Generative AI for Writers: Worth It?

In this video, I'm going to cover AI for writers and which tools are safe and ethical to use right now.

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[ThatsJustMyBabyDaddy]

When I tell you that chat GPT has completely changed my writing journey!!! I use it as an idea generator and story organizer. It's like I have my own writers room full of the most intelligent, learned and creative minds money can buy, all at my fingertips. A writer or editor being afraid of AI will be surely left behind.

[heavymetalelf]

Michael, I really respect your take. I'm all in on generative AI. I think it's awesome, it's definitely the future. I appreciate your more nuanced position in comparison to some others I've seen and heard. Too many people think ChatGPT is literally stealing words from books authors have previously written. It's been described as a hyper-autocorrect and that's really more of what it is

As an indie writer struggling to break into the field, I first thought ChatGPT was a godsend. It was gonna take my outlines and crank out my fully realized novels in record time. My struggle was over.

But you are right. It's not ready for primetime. It is good for ideas and rough drafting and outlines and all the things you mentioned though. Thanks for the nuanced take. I was glad to see a video from you. I haven't seen any lately and I was worried maybe you quit making them. Take care!

[CGFernandesOficial]

Great time we are in, so exciting. I’m playing around with ChatGPT, I use to zero draft my scenes, just give the prompts about the events, this helps to get me in writing mode faster. I’m looking forward to how editing tools will be much better, probably in some months from now.

[SDHuston]

I have been waiting for your thoughts and video on this!

[DaleLRoberts]

Great video! Glad to see I'm not the only one approaching this area with caution.

[thelatentobserver]

Great video, Michael. I agree with 100% of what you’re saying here. You mentioned some things I might try with regards to continuity in existing passages I have. Very cool.

[Baraborn]

There is a NEW NEW personal AI assistant for your personal computer called Vicuna. This AI allows the users to create a character to interact with. Imagine the realistic dialog that can be created when a sufficiently deep character is generated and interacted with! The possibilities are endless!

[WhatShouldMyArtistNameBe]

The best way I've used AI is basically as a substutute for a thesaurus . Especially in my song writing, but typing out what I want to say with the prompt, "how to say this more elegantly or sophisticated" haha

[jerichodejesus]

Because of Undetectable AI Human Auto typer, I didn't have to stress about writing text in gdocs, it's save my time lol a true life saver.

[Deniz_]

I am using ai for generating character/landscape art to get inspiration from. And now you kinda convinced me to use it to get rid of writer's block and start writing again. And I am using it with learning coding.

[neopagan]

Thank you so much for this video, Micheal. I will take all of your well founded opinions under advisement. I’m currently using the regular Chat-Gpt 3.5 text generator for everything from the story outlining to the book description for my latest Sci-fi novel. I make sure that the text generator uses only the story synopsis, the ideas, the fictional settings and the fictional characters that I've already come up with on my own. There’s a way for writers to get these AI text generators to do that. It’s all in the wording of the prompts. I even go so far as generating full story scenes for my novel, I heavily edit the content of those AI generated scenes to ensure that they all fit with in the storyline of my novel and that they’re using only my story ideas and contain no fictional settings and fictional characters that I don’t immediately recognize. Only after I take care of all of that do I put the story scenes into my manuscript. It definitely pays to be extra careful.

[susanam.]

I've been using ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas, correct typos (and jazz up book descriptions :) ), and MidJourney to brainstorm characters and settings. Thank you for the video!

[gfunk]

Hey Michael. Great content. 2 things on the AI art.
1. When Adobe makes Firefly available for customers it will be a game changer because the assets they use are their own and items within the public domain. While the lawsuits are flying I think Adobe will be mostly insulated.
2. I think creating items within MidJourney or Leonardo or whatever it depends on what your creating. Example if I'm creating a new urban fantasy book cover and I need a rain overlay or some other small asset like embers for a fire, a set of wings, etc. it would be fairly safe to use in this way. For creating small assets that are part of larger projects as opposed to saying "Create an urban fantasy book cover"

[SDHuston]

I have similar feelings for all the technology as what you stated here. I also feel some of this AI will grow by leaps in the next few months. Technological achievements are speeding up. I also agree about being ethical. I used it to rewrite my blurb and make ad copy. I made a video on it and mentioned that I try to use the AI as ethically as possible when asking the AI to model the top 100 books in my category. I also used AI generated images from book lines in my full trilogy to include with my boxset (published last November), and I made it clear that the images were AI. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and I look forward to what will happen next in this space!

[Iwasonceanonionwithnolayers]

I played with it for a wide variety of things. Made an outline based off of a description of one of my stories, some short stories, some research papers, a cover letter. I didn't use any of it. They were all missing the human element I bring to what I write.
But I'm excited about AI. I understand the fear surrounding it but I think it's useless. This train isn't stopping whether you like it or not, so the only question is will you be on it or under it. 100% support the artists who seek compensation for the use of their work to create it.

[thelatentobserver]

I also use Midjourney to create character avatars, but don’t sell anything.

[joemoya]

I have learned that AI can effectively write complete and well written scenes (or partial scenes) IF you learn how to prompt the AI with appropriate information, style, form, expectations and examples.

[NnaemekaAmamasi]

Brother I ain't seen you in a while...how you been?

[themore-you-know]

I'm currently programming a new software for writers, like a Sudowrite 2.0
Generating so much content, I was getting the weird feeling at my grocery store that people are simulated... wait... is this a horror thriller from a prompt I wrote, or am I myself the response?

[MsMotherWolf]

The gal shares her experience with using AI to write a book, taking note to mention it's written with AI and how the AI can get repetitive and lacks a certain spark of creativity (my take from what she shares of its writing style).

I have used the ChatGPT AI to help me with quick dungeon descriptions for my D&D games and brainstorming ideas, name and character description generators so I can get something done in 15 minutes versus hours.

There is one book I am very serious about getting out there. I used the ChatGPT AI to help me with dull, dry and boring technical write ups. You absolutely must run any text an AI gives you against a plagiarism checker like Grammarly. there was indeed a lot of repetition at points with how the AI speaks to you. Once a section is checked against Grammarly and fact-checked, then you need to take it into a rephraser tool. The most infuriating part was a page of text I wrote that Grammarly flagged as plagiarism. Really? I wrote that part, not the AI.

Rephraser tool and read it back to make sure it all makes sense. Especially to get your voice into the writing and shake out the AI. toss it back into Grammarly to check for plagiarism until it gives you the green light.

The AI can get wonky in that it hallucinates and gives wrong information. There are reports that there is an increase in the hallucinatory moments AI can have and double down on giving incorrect information and creating false citations for sources.

Fact Check everything.

As an idea generator to help you through a writer's block moment, invaluable.