AI is here, and it’s taking the world by storm. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are two of the most advanced AI services that anyone can use for free right now. Experts predict that the current AI tools available will completely flip the world economy on its head in less than 3 years. But where does this leave those of us who love to read and write? Will bibliophiles suffer from an explosion of low-quality ChatGPT books? Will writers seriously let AI write the entirety of their dream novels? Will authors who refuse to use AI be left behind?
It’s impossible to predict where the book publishing industry will be three years from now. For now, authors have already embraced the use of AI in their work. Bestselling authors have even used AI-created illustrations on their book covers. One of my mentors, Joanna Penn was an industry leader on this AI trend, predicting how it would disrupt the market 4 years in advance.
-Image from Forbes
While you will be heavily judged for publishing a fully AI-generated book, there isn’t a problem with using AI in a more ethical way. Those who copy and paste without editing, proofing or fact-checking are creating substandard content. Furthermore, they miss out on including a necessary dose of humanity in their writing.
But can a writer use AI ethically? Yes, it’s absolutely possible to do so.
Here are several ethical ways for authors, writers, and creatives to use AI in their work.
How to Use AI Tools Ethically as a Writer or Creative
Improving your Prose
I admit that I’m a sucker for some well written prose. But poetic prose isn’t easy to put together for everyone. This is where AI can be a useful tool. Language models like Chat GPT have somewhere over 15million words in its vocabulary, and that’s just English. It can also utilize a number of writing styles in its output. The best way to improve your prose with something like Chat GPT, is to give it a snippet or paragraph of your own work that you want to enhance. Ask the AI to improve your prose, and give it any context that’s relevant to the scene, characters or subject.
The AI should give you back a vastly improved version of your own work. But wait! I’m not saying you should just copy and paste the AI’s version and drop it right into your manuscript. I would still tweak the passage a little more to ensure your own personal voice is in the piece of writing. Because one thing the AI can’t do is mimic your own unique quirks. Your work is a representation of you, so take pride in it.
Naming Things
How many times have you needed to introduce a new character, city name or group name, but you can’t think of anything that sounds right? AI is the perfect way to get a list of name ideas, tailored to your work.
Ask the AI to give you a list of name ideas, making sure to include any relevant context that fits your project. For example, if you’re writing a Space Opera and you need an organization name themed around the names of stars, you could ask ChatGPT:
“Please give me a list of organization names for my Space Opera universe. I need the names to be themed around popular stars and systems. The name of the fictional planet where the organization is based is called Plantopia.“
As I said earlier, I still encourage you to add your own unique flare to these names. You can use the AI’s ideas to spark your imagination and still come up with your own version of the name.
Help With Worldbuilding
Similar to getting ideas for names, you can also use ChatGPT or Bard to help you develop your worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is essentially the bible of your story. It is the lexicon, the wiki, and the main reference point. A good piece of worldbuilding includes the history of your world, the backstory of your characters, the technology in your world, philosophies, and various other aspects.
Now obviously it’s a big ask to get AI to put together your entire wordbuilding, but you can certainly use it as a time-saving tool.
The majority of your worldbuilding is for you to know, and not necessarily the reader. This means that you can indeed ask the AI to do large chunks of your worldbuilding for you, by just feeding it the essential details that are key to your story. You can then save the worldbuilding entries given to you by the AI and tweak them where needed. Now you have the perfect reference points for your characters and plot.
Remember, worldbuilding is the parts of your story that readers wont see. And therefore you can copy and paste as much as you want from the AI. Just know that when you reference these worldbuilding entries in your manuscript, that’s when you need to get creative. Because copy and pasting chunks of worldbuilding doesn’t make for an enjoyable read.
You can use AI as a research tool
For this part, I recommend using the Bing version of GPT, or just use Google’s Bard. That’s because both of these systems can reference up-to-date content on the internet.
Have you ever needed to fact check certain subjects in your work? AI is making this a 1000x easier to do now. No longer do you have to scan dozens of websites to ensure you’re fully clued in on a subject when writing about it. Now, you can simply ask the AI any research queries you might have.
But please understand that you shouldn’t take the AI’s answer as 100% fact. You still need to fact check the AI’s answers if you want to be accurate. This is especially important if you’re working on a piece of nonfiction.
Translation
In actual fact, there are already many translation tools that can help you out. But what’s great about ChatGPT and Bard, is that the AI can also explain the nuances of the translation to you. On top of this, it can give you a number of ways to say the same thing in the intended language.
As with everything, I still recommend fact-checking and cross-referencing what the AI gives you here. And after all, there is no better validation than someone who speaks the native tongue. See if you can find someone on a forum (or social media platform) to verify that your translated text is accurate.
AI Editing Services Are Super Ethical
AI is a godsend for indie publishers who need their work edited. Now, I would still advise all writers to run their work by an actual human before publishing it. This could be in the form of developmental editing, or line editing. But before you even prepare your work for a human editor, you now have the ability to run your work through a number of AI tools that will help you get your work in the best shape possible before human editing.
To get access to the best kind of editing, I recommend some AI tools other than just ChatGPT and Bard. Here are a couple.
Grammarly
Grammarly’s AI system combines machine learning with a variety of natural language processing approaches to offer in-depth text editing services. Their goal is to help you express yourself in the best way possible. But their service may be better suited for letters, blogs, emails and nonfiction.
ProWritingAid
ProWritingAid pretty much specializes in long-form writing projects. This makes it perfect for both nonfiction and fiction authors. When using ProWritingAid, you can even select the style of writing that you’re working on from a dropdown menu, and the tool will then tailor all of its editing advice to that specific style. They have a free trial that let’s you try the service out for yourself, so why not give it a try?
As long as the work you feed these AI editors is from your own mind, then these tools are totally ethical. You’re not asking the AI to do your homework for you, instead, you’re giving your work a much needed edit before giving it to a human. And all writers need to get into the habit of editing their work. It’s part of writing, period.
Bonus Usage: Marketing
Here’s a bonus usage case for writers. Most writers that I know despise the marketing aspect of their writing business. Writers tend to want to focus on creating. The business side of the business means interacting with others, and talking about our work as if we’re narcissistic. Nobody loves doing this.
Thankfully, you can almost fully automate your marketing process with AI. You can ask it to create a 30 day social media content calendar for you. Giving it enough information about your work for it to come up with effective posts.
Another usage case is using the AI to draft your synopsis, book descriptions, back cover text, newsletters and much more! Draft, not write.
As always, I suggest that you edit anything the AI gives you and add your own voice to it. But AI is a powerful tool for marketing. Have fun!
In Summary, Writers Can Use AI as a Writing Assistant that Saves Time on Tedious Tasks
At this point, no one can ignore the use of AI in their industry. Its something that will be used in almost every industry moving forward. Any writers choosing not to use AI, will be left behind. And that’s because competing writers can use artificial intelligence to effectively save time and be more efficient with their business.
The ones who will lose the most, are the ones that try to use AI tools as a way to get rich. These are the ones that will over-saturate the market and turn people off in the long run.
Writers who understand that THEY themselves are the real asset, and merely use the AI as a way to save time, are the ones that will outlast everyone else. Remember, nobody can tell your story better than you can, not even AI. But artificial intelligence can be a damn good assistant that helps you get the job done at a faster rate.
Image credits
- Forbes
- Judit Peter
- Tara Winstead
- Andrew Neel
