IWSG: What role does AI play in my writing?

It's the first Wednesday of the month, and time for another IWSG post, delving further into a touchy topic: AI.

 

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting!

 

Don't forget you can post your link on the IWSG Facebook page!

 

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!
Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

 

The awesome co-hosts for the August 7 posting of the IWSG are Feather Stone, Kim Lajevardi, Diedre Knight, C. Lee McKenzie, and Sarah - The Faux Fountain Pen!

 

The optional August 7 question is: 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?

 

 

Last month we all discussed writing tools and software, which is a natural lead-in to this discussion of AI in writing, since most of those use some for or another of AI. That led me to check out ProWritingAid, and my initial take on that is here.

 

Grammar checkers, even something like PWA that claims to help with style, are a lot longer on the "artificial" part of AI than on the "intelligence" part, but they have a place among the tools we use to produce clean, tight prose. Ditto letting the machine read your work aloud, if you find that a better way of editing than reading it aloud yourself.

 

When we talk about AI in writing, however, I think we are talking about something a little different--tools that can produce a summary or a blurb (which the author had better edit!). Those same tools can write "stories," though what I've seen so far lacks imagination and empathy, as you might expect from a machine. For me, either of those acts is outside the range of acceptable, for several reasons.

 

First, having AI  "write" a story for you, even if you then edit it, is just wrong. I hope no one among us will go that far. I'd say that's also true about letting AI produce a blog post. (We'll leave aside the problems that the huge power demands of things like ChatGPT and all those image creators are causing, and thus the contribution to global warming caused by people just wanting to have fun seeing the machine make a person with six fingers.)

 

I also won't feed the AI my work. Maybe it'll get pirated anyway--and yes, the use of copyrighted material, without permission or payment, to "train" the AI is piracy--but I don't have to hand it to them on a silver platter.

 

Finally, since I find writing a lot easier than editing, not to mention a lot more fun (yes, even blurbs), I don't see any point in having some machine do the fun part and leaving me with the heavy lifting of editing it into something usable.

 

As for another tempting use of AI, to create cover art, that's another and perhaps even more disturbing issue, with all the problems mentioned above, with a more direct impact on artists trying to make a livelihood.  

 

A final note on using AI for research: it's far too often wrong. Skip the AI-generated  results at the top of the Google search and check for good answers from vetted sources.

 

I guess I have some kind of strong feelings on this :)  Thanks for sticking with me this far! 

 

Writer's report:

The MS of Washed Up With the Tide is now complete, and getting a final look for errors. I currently have one story out on submissions, and a partial draft of a story that had me very excited but is struggling to go anywhere. I'll keep playing with that while I'm out hiking for the next month or so.

 

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2024
 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated. 


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