Often, writers hear “AI” and cringe. While some people have a blanket dislike for all things AI, writers are often concerned about the impact that it’ll have on their careers. In fact, many writers have already been negatively impacted by AI. While AI can and will be a detriment to writers, it also can be harnessed strategically to help make more money writing.
What Is AI?
Artificial intelligence is often viewed as a technology, but it actually is a complicated science that involves incorporating human-like thinking in machines. These machines are often called “smart.” While this includes things like the smart TV in your living room, home alarm systems, stereos and more, technology also extends to the creative realm in areas like writing, graphics and videos.
The Dangers of AI to Writers
AI has applications in all types of writing. From novels and research papers to articles, journal entries and more, artificial intelligence can be harnessed to produce intelligent text in a matter of seconds. As a result of its speed and ease, some people are choosing AI-generated content to human-generated content. What does AI mean to writers exactly?
AI Taking Jobs
Numerous writers have already lost clients to AI. AI is a free resource. From a financial perspective, many people now enjoy saving money by using AI to produce blog posts, product descriptions and more. While it hurts our bank accounts, can we blame them? If quality isn’t their many driving factor, saving money makes sense.
Quality is perhaps the main reasons why freelance writers continue to make money today. AI is simply not able to produce content that humans enjoy reading. It often reads like an encyclopedia. If you’re going for a research paper or whitepaper, it may suffice. If you want to engage with your readers and keep them hooked till the end of the text, AI simply isn’t going to cut it. As long as we inject a touch of the human element into our writing and AI does not, we have jobs somewhere. Perhaps we don’t have as many options as we once did, but they are still out there.
Losing Readers Because of AI
What if you write for yourself? Maybe you haven’t had time to write a blog post lately and you’re falling behind on your posting schedule. Why not churn out a few AI posts in a matter of minutes. Maybe spend 5 minutes injecting your personality at the beginning and end, and let AI do the bulk of the work. What harm’s in that? AI text output is so poor that reader often don’t care to read it. It’s boring to read. The sentences often have the same structure, and the same phrases are repeated throughout a text.
What’s the harm? Your readers will click off the page without reading it. Their experience may be so poor that they don’t want to waste their time visiting your website again. Now, Google won’t penalize you for having AI content on your website. (At least, not yet.) What it does penalize you for is a poor user experience. These things are related.
Getting Booted Because of AI
Many places where our work is published have a no-AI policy. If you get caught, you aren’t warned. You just get booted. To name the few that come from the top of my head – Medium, Amazon, Draft2Digital… There are many more.
Can you get your account back after some point? Amazon holds 85% of the market in book sales. You could sell books without an Amazon KDP account, but would you sell as many? Probably not by a long shot. I’ve yet to hear about someone who got banned for AI content being reinstated, but do you really want to risk it? If you use AI content, ensure that the client or publisher allows it.
How to Use AI in Writing
Clearly, AI has some serious and negative impacts on a writer’s income and job prospects. Scroll back up for a second, and look for what those three points have in common.
Need a hint? They’re all tied to the finished product.
It’s pretty clear that using AI for a finished project will or could backfire with serious outcomes, there is a place for AI in our writing. Generally, writers don’t just sit down and churn out content. There’s planning, development, research and so on. These things take time, and they’re perfect for AI to do.
Topics Ideas
After writing 120 blog posts or penning 10 novels, your tank may have run dry. AI can absolutely give a few topic ideas centered around your niche. Even if you don’t use the AI ideas, those ideas may jumpstart your battery or point you in a direction you never thought about going.
Character Development
Do your characters seem flat? If you’ve published multiple books, does it seem like none of your characters are unique anymore? Maybe you’re just having a hard t thinking of a character name from a specific era. AI is a great resource for aiding in character development. The output will be rather generic, but you can use AI to develop specific aspects of the person’s background or personality through detailed queries.
Setting Descriptions
Have you ever had one of those days when everything is “old” or the sea is “deep blue”? That lush, green grass gets pretty old reading about, and it does little to convey your meaning. At the same time, the thesaurus does little to foster your creativity. After all, if you wanted to say “antique” or “navy” or “refreshing,” you would have. Ask AI for a description about an old tree or a blade of grass or anything else. You’ll get some great ideas that the thesaurus can’t give you.
Outlines
Regardless of whether you write fiction, non-fiction, blog posts or something else, AI can give you an excellent outline. The outline is a backbone, so it’s up to you to fill in the content and make it shine. Need more help? Ask it for sub-headers for each of the headers it gave you.
Graphics
Finding graphics for your work is often a pain in the backside. You may know exactly what you’re looking for, but you can’t find it. Maybe you have no idea what you want and need inspiration. AI image generators are commonplace now, and they let you create graphics that are entirely your own.
A Word of Warning for AI Users
I touched on this early, but it’s worth repeating. AI is a powerful writing tool, but it can kill writing careers. If you’re an author caught using AI on Amazon, a ban could destroy your royalties. If you’ve got 20 years of novels posted on Amazon, the financial blow will be serious and immediate.
What if a client runs a blog post through an AI detecion tool and sees those large chucks of your work are AI-generated. Well, you’d lose the client. You might be kicked off the writing platform and lose all of the other clients you’ve established on the site.
These aren’t what-if scenarios. They’ve happened to people, and they continue to happen to fellow writers who try to cheat the system. Take advantage of AI for the background work, but always do your finished product yourself.