How (NOT) To Use Writing AI

#ChatGPT #writingadvice

Write a terrible sentence, click “show don’t tell”, and great prose comes out -- is this CHEATING? Programs like ChatGPT and SudoWrite can enable you to produce work above your writing skill level. You can write whole novels with these engines. How should writers contend with this new technology? On the one hand, it’s a tool that produces great results -- why not use it? On the other hand, you’re not getting better at writing -- that’s a problem, right? In my opinion there’s a way to use this productively for writers in certain situations. But at the same time, it should be approached with caution.

-- MORE VIDEOS --

Support the channel on Patreon:

Read my comic Minor Champion!

Follow me on Twitter!

Business email:

0:00 - the question
1:06 - argument for AI
1:40 - storytime + suggested method
3:19 - who should use this method?
4:41 - who should NOT use this method?
5:44 - who should embrace AI?

[sweetgreenlettuce]

I think you make a great point schnee, using AI as a learning tool is totally valid imo. I think for me the big problem comes from the potential automation of creativity. Especially as an artist, the reason I feel threatened by AI is because creativity has become a commodity. Attaching monitory value to content means adding another barrier to reaching an audience and unnecessary competition. It doesn't necessarily matter if a machine makes your car or does your taxes. Efficiency and accuracy is really important in those areas. But if a machine painted all the art in the museum, wrote and performed all the songs on the radio, and wrote all the bestselling books, that would be very sad for humanity. I think that's the heart of why so many of us get the ick from AI.

[jadegecko]

What stands out to me about AI is that one of the imperatives in writing is to avoid cliche. You don't want your prose to be tedious or predictable, because then your reader tunes out. But since AI aggregates and learns from the majority of what it reads, you'd basically have a cliche-regurgitating robot.
And forget about writing dialogue - to write dialogue well, you've got to understand the individual characters, their motivations, and their emotions, and their personal idiosyncracies and verbal tics. How do you prime an AI to even do that? You'd have to teach the AI who your characters were first, and any effort going into that might as well go into writing the dialogue itself.

[HeroDestrin]

I have about 3 sentences written by AI in my entire 430 page novel. The reason: I had a three day writer's block spell that I was determined to do away with. I slapped ChatGPT in the face with the last few pages and asked it to give me the next few sentences. It did, and it allowed me to move on.
I'm probably going to rewrite those three sentences too, once I polish up the rough draft.
The moral: use AI all over your rough draft if it can get that rough thing done. But then, when you polish it up, don't keep ANY of the AI sentences, because they were just a stepping stone to leap over writer's block. That's my idea of how AI should be used at least. And never more than a sentence or two.

[resolutionblaze]

I think there's a concerning amount of AI developers who are attempting to make art in general obsolete through AI.

When you picture the ideal future, you think of a world where AI takes care of the menial work, the labor, the rough parts of society that nobody wants to do. But today what are we seeing? AI isn't being used in that manner, its being used to attempt to supplement the arts. The part of humanity that indulges in creativity, that we were ideally meant to sink our time into in a fully-automated future, is in itself being automated.

Call me a conspiracy nut but it feels very targeted. Because for all the applications of AI they are really trying to push AI into supplementing every artistic genre and medium possible.

[simplyepic]

In 3D art there's a particular use for AI art that I think it not only acceptable, but a good idea in many cases. This use case is using AI to generate textures for background assets.

Before AI art came about there was a method for making background assets that a 3D artist named Ian Hubert popularized. It was essentially just taking random photographs of real stuff, slapping the image on an object, and placing it way in the background where nobody would ever notice that it was low quality. By doing this he could create huge, realistic images without wasting time on the parts that nobody really cares about. By doing this he was able to make an entire half hour short film all by himself that looks like it could have been made by an entire professional filmmaking and vfx team.

The principle of his method is that you should spend as little time on things nobody cares about as possible. He sourced his images from random photographs because it was quick and easy. You can easily do the same thing with AI, and frankly I would encourage artists to use AI art generators in such a way. There's nothing wrong with meticulously perfecting every asset in your scene, but if you're just looking to have quick backgrounds that look good, use AI. It'll give you a lot more time to focus on the parts you and others care about.

[mio]

You changed my mind about Writing AI. My first reflex was to reject it, but now I see it for what it is: a tool that could help my writing. Like I could definitely have used the 'show don't tell' thing when I first started...

[four_runner]

Schnee, there isnt enough praise in the world to describe that entails for a writer, i have watched alot of your content. Including how Arcane writes men and so on. The facts remain the same. I enjoy your content and agree full heartly. Theres a great phrase my dad used to say to me when i was young. "The hardship creates the person, easy times are not the easy times." And i strive to do this as a writer starting out as a hobby to something akin to a career choice if what i want isnt what i truly want.

[obara]

I'm someone who studied illustration, writing for film, and currently in yr 3 of 4 in animation, so you can imagine how passionate I am on this topic and feel, for lack of a better phrase, under attack from all angles with how rapidly AI is advancing.

I may be competent with math but I know nothing of computers. That said, my biggest grip is when people say that the AI learns just like a human because we all get inspired from external reference. Yes, while humans use reference, we can not just copy wholesale to get the same level of skill.

Even if an amateur spent 15 hours trying to recreate the mona lisa with multiple references, they still wouldn't have the skill to recreate something even 40% as good.

Being neurodivergent, one thing that has helped me slowly chip away at my perfectionism in regards to art is approaching art like engineering, and I'd like to thank my dad for that. Engineering, as far as my father says, is all about problem solving, and always accounting for error. You expect and look forward to the bumps in the road, and the things you need to know to scrap the whole project and build it from the ground up as solid and correct as you can possibly make it.

