AI? As a professional novelist for 30+ years, I toyed with ChatGPT just to see what all the fuss was about. I even asked it to write in the style of my own work. What came out read like a middle-schooler’s summary of the Cliff Notes of a book she hadn’t bothered to read. No dialogue, and no personalities, per se, other than an arbitrary name and a stock character description (“a woman in her thirties”). Some AI fiction examples I’ve found that were produced by others managed to prompt some dialogue so leaden that it makes TOP GUN sound like Shakespeare. Pages of telling-not-showing action crawl by with no suspense because the characters aren’t even cardboard–that would at least require *two* dimensions. And it’s because AI is NOT intelligent: it has no experience of the actual world or even understanding of the cliches it regurgitates from the works of humans it pillages. The whole “threat” of AI to creatives like writers is a snake-oil sale by Silicon Valley to greedy, penny-pinching CEOs who really want to believe that ANYTHING can be automated. Unfortunately, well-meaning people such as you have bought the hype without actually seeing the product, and you spread and amplify the hyperbole, despite the fact that you yourself are a writer. And I think this stems from a deep cynicism not only about the business of publishing and entertainment but also about the quality of many of the most successful *human* writers, as evidenced by your TOP GUN remark. But if you think Hollywood’s latest superhero rehash is bad, just wait until you hear the crap AI shoves in actors’ mouths. And no matter how debased you think the audience’s taste may be, they know when they’re bored and will eventually reject the reheated leftovers even when humans offer them. (See INDIANA JONES, THE FLASH, and the other mega-flops of summer ’23.) Even the WGA isn’t worried writers will be replaced altogether; they’re worried skinflint producers will only hire them for a cheap rewrite to clean up the dreck first draft AI spits out. So please, please, PLEASE stop feeding your readers this hype that wrongly devalues our profession! The AI emperor has no clothes, and we need to expose its nakedness to the public!!!
This is a corrected version of my previous comment.
Hi, Stephen. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It sounds like you’re deeply frustrated and upset by all the talk around AI, and I can relate to that–I think many of us in the creative arts are, for a variety of reasons, and are looking to be as prepared and informed as possible.
I agree that right now, much of what large-language models are churning out would be unpublishable in the current market. Of course, that’s not keeping them from being published, as I mentioned in the post. But the speed of machine learning is astonishing–in the four months since I first posted about generative AI models here, its product has already improved exponentially–enough that many major media companies are relying on AI-generated content already. I also think it’s telling that in the current Hollywood strikes of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA with the major studios, artificial intelligence is a main point of disagreement, with studios wanting to reserve the right to use it “to come up with ideas, write scripts, and even replicate the voices and images of actors.” That’s creeping in pretty notably on the work of writers and actors.
I agree with you that humans bring something transcendent and rich to art that machines may never fully replicate. My contention is whether the industry will decide it needs that ephemeral thing in order to thrive and profit. I suspect not. It seems to me that creatives would be well served to be as aware and engaged as possible on this issue. As I said in the post, I’ve seen firsthand how denial of changing technology hampered those in our business who were left far behind the curve as it startlingly rapidly transformed our industry. Most of what I do is geared toward helping authors create successful, rewarding writing careers, and this is an area where I think it will benefit artists to be informed and flexible about what it might mean for our business and how they can best surf the wave, if it comes. (If it doesn’t, I feel nothing is lost by knowledge and awareness.)
I appreciate your championing of creatives and the creative spirit–and I share it. Thanks for sharing it here.
I don’t use ChatGPT. I tested it out and it invents facts that are false and you can easily with a few prompts convince it of things that aren’t true (with some limits).
Also, if I use it to generate scenes or write for me, then I’m not going to improve at my craft. Like I don’t get stronger from someone else doing exercise. I have to exercise my own brain. If I need examples of something, I look up the actual books by actual writers. I don’t see the benefit of asking ChatGPT. Googling is already pretty fast.
There are also all the ethical questions and issues, but I won’t get into that in this reply.
Good article and some interesting points. Thanks.
I kind of feel that–I use it very minimally, and mostly to help me, for instance, look for bestselling titles told in third-person, say, for when I’m prepping for a new course I’m teaching. You’re right–much of the time it gives me wrong info, so I’m careful to sift through it, but these lists still save me some time and gives me a place to start.
I feel wrong-wrong-wrong about using AI for any kind of content generation–full stop. The closes I come is telling it a topic I’m writing or teaching about, and I ask for an outline. I check that against my own presentation to see if I missed any major areas I’d want to cover.
I’m following in fascination the many lawsuits against the AI companies, especially those related to authors’ intellectual property and how/where large-language models scraped their source material. Expect future posts about this…which amuses and bewilders me, as I am the last person to have my finger on the pulse of technological advances, but this feels so relevant to my field. Thanks for the comment, Melody, and the kind words.
I guess you’re trying to say that young authors shouldn’t try anymore?
