It’s First Wednesday so time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group Post!
Today’s question is: August 7 question – Do you use AI in your writing and if so how? Do you use it for your posts? Incorporate it into your stories? Use it for research? Audio?
I am not a big fan of so-called “artificial intelligence” used in writing or art. The programs we have currently are just not advanced enough to produce anything of quality—and I’m not sure they ever will be. I question whether or not a machine can ever create a manuscript or work of art that will stir human emotions.
They are capable of copying human endeavors quite nicely, but when it comes to actually producing something original, it just can’t be done with our current technology. What I use the AI programs for is research and fine-tuning. I ask the AI (Claude or ChatGPT or SudoWrite) a question like “What sort of technology would be available on a near-future train trip from New York to San Francisco?” and get a detailed and mostly plausible answer that I can then use to brainstorm story ideas or flesh out a story already in progress. Or I will upload a short synopsis of my idea and ask the program to help me add conflict or romance. Usually I will get at least one solid idea from the AI, but lots of time it seems to have no real idea of what we’re trying to do.
I have not tried AI with blog posts. Again, I just don’t feel that an AI-written post is creative enough to have that certain “punch” a blog post needs in order to get hits. One use of AI that I haven’t tried yet but intend to use somewhere is images. You can ask the AI to produce a variety of images of whatever you wish to use in your story or blog post. Of course, you cannot then turn around and sell anything that includes those images, but you can use it to, for example, show your cover artist a rough idea of what you’re looking for.
In short, I don’t believe AI is truly intelligent at this point in our technology. If we ever do create truly sentient software, I’ll be willing to try letting it help me actually create a story or blog post. If it can prove to me that it has a soul of some sort, that is.