Most people, even artists, see art as instant gratification. We've all been there when we beat ourselves up or maybe even cry because we can't get something to look like, read like or sound like what it did in our heads. AI is the quick fix to that instant gratification. But it is giving up.

There are little quirks, tricks, and secrets in craft that you will only find from failing faster. From learning how those you admire did what they did, and infusing it with your own experience and limits. It's all about problem solving and learning.

If the creative arts are problem solving skills combined with self expression, AI is burning the question sheet altogether and pulling something from google to give as the answer.

Idk if that all made sense, lol.

[siennasobott]

I love how you propose a balanced point of view on the topic as well as including your own experiences. I think AI should definitely be used to aid as a tool but never to over take your creativity and writing, and the method you proposed to learn from AI is fantastic. Just keep up the awesome work man, love the places you go to as they seem so interesting!!

[SleNtRIP]

GEEZ! 6:41 looks like an amazing view.

Also, Louis L'amour was wonderful! Wrote my favorite book, To the Far Blue Mountains. He was such a wise man, with so much of it scattered throughout his books!

[ceejay]

I think a different way to look at this is that it won't necessarily make you "worse" at writing but can allow you to focus on other aspects of writing. We can only learn so much in our lifetimes. But even better than that, writing can now SCALE much better than ever before and it should be easier to demonstrate more direct ROI (meaning it's easier to justify larger writing budgets), especially as these tools get better and we get more use-cases. I'm talking in optimal hypotheticals though.

[dameanvil]

00:00 🤖 The video discusses using AI tools, like ChatGPT and SudoWrite, to improve writing efficiency and quality.
00:29 ⚖️ The main argument against using AI in writing is the concern that it may be considered cheating.
01:13 📚 The efficiency of using AI as a writing tool is compared to using a calculator for mathematical calculations.
02:36 📚 Using AI tools is encouraged, but it's important to also use them as a learning tool to improve writing skills.
03:19 ⚠️ Relying solely on AI without working on improving one's writing skills may indicate a lack of seriousness and discipline in writing.
05:26 🖊️ Using AI may besuitable for writers focused on specific genres or niches where prose quality is not a primary concern.
06:52 📖 Established writers with a dedicated audience may benefit from using AI to enhance their prose without a need for significant improvement.
08:18 👥 Engaging with the audience's perspectives on using AI in writing is encouraged, especially in the context of broader discussions on AI in various fields.

[chad_eowyn]

I am studying AI at university right now and I love your video. I think you captured the main idea of AI - a tool that assists you and can potentially help you learn. There is no shame in using AI tools as long as you do so attentively. You should never use it as a replacement for your own efforts.

Many people - who are not well-informed about AI - believe this technology is the great savior that will do every task for them in the future. This is not how AI is intended. Unfortunately, it is easy to misuse it - as we know from the AI art debate - and many mistakes are made in the data collection process.

At the moment, AI can only reproduce and combine data it has learned on but is not creative. It cannot express emotions and experiences like humans do and probably never will. Although it is unclear what the future might bring, human artists and writers will never be obsolete. Every piece of art has its story and contains a part of the artist itself and this is what makes (human) art so special.

[rrr-mikv]

As someone who works with AI, pretty much everything you listed from around 3:50 *can* be done. AIs are at their heart pattern recognition (and reproduction) machines. Anything that can be abstracted as some kind of “pattern, ” be it style, voice, foreshadowing and payoff… and AI *can* be trained to do that.

The one thing AI cannot do, and will *never* be able to do without a massive paradigm shift in the fundamental technology, is innovate. Everything it knows comes from data. It can learn the patterns we humans make, but it can’t yet meaningfully make anything truly original.

[Alza.art]

It’s the same with art too, right? I doubt this is a revelation to most people, but the people that do AI art, hate art. They fuckin despise art and artists, which is why so many AI art users go off on hate tangents about how us artists are gunna be replaced. It’s stupid, it really is, because if you hate art that much, than you shouldn’t be doing it, AI art is just allowing people who hate art, the ability to do art.

[jowiemonster]

hello, from Suriname . i hope you liked your stay and i really like your video essays about writing.
i'm trying to write a short story but was stuck on a point in the story and your tips really helped.

[phtown]

I've done a bit of technical writing, and I think AI writing tools are probably going to catch on in a big way there. It's essentially the same as the example you gave with the submarine thrillers--the only thing the prose has to do is communicate clearly. I've put in a lot of work over the years learning to write clearly and directly about complex technical topics, but I didn't do that out of love of the craft. It's hard to see why I wouldn't have skipped that and gone straight for the results if the tools to do so had been available to me.

[tranof]

This was a phenomenal take on the subject - as an artist, I'm still wrapping my head around even how to think about AI Art, and a lot of your mindset on this fits that as well. Using it as a learning tool makes sense, and doing as much of it 'manually' as possible is the best way to get your voice and your vision and everything that is 'you' in there - even the flaws are part of that. There's still worries about the mainstream perception of art, or how it'll affect the industry and jobs in the future, but at least I can do my stuff the way I feel is right. Thank you so much for sharing more of your unique background experiences and being funny and awesome!

[sugarjoe]

An interesting use case I just thought of is as a student who's assigned to reading really dry material. If you had access to an AI that could maintain three same meaning but make the writing far less boring, it could be super helpful to stay engaged

[StephenHarperRaptagon]

As someone who is working with AI in a big way, the best results come from your input. The AI has no imagination so it will give you something bland without your directions.

The more you input into the story the better, and it will take care of the busy work that slows you down and kills your creative drive. Making it easier to turn thoughts into reality.