AI for writers: friend or foe?

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has grown immensely in recent years and whilst it is scary and daunting, for writers AI can be a useful tool – to some extent.

This week I attended a workshop for my degree that was about artificial intelligence. As creatives, it can be a daunting concept because of the power AI holds and the potential that is yet to be unlocked.

My sister, who is a translator, has also been talking about AI recently because there's the worry that it will ultimately take over creative jobs – like translators and writers – leaving people without work.

However, after attending the uni workshop, AI seems much less scary than it did for me before despite me receiving an email about AI and whether it's a friend or foe straight after the workshop – a coincidence I think not. But whilst talking to my fellow students and tutors, I learnt a lot about AI as a writer and how it can be used as a tool and an assistant.

So, I thought I'd share with you all the takeaways from the workshop, AI: friend or foe?

I want to begin by defining what artificial intelligence is. It's something that has been predicted in multiple science fiction novels over the years but it is fast becoming a huge part of modern society.

AI can be defined as:

"The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages."

In other words, AI is a technology that mimics human thinking and behaviour. An example would be Google Translate which uses an artificial neural network, or Grammarly which highlights spelling/punctuation/grammar errors in texts.

However, AI isn't always correct because it is still being developed and will continuously be developed. In that regard, AI is not creative itself. It is dependent on the input from its developers until it learns its code to become independent and is therefore re-creative.

And whilst there are drawbacks to AI, the workshop I attended highlighted how it can be a tool.

Benefits of AI as a writer

AI isn't a writer and it isn't a storyteller. But it can help writers and storytellers. For example, I use Grammarly for my journalism to have an extra hand in proofreading my work. But when it comes to creative writing, AI can also be utilised.

During my workshop, we used Copilot (Microsoft's AI program) to generate a story idea. It produced eight science-fiction-based ideas but the premise we chose to use was as follows:

"Genetic engineering has become commonplace, allowing people to modify their bodies with enhancements. But a group of biohackers rebels against the corporate-controlled enhancements, advocating for organic purity. As tensions rise, a biohacker journalist investigates the truth behind the corporation's motives."

In this instance, AI can be incredibly useful if you're suffering from writer's block. As a creative writer, writer's block is not uncommon and sometimes you just need that extra boost of creativity from an external source to help.

AI can be that source.

Artificial Intelligence shouldn't be used to write stories but it can accelerate your creativity. In the workshop, once we had the basic idea we all got to work on fleshing out the story. The results were all based on the same premise but were all completely different; I must say, I'm quite pleased with the plot I came up with.

When we had each developed more of the story, Copilot then created other aspects of the story for us, such as the worldbuilding and key themes for the story. The themes it suggested were expressed as interrogatives, so for example, "Identity: What defines us – our genes or our augmentation?"

As a writer, it was interesting to think about themes as questions that need to be answered rather than one-word ideas. It allows you to think more deeply about what the core lesson is.

Also, after the workshop, I experimented with Copilot and asked it to generate some character names. Coming up with names for characters, locations, pets etc, can be difficult and there are multiple ways to brainstorm ideas and AI is one of them.

Character names generated by Copilot when asked by WriteWatchWork

Therefore, artificial intelligence is a tool writers can use to:

• Generate ideas to help overcome writer's block

• Help improve writing skills and avoid grammatical mistakes

• Brainstorm ideas for names of characters, places, pets, artefacts

• Support critical thinking skills by challenging your key points

• Accelerate your creativity

However, of course, there are negatives to Artificial Intelligence.

Drawbacks of AI as a writer

Depending on what capacity you're using AI for, there will be different drawbacks. However, looking from a writer's perspective, there are specific negatives. Firstly, AI does have the power to write a story, a poem or an article if you tell it to.

But what it will produce will be an amalgamation of already published content. It will also lack the human touch and the writer's personality. As I mentioned above, in the workshop I attended, whilst I and my fellow students were all given the same premise, we all produced something different.

That supports the idea that you can't copyright an idea but you can copyright the execution. For instance, romance novels tend to follow the overarching story of a boy meets a girl, they fall in love, something bad happens, they break up, and spend time apart but get back together. However, each romance novel tells that story differently because it's the author's interpretation.

Writing produced by humans is much more effective than that of a computer.

Another drawback of AI that was evident in the workshop was the overwhelming quantity of creative stimuli.

Artificial Intelligence can develop ideas and themes and provide you with suggestions. But the rate at which it does this can be overwhelming because you are suddenly confronted with a whole bunch of potential ideas you can use.

As a result, it can fry your brain and make you less productive because it could be hard to choose. Writers need to have the skill of filtering and focusing on what is significant when using AI; creativity and expansion are important but focusing is more so.

In conclusion, as a writer, AI can be both friend and foe. I would say I am leaning more towards it being a friend with the knowledge that we have to be aware and know how to use AI in the best way for us but also know when to stop.

What do you think?

Until next time...