Sharing my experience using Generative AI for writing.
Does AI scare you?
Why wouldn’t it? Lots of fiction over the years has painted AI as the thing that will end humanity (see the Terminator and Matrix movies). Then, it inevitably raises several ethical and moral questions. Can/will AI steal copyrighted material in what’s created? Will it take away jobs – even those of artists? Will we be competing with AI for our creative identity?
Scary, right? And what’s more, because Artificial Intelligence learns, there are all sorts of concerns that it will learn wrong, poorly, or worse – that it no longer needs humans and so it will act accordingly.
Sci-fi dystopia notwithstanding – the current generation of Generative AI isn’t that smart. What’s more, while it is getting better at things, and becoming a better autonomous creator – it’s still imperfect and needs human interaction to do anything.
As part of one of my work gigs, I’ve employed a couple of Generative AI tools. And to help you understand what that’s like, I thought I would share my experience.
Learn all you can before passing judgment
Before I share my experience, I want to bring up something important that’s not just about this topic, but many others.
It is all too easy to pass judgment.
It doesn’t really matter what the topic is – even with limited, biased, and prejudiced information, people tend to pass judgment with ease.
I do it sometimes. There are certain beliefs I’ve held based on a judgment I made with little to no first-hand and even second-hand knowledge. I’d heard a thing from a person, personal or impersonal, and passed judgment on the topic.
When you recognize this issue for yourself, however, you can make a new choice. Step away from your prior judgment and learn all that you can before forming a new belief, value, or judgment.
Artificial Intelligence – AI – has been around for quite a while. It’s been used by search engines and assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana for some time. Other AI you might be familiar with include Grammarly and ProWritingAid.
The basic idea of an AI is that along the way we humans won’t need to keep adding programming to it because it will learn from experience. It’ll teach itself to a degree, so that we don’t have to constantly be its teacher.
Worst-case scenarios suggest AI eventually won’t need human interaction. That might be true – but for a whole host of reasons I’m not diving into here, that’s not realistically happening for a while. For the foreseeable future, AI will need human input.
Enter Generative AI. Via human input, this AI can do more than just expand its programmed knowledge on its own. It can create original material. This includes numerous forms of art. As the name says – Generative AI generates autonomously.
However, it still requires human input.
Writing with Generative AI
I’ve had a couple of experiences using Generative AI for some writing.
I do feel I should state, before going further on this topic, that I have NOT employed Generative AI to write this or any of my other blog articles, nor any of my fiction.
My first experience with Generative AI came when the entrepreneur I work for asked me to run prompts by ChatGPT to see what it spat out. I did, and it presented some interesting stuff. But it was pedantic and lacking…something.
I used ChatGPT – and later, Claude.ai, for generating content off similar, small prompts. We used this to give us a quote or two to tie to her AI for Creatives podcast to LinkedIn posts she made about it, to come up with a title for an episode or two, and to generate content for some other AI-related posts.
While both ChatGPT and Claude produce some decent stuff, they still lack something. Claude is a bit less pedantic than ChatGPT, but both are almost too structured to feel exactly natural.
This is a part of why Generative AI still needs human guidance. I had to create prompts for it to work from and then edit what it produced to use it.
I’ve also seen Copy.ai and what it can produce, but haven’t employed it myself, yet.
My overall experience with using Generative AI has been that it’s a new tool I and other writers can use to help take an idea and turn it into something more.
Additional, more in-depth Generative AI engagement
The amazing entrepreneur I work for set a task on my plate that gave me a chance to engage with Generative AI much more in-depth.
That aforementioned podcast is, as the name states, about AI for creatives and the impact it will have on various creative industries. This includes writing, graphic arts, fashion, and more. Part of the discussion that this brings up examines how AI can be a tool for good, rather than the destructive force many fear.
To that end, she had an idea. What if we use the material she’s creating on the podcast to create something more? We had some transcripts of episodes (and it just so happens, I’m the producer and editor of that show for her). Additionally, I learned how I could use MS Word to generate transcripts from the rest of the episodes.
With the transcripts, I could write a book expanding on the topics covered. Or I could feed them to a Generative AI with certain prompts and let it write chapters using the episode transcripts. That was the task before me.
Through trial and error, I came up with prompts to give ChatGPT and Claude what they needed to take the transcripts and generate content. It was trial and error because certain prompts got me veritable gobbledygook or rehashed the transcript, rather than generate what I sought from it. But in time, I got what I needed.
Is it done and ready to move on to the next phase? Yes – so long as the next phase is human editing, fact-checking, and adding citations. In its present state, without additional human interaction, it’s not credible, usable material.
Do I feel threatened by AI as a content creator? No. However, AI will change many, many industries.
A tool like any other
Like every new tool presented to the world, no matter its intent, this tool will be abused.
The screwdriver is an incredible, simple tool. It’s meant to add and remove screws from things. Nice and innocuous, right?
Until someone drives a screwdriver through someone else’s chest cavity and into their heart as a murder implement. Now the tool has been abused.
Is the screwdriver evil because it can murder? No, this is about the person using it. And overall, AI is the same.
That means that while most people will use Generative AI and other AI tools for good and with good intent, some won’t. People will abuse this tool, use it to plagiarize, steal, and produce half-assed crap to make a buck writing about a topic worse than any hack might do. Will that be the fault of the tool? No – like the screwdriver, this will be on the person using the tool.
Like guns, cars, and certain other tools, there will need to be safeguards for the use of these. Laws, regulations, and safeguards to watch for, prevent, and punish abuse. From students using AI to do their homework to creators making art by stealing another’s intellectual property, bad actors are out there who will abuse Generative AI tools.
But the tool itself isn’t inherently evil. It’s just a tool. Thus far, I’ve found it useful.
Finally, please don’t just take my word for it. Before you decide that Generative AI is an amazing new and useful tool – or a new and terrifying step towards the downfall of society – check it out for yourself before you pass judgment on it.
Thanks for reading. As I share my creative journey with you, I conclude with this: How are you inspired to be your own creator – whatever form that takes?
Please take a moment to check out the collection of my published works, which can be found here.
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