Do Androids Dream of Electric Boogaloo?

Considerations of AI in writing

Like many writers, in recent weeks I have been watching with interests the purported successes in the world of AI. An author writing ‘in collaboration’ with ChatGPT receiving a book publishing deal. Job losses in the sector as those in SEO and marketing decide that they don’t need a human touch, after all. A photographer winning (and rejecting) an award won with an AI image. Focus groups made up not of the people that are being sold to, but artificial representations of humanity. New careers in prompt writing for AI being discarded and irrelevant before a union can be formed, as big business seeks to erase any need for human input at any stage of the process of making money. 

And let us be clear, this is what AI seems largely to be about. Making money. For if it were about truly enhancing our lives, the focus would be on making it easier for us to have the time to make our own art, our own peace in the world. Taking away the jobs we don’t want - those that make the workers ill, or that make the world a worse rather than a better place. That stop us from having the time to follow our passions and creativity. If it weren’t happening in the here and now, it would feel like the prequel to the next big dystopian thriller. 

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-robot-giving-a-woman-a-flower-8438965/

I don’t think it is all bad. AI is being used, for instance, to make rapid advances in medicine that have the potential to improve the lives of millions - as long as we can afford the cost post-patent. It is the movement into the arts that has many people concerned. Why pay an artist for a book cover when you can speak a prompt into your screen and be greeted with a dozen options for free? I mean, yes, your characters might suddenly need to have polydactylism and an extra set of teeth written into the manuscript to explain their auto-generated appearance. But who cares, when it’s free. 

At present, we can safely sit behind our screens and mock, as published articles are found with the phrase ‘As an AI language model, I’ scattered tellingly throughout. We can easily