Generally speaking on AI as it pertains to writing, I feel like we just started talking about this maybe a year and a half ago. I can remember the mod team discussing the necessity of creating an AI section of the forum, which appears to have been in mid 2023, so that sounds about right. Before that, nada. But within a few weeks, it sprouted like weeds. And the tone of the collective conversation has very quickly evolved from a hell-to-the-no to a well-I'm-not-sure to hey-there-might-be-some-good-applications-here. Which tells me that the publishers trying to fight it and the artists clutching their pearls about the violation of their precious craft will be all-in in the not too distant future. The publishers absolutely will. Money talks so you can take that one to the bank. They don't care. There hasn't be an industry in the history of the universe that hasn't chosen to mass produce a cheaper product that will sell as well as the more expensive original when presented the opportunity. Does anyone really think the public will throw up their hands and boycott a substandard product when an alternative becomes harder and harder to fine. Moreover, will a publishing willfully go bankrupt in an aggressive market by spending dramatically more in operating costs? Have either of those things ever happened once in history in general or in the arts in particular? I don't like it but the writing on the wall appears to flashing in neon pink.
Well, the saving grace is that with self-publishing now firmly established, it becomes easier for everyone to publish their own substandard product. Which means to get any traction as an olde-style writer, you're going to have to be better. With thousands of books about too-handsome, fit, multi-lingual heroes out there, it's going to be even harder for writers to stand out. Maybe it'll even improve the quality of the works that do make it.
Very true to a certain extent. Leveling effects are good. And there's nothing like a good plague to kill off the weaker members of the species to preserve posterity. But then you get the opposite effect where mediocrity becomes so pervasive it transcends its own shittiness, lowering the standards for producer and consumer alike. Not the worst thing, I suppose. You take what you can get.
I have been using AI mainly for various things I'm writing my first long-term series that is set in a timeline that is Iron Age for the first two books and the rest are modern day. I am also trying not to be a perfectionist so using AI for prompts on my series has helped me develop it to the next level. An author I read J.F. Penn (Joanna Penn) uses A.I. for the same thing in writing her novels and nonfiction books as well. She has a whole series of nonfiction books to become an author. A.I. is Helpful to me in many ways.
I do a little bit of commercial copywriting from time to time, where bespoke ‘AI assistants’ are now gaining prominence. By feeding them your unique rules—your brand guidelines, tone of voice, style guides etc—they can produce copy that feels less generic. This approach works reasonably well from a commercial perspective, as many organisations prioritise quantity of content over quality. But, for me, it somewhat diminishes the enjoyment of writing. Makes it feel more like programming.
I can see how that would be, and I don't begrudge anyone following work guidelines. Today, it occurs to me - and please don't take offense - it may even be a case of appropriateness following evolution. By some studies, such as a recent AWS survey, the Internet's text content is already about half AI generated. AI feeds on the Internet. As humans spiral through ever increasing depths of illiteracy, the Internet will also become increasingly read by AI, less read by humans. AI isn't deliberately replacing writers. It's just recognizing the market and building its readership!
It's been helpful on lore building for my book series and expanding it into spin offs from the original 8 books I am writing.
Just as consumers during the Prohibition developed a taste for bad liquor, so the reading and media consuming public are getting used to bad content. While AI is a tool like all tools before it will disrupt the creative status quo, the difference is that it is capable of producing a 'finished' product based on prompts and learning models. And like all technologies before it, we can't really say where AI will lead to.
I have a scene where my characters visit KB Toys. Its no longer around, but I remember going to KB Toys growing up. Only thing is, I dont remember what color shirts the staff wore. And when I googled, it kept givng me a bunch of random colors. Maybe they DID cycle through the rainbow, idk. but it never told me that. So i asked ChatGPT what color shirts did employees wear, and it gave me a timeline of the uniforms employees wore in the decade i was writing in. and THEN i was able to do my own research based on those results. For the same story, I needed an early version of a portable DVD player. googling, it just kept giving me new ones and brands that didnt exist in the timeline i was writing in. So i asked Chat, and it gave me a list of portable DVD players through the 90s. Then i was able to do my own googling. (i never trust answers from ChatGPT, but use it as a stepping stone)
This is where I'm at. Some of the pushback is that you still have to research even after GPT gives you what could be an answer, so why not just research the first time around? Pretty much for the reason you outlined, Google is near useless these days. I've been able to spitball with the chatbot about a million topics at my leisure, then spend a fraction of the time confirming only what is needed. I can't count the plot holes I've been able to plug by going back and forth. It's even caught some before they began, which was much needed when writing for specific time periods going back a decade or two.
for some reason, i remembered yellow shirts. and blue shirts... though I might be getting Toys R Us mixed up (all toy stores are the same when you're a kid )
KB was down the street from me but Toys R Us was 40 minutes away. I want to say KB closed before I was old enough to drive. Maybe 1993 or so?
That was just our local store. I was able to walk there. They were the only place in my town to buy video games back in the early Nintendo and Sega years.
Well, I have to admit I see a possible use for AI in my workflow - but I could quit any time I want. I like to keep story notes in Devonthink. Certain notes, like location descriptions, are more or less constant through the span of the story. I like to transclude those static notes into the story beats where they fit. If a note is so big it would be messy to transclude, Devonthink allows a secondary text document for each thing in the database. That secondary file is called an Annotation. I think DT4 will create an AI summary in the Annotation of a document. Instead of transcluding the full document, I could just transclude a summary from the Annotation. It would be an AI generated summary of my notes that nobody else will see. That would be ok, I think. I could also write my own summaries, but if an AI overlord wrote them for me, I guess I wouldn't complain. Much.
