Software for Writers: the AI Invasion
Last week we looked at software created to help authors find and enhance their talent. This week we’re examining AI software that seems designed to either hinder skill, replace talent, or turn writing into some kind of blood sport for people who would rather not get involved in the dirty business of actually putting pen to paper.
Since the beginning of time blocked writers have been looking for a way to make their craft easier and by the look of the numerous new products hitting the market, many software companies are applying themselves to the potentially lucrative business of replacing artists with machines.
To my mind Jasper was the first autonomous machine author. The software was called Jeeves originally, but they got into a fight with Marvel about using a name Disney had claimed as its own because Iron Man had used the name for his computer butler. Clearly Disney had never come across PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster - where the idea of calling a butler ‘Jeeves’ originated in the first place.
Jasper is very clever, suitably expensive, and often feels like a smart-arse friend. Probably better for articles and non fiction content, many young entrepreneurs swear by it.
AI-Writer is recommended for generating content from as little input as one word and boasts a sub-topic finder tool.
WordAI is good for repurposing and paraphrasing text, Apparently good for tensing, grammar, and ‘AI content spinning’ whatever that is.
These AI programs sell well but probably not specifically to those we might traditionally regard as ‘writers’. My guess is that there are now many ‘word nerds’ out there who know all there is about writing without actually doing any.
I watched a video recently from a young guy explaining how he used AI software for all of his web content, how he worked with his copy writing clients, and generally how he spent all day manipulating words, sales pages, books, and articles, without actually doing any writing at all. Fascinating and bizarre. The new normal.
Honestly there are so many AI writing providers out there at the moment, it’s hard to keep up. They have silly names like Hypotenuse and Stunwriter and Copysmith. Most are concerned with writing marketing copy and SEO and keyword stuffed articles for online content. Soul destroying drivel mostly.
I guess online people need this stuff and there’s no doubt AI makes it easier if you like your writing to be ‘done for you’ and aren’t too fussy about the person-less quality you end up with. Not great for writing books either because Amazon and other online publishers now use machines that can tell whether you wrote your books with AI. They can also reject your book if they suspect you used too much AI to write it.
Some AI programs have a terrible habit of plagiarizing sections from other books. It’s happened to me. I’ve seen entire paragraphs of mine appear in other books with authors claiming it’s all their own work.
Hmm…
Scribbr is an AI detector, using AI, ironically, to detect itself. Problem is it analyzes only short bursts of text. And in English only. Ai-detector and contentscale do the same.
There are also websites that will check your writing for ‘AI-ness’ so that they can change some of your words and sentences around to fool writing software detectors. Some sites also offer to do that for you automatically, as in: change the text, to undo the AI, making it less detectable to AI detectors!
I should mention that all of the above AI programs are expensive. Monthly and annual subscription based mostly, usually with limits on your word usage. Expect to pay $50 to $250 a month for basic writing AI.
All very complicated, programming heavy and seriously, if you spend all that time trying to make AI writing work for you, at the end of the day, you might as well have spent all day writing properly - you know, like making stuff up off the top of your head. Writing stuff that’s real and engaging. Having said that, I’m sure there are many people working in content mills - and people who want to sell content writing - who think AI is a godsend.
A product called Vellum is a book formatting option. I use Amazon, and Draft2Digital for that. For making the text of hardbacks Vellum is probably useful but it’s an expensive one-off option that may not work so well as technology changes. As it often has in the last couple of decades. For example, Amazon and D2D now offer a variety of text formats for free.
ProWritingAid. I bought this for a year but only used it once. I’m sure the programmers mean well and many people do like it but the ‘help’ was so thorough, it made me hate my own writing. Always trying to perfect everything until the text was so bland as to be unreadable. After a while I thought, Why should I write the way a machine tells me is correct when my bestselling books are the ones where I make all my own decisions about grammar, readability, and sense?
You probably already know I recommend Sudowrite for fiction writing. Lots of bells and whistles and always trying hard to be useful. And honestly it is very good at what it’s trying to do.
Replacing authors might be its ultimate goal but my feeling is that AI will always need a guiding human hand. Certain publishers may regard AI as ingenious and entirely better than a real author, but when I said guiding human hand I wasn’t including publishers - or movie producers for that matter.
While professional editors are often referred to with great affection by the authors who rely on them to make them look good, publishers (and movie producers) are often seen as the scourge of their industries. Funny because it’s these same parasites that give themselves the most awards at ceremonies where the writers are not invited!
Looks like in the future we may have award ceremonies for computer nerds who invent the best AI writing robots. I wonder who will be writing the thank you speeches for them.
Keep Writing!
Rob Parnell’s Writing Academy
Since the beginning of time blocked writers have been looking for a way to make their craft easier and by the look of the numerous new products hitting the market, many software companies are applying themselves to the potentially lucrative business of replacing artists with machines.
To my mind Jasper was the first autonomous machine author. The software was called Jeeves originally, but they got into a fight with Marvel about using a name Disney had claimed as its own because Iron Man had used the name for his computer butler. Clearly Disney had never come across PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster - where the idea of calling a butler ‘Jeeves’ originated in the first place.
Jasper is very clever, suitably expensive, and often feels like a smart-arse friend. Probably better for articles and non fiction content, many young entrepreneurs swear by it.
AI-Writer is recommended for generating content from as little input as one word and boasts a sub-topic finder tool.
WordAI is good for repurposing and paraphrasing text, Apparently good for tensing, grammar, and ‘AI content spinning’ whatever that is.
These AI programs sell well but probably not specifically to those we might traditionally regard as ‘writers’. My guess is that there are now many ‘word nerds’ out there who know all there is about writing without actually doing any.
I watched a video recently from a young guy explaining how he used AI software for all of his web content, how he worked with his copy writing clients, and generally how he spent all day manipulating words, sales pages, books, and articles, without actually doing any writing at all. Fascinating and bizarre. The new normal.
Honestly there are so many AI writing providers out there at the moment, it’s hard to keep up. They have silly names like Hypotenuse and Stunwriter and Copysmith. Most are concerned with writing marketing copy and SEO and keyword stuffed articles for online content. Soul destroying drivel mostly.
I guess online people need this stuff and there’s no doubt AI makes it easier if you like your writing to be ‘done for you’ and aren’t too fussy about the person-less quality you end up with. Not great for writing books either because Amazon and other online publishers now use machines that can tell whether you wrote your books with AI. They can also reject your book if they suspect you used too much AI to write it.
Some AI programs have a terrible habit of plagiarizing sections from other books. It’s happened to me. I’ve seen entire paragraphs of mine appear in other books with authors claiming it’s all their own work.
Hmm…
Scribbr is an AI detector, using AI, ironically, to detect itself. Problem is it analyzes only short bursts of text. And in English only. Ai-detector and contentscale do the same.
There are also websites that will check your writing for ‘AI-ness’ so that they can change some of your words and sentences around to fool writing software detectors. Some sites also offer to do that for you automatically, as in: change the text, to undo the AI, making it less detectable to AI detectors!
I should mention that all of the above AI programs are expensive. Monthly and annual subscription based mostly, usually with limits on your word usage. Expect to pay $50 to $250 a month for basic writing AI.
All very complicated, programming heavy and seriously, if you spend all that time trying to make AI writing work for you, at the end of the day, you might as well have spent all day writing properly - you know, like making stuff up off the top of your head. Writing stuff that’s real and engaging. Having said that, I’m sure there are many people working in content mills - and people who want to sell content writing - who think AI is a godsend.
A product called Vellum is a book formatting option. I use Amazon, and Draft2Digital for that. For making the text of hardbacks Vellum is probably useful but it’s an expensive one-off option that may not work so well as technology changes. As it often has in the last couple of decades. For example, Amazon and D2D now offer a variety of text formats for free.
ProWritingAid. I bought this for a year but only used it once. I’m sure the programmers mean well and many people do like it but the ‘help’ was so thorough, it made me hate my own writing. Always trying to perfect everything until the text was so bland as to be unreadable. After a while I thought, Why should I write the way a machine tells me is correct when my bestselling books are the ones where I make all my own decisions about grammar, readability, and sense?
You probably already know I recommend Sudowrite for fiction writing. Lots of bells and whistles and always trying hard to be useful. And honestly it is very good at what it’s trying to do.
Replacing authors might be its ultimate goal but my feeling is that AI will always need a guiding human hand. Certain publishers may regard AI as ingenious and entirely better than a real author, but when I said guiding human hand I wasn’t including publishers - or movie producers for that matter.
While professional editors are often referred to with great affection by the authors who rely on them to make them look good, publishers (and movie producers) are often seen as the scourge of their industries. Funny because it’s these same parasites that give themselves the most awards at ceremonies where the writers are not invited!
Looks like in the future we may have award ceremonies for computer nerds who invent the best AI writing robots. I wonder who will be writing the thank you speeches for them.
Keep Writing!
Rob Parnell’s Writing Academy
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