Artificial Intelligence, Writing, and Editing (Part 4): AI Writing Copilots

AI has really come into the writing mainstream over the last two years, causing great excitement and anxiety. Here at CDWC, we are following these developments with great interest. We have already written about AI and editing here, here, and here. Today we’ll explore how AI tools are impacting the writing process, and what this means for writers.

AI Writing Copilots

There are now many AI tools that help writers: SudoWrite, Jasper.ai, Lex, Laika, ChatGPT, and GPT-3. Many of these tools are still in the beta testing phase (we’re still waiting in line for Lex), but they have already impacted the zeitgeist. The benefits are obvious. The AI copilot allows writers to focus on the big picture while it does the sentence-by-sentence and phrase-by-phrase grunt work. It’s like having an overly enthusiastic intern writing your first draft for you.

How are these AI tools used? A recent WIRED article concluded that AI tools most commonly help with writer’s block. Writers also use AI tools for summarizing and early-draft editorial commentary. These are still early days. We think that AI will eventually impact every step of the writing process: planning, pre-writing, drafting, and revision. But for now AI copilots mainly help with pre-writing and drafting.

AI Copilots and Writer’s Block

We’ve written about the struggle against writer’s block extensively, so we are very interested in whether AI tools are potential game-changer. So let’s dig in a bit!

Current AI copilots are good at taking in a large chunk of text as input and generating plausible continuations. Such continuations can help us power through a tedious transition, or they may stir up some ideas, or it may generate some passable text that we as human writers can improve on.

Less time typing means more time for strategic thinking.

Tedious transitions are big energy wasters, and since our writing energy is mostly limited, it makes sense to use AI to help us stay in the zone. This somewhat resembles the advice to change the medium of writing as a way to reframe around a blockage. In a sense, there isn’t a big difference between switching from laptop to notebook and switching from a word processor to your AI assistant. Similarly, prompting your AI assistant is not that different from doodling, or externally processing a sticking point. Also, we all know that starting with bad or mediocre text is sometimes better than not starting at all. If AI helps you generate such text, more power to you!

Discernment

As with all uses of AI, it’s important to be discerning. As writers, we should get clear on our tendencies around writer’s block and where we need help. Perhaps you as a blocked writer only need a couple of sentences as a nudge. Perhaps you need a paragraph or two to get you to reflect more on the general direction of your thinking (as parsed by an attentive AI). We should also be clear on what the AI copilot’s capacities and sensibilities are. As it stands, AI copilots produce fairly middling text: competent but not remarkable. They excel in reading what you’ve written and engaging with the content, though not the intention behind the writing.

A lot depends on the specific AI assistant you are using. Stay tuned for a more in-depth post on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the systems.

AI Copilots and Pre-Writing Strategies

AI copilots can also be used before you write anything. Some of them (e.g., ChatGPT) are remarkably good at writing decent text based on natural-language prompts. This is excellent fodder for brainstorming. We’ve already written about draft -1 and draft 0 as tools for writers to slip into writing when it feels difficult or impossible. There we considered using image generation AI as a way of getting the creative juices flowing. We consider AI writing copilots as part of that toolkit.

Another note on discernment: we think that a writer’s responsibility is to be (relatively) clear on their intention with a piece of writing. As of today, the intention behind language remains the exclusive purview of human intelligence. We shouldn’t give it away to the AI. As of today, it’s not possible anyway, and all indications point to the mechanization of the meaning behind writing being quite far off, if it ever arrives.

Don’t let the AI copilot disrupt your intention. If all is going well, you’re in a creative dance with a remarkable piece of technology. Lead that creative dance! AI copilots, without clear intention guiding their output, will tend towards the most generic text possible. (We are working on a future post dedicated to the details of why this is.) And we don’t necessarily want that!

AI Copilots and Editing

As things currently stand, AI copilots aren’t great with large-scale text structure: plot lines, argument outlines, asides, the subtler aspects of sequencing and repetition. So we editors are safe, for now—developmental editors in particular. But if you think of an AI copilot as a fresh computational pair of eyes on your text, with all its limitations and different sensibility, you might have great success in the early stages of brainstorming and planning a piece of writing. Getting this right will take experimentation. Developing “feel” for what the AI can help with is an extended process. Once again, there’s no substitute for clear intention and discernment, and the knowledge of your writing goals and tendencies.

An AI editor has no ego in the game, nor does it understand that you have your ego in the game! in a way, it can be radically honest with you, and its feedback may be easier to take in. The writer-editor relationship is a delicate thing that requires care; it can be greatly beneficial, but only if both parties are clear about their intentions. An AI editor doesn’t have the social graces of human editor, but for some types of editing that’s not a problem.

Once again, keep your wits about you. AI systems have many sneaky biases. They are also very good at seeming confident even if the have failed to grasp the basics. Experience and experimentation are essential if you are to lead in the dance. Good luck with it!