I hope that’s not what this post seems to be saying! I’m a staunch advocate for creatives and creating. If an author is pursuing writing professionally, it’s important to go into this pursuit with open eyes and a realistic understanding of the industry and market. It’s key to creating a fulfilling long-term career, and can help us maintain the resilience and fortitude any creative career requires.
AI is changing the game for sure–and it’s too soon to predict exactly how. But the more aware we are, and the sooner, the better we can navigate the waves.
You may be jumping the gun with this article because although AI is able to write it isn’t able to do it well and it may never be able to. Or, at least in our lifetime. The writing that it is doing is derivative and of poor quality. There’s possibly a logical fallacy in assuming that it will one day surpass what humans can do. Think of Elon Musk’s self driving car idea. He said it was two years away from being a reality. Two years later he said it was about eighteen months away. That was about ten years ago and it still hasn’t arrived. That’s because they’ve hit a snag. They have found that the problem wasn’t as solvable as what they thought it would be. Personally, I think AI will just be a tool that writer’s use just like typewriters and word processors were and are but, it will most probably take much, much longer to get the technology up to the point of replacing human writers. So, you don’t need to worry yet, and, you may never need to. I sense that AI is being hyped up in order for AI researchers to secure more funding.
I fervently hope you’re right. 🙂
I’m not sure it can ever outstrip what humans can do relative to originality and voice, but I do think that the market may reach a degree of not caring about that. If formulaic, recycled stories are cheap, I can easily see industries leaning pretty heavily on that easily created mass content–it’s already happening in media, and Hollywood is concerned enough about it that writers and actors conducted a lengthy strike largely over that issue.
There will always be a market for “the real thing,” but perhaps a shrinking one. But as I said–I very much want you to be right about this! And I can’t deny I have a history of Chicken Littling. 🙂 Thanks for the comment.
I’m going to apologize in advance if you know how AI prose generation works, but I liked your blog post, and this is a passionate topic for me. TLDR: I agree with Doug.
Large Language Models all work based on prediction, and this is controlled by parameters. ChatGPT 4 has 1.76 trillion of them, and more common AI writing tools use 10-20 billion. More parameters generally equal better results, but more parameters also mean more memory and more memory means more computing power. This gets expensive very fast.
The AI is really goods at correcting dis sentence because it can scan and easily recognize that “goods” and “dis” aren’t what would be predicted there and make recommendations. But what about generating new prose?
“Jack walked into the bar and sat at the ___” Any reasonably trained AI will come up with a good suggestion for this. One tool suggests “end” 26%, “stool” 25%, “far” 24%, “table” 10%, and then a few others. But we don’t want one word at a time, we want multiple. Suppose it picked “end”, now the model suggests “of” 50%, “.” 26%, “,” 24%. And so on and so on from there. It randomly picks these with influence from a context memory, i.e., we might “tell” the AI that the scene is a tiny bar. In this example, that influences the AI, and “counter” becomes the top-ranked follow-up word at 42%.
But the amount of information it “knows about” is finite, and the more we “guide” what it should write, the more memory we would need. If the AI knows the last 2400 words of a novel you are writing, plus 100 words of info on the characters, setting, etc, and then it generates another 2400-words (chapter 2) of amazing prose (it won’t be because of the randomization described above, but let’s suppose).
But now Chapter 1 is gone, and the AI has absolutely no idea about it anymore. So now, when you generate chapter 3, it has no idea that Bob punched Jack, and so Jack shot him in the knee and stole his wife back in Chapter 1. You would need to keep those facts in the guiding memory, which you could, but now, what about chapter 25?
On its own, the AI will never remember that quote that is fitting for a character to recall from 5 chapters back, weave multiple plot lines together, or remember to reveal some foreshadowing 15 chapters later.
But computers get better all the time! They do, but the sheer computing power needed to keep track of 80,000 words of prose in a way that can weave a good story. Not anytime soon. Authors aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
But what AI can do is take the sentence “The early morning sun shone brightly on the small town.” and turn it into “The golden rays of the early morning sun poured over the small town, painting the buildings and streets in a warm, vibrant light.” with the click of a button. So, if you are a good storyteller, AI can dramatically help your creativity with descriptive prose and sometimes surprise you in a good way (think of the random word selection above). But it’s still up to people to craft the story.
AI is like a carpenter with a nail gun vs a hammer and nails. It’s not going to build the house, but it will make it faster to build. This, unfortunately, affects the supply and demand model, which will hurt new writers in other ways, but I digress.
Thanks, Rob, for your insights. I’ve done quite a bit of reading about AI–especially since this article was first published–and I understand how it works. I don’t mean to sound Chicken Little about it–but we’re already seeing how the technology can be used to generate workmanlike versions of news articles and the like. I don’t imagine AI will ever replace the creativity and uniqueness of which humans are capable–but I do think that there will be markets for the “good enough” work it can produce, many in entertainment fields like publishing and scriptwriting. We’re already seeing acknowledgment of the latter in the fact that the Writers Guild strike held on this as a major sticking point in their negotiations with Hollywood studios–and in that the studios tried hard to overcome it. I think both sides realize that AI will be capable of using its vast dataset of source material to churn out a formulaic screenplay as viable as any other of the formulaic scripts already making up much of the industry might be. I think the same will hold true for publishing–especially where the large-language models have access to reams of source material from which they can cull a workmanlike–if unoriginal–manuscript. But again, plenty of that type of books written by human sell just fine already.
Where I think the finesse (such as it is) of these stories may come in is in the prompts fed into the LLM platforms. “Write an 80K-word romance where the heroine is a video game character and the hero is a real-world player who falls in love with her” might in fact eventually yield a credible (if uninspired) story. Will the market come to rely on these? Maybe parts of it–the way that some news outlets–even higher-profile ones–have already begun to utilize AI-generated articles as a cost-effective approach to content generation. And I do think there will need to be human involvement on some level–at least for now–in an editorial capacity.
I’m no expert admittedly–I’m playing the writer’s “what-if” game of imagining possibilities based on premises. But from what I read, and what I see in my own experimentation with ChatGPT, it seems like some of these outcomes are certainly possibilities, especially based on what what’s happening in the field already. But I would love to be wrong. 🙂 Thanks for your considered comment.
Just a point to clarify (based on my understanding): the writer’s strike was not caused because AI was taking jobs. It was because the WGA and AMPTP didn’t have a contract, and there was also a dispute over residuals with streaming media. The AI piece was only a small part of the total WGA/AMPTP negotiation but was a good talking point and something the media could run with for clicks.
Yes, they wanted to make sure they were protected from AI writing/rewriting and then not being given credit, but I never understood that it was actually happening. I always thought they were just jumping on the “AI is going to take all out jobs” train as well.
I think we agree more than not, I just personally think we are much further away from AI doing small little pieces that humans orchestrate and then use to create something like what is done today to a time when AI can generate a screenplay at the touch of a button. Still, if I had a youngster graduating high school, I wouldn’t encourage him to be a writer. You have to hedge your bets 🙂
Streaming was a big prong, yes, but my understanding of the strike was that the AI part of negotiations was a pretty big sticking point for both sides as well–writers for obvious reasons, and my interpretation was that Hollywood was trying to hold out on that because they use/plan to use the technology for script creation/rewrites in some way. But I’m not deeply versed on the matter–I followed it as a former actor and SAG member, and of course for its possible implications for the publishing industry.
And I hear you on the implications for what certain careers may look like in the future. My repeated takeaway every time I think about or look into this is basically that we don’t know–and it could be seismic or it could become as routine as using smart technology has become for so many of us. And also that progress gonna progress, and all we can do is stay light on our feet and try to adapt. I appreciate your insights about it, and always enjoy discussing the possibilities. And I will continue to wish for things to develop according to your theories, and not my own worst fears. 🙂
Uh no, you can do improv audio as well using recording devices. Storytelling doesn’t just work through symbols on paper or word document files on a computer screen. Also, “change or die” sounds more like it should be told to our governments, not people. Why should we all be held back from being self reliant, making friends, etc just because the government has these discriminatory, racist or otherwise antisocial laws that prohibits anyone from, say, hunting or fishing or even commune founding. Those aren’t allowed without papers, contracts, regulatory licenses and Money. If the most base things in life, including our necessary efforts to survive were not handed down to deep, discouraging and undercut regulatory behavior, AI’s existence wouldn’t really matter. Many of our governments right now are still living in the 1930s depression era, that’s the problem mainly. Hand weaving or “sewing” was made “obsolete” in the 19th century because of the Vagrancy and unnecessary laws regarding Usury back then. Usury, I agree, should be a capital crime but not to the point of decriminalized forgery which is what was done to “the poor” in the olden days. Indigenous peoples were most affected by laws like these for centuries as it took away their traditions i.e Hunting, Fishing, Farming.
Take away the use of guns for hunting and make mass fishing labour illegal then you’ve pretty much solved the environmental stupidity. The only reason hunting is so regulated and in such a ball and chain is because of what rich white sports hunters and fishers did back in the Victorian period with semi automatic rifles. Farming is pinned down the most because there are no usury or intellectual rights to farms or farmer’s imprints.
I personally like AI, I think it’s innovative and fresh and hopefully will replace government run classrooms one day. Schools are the most cruel of Victorian ideas and need to get replaced ASAP as they have been obsolete since the 1950s.
You have to realize that storytelling is a personal matter, not something to become a moneygrab. Money doesn’t mean a thing at the end of the day if you have nobody to lean on. You underestimate the power of human experience and deliberation, why do you think nobody cares about money? Not even the most powerful thinkers on the planet care about money. We talk about UBI and saving the planet and stuff but why are we not talking about giving full liberties to people and cutting out all the excess paper milling and gasoline usage? If full liberties were given back to people then there would be no point in UBI but that is not what people like to talk about.
Oil doesn’t just power cars you know, it also powers your home in the electrical current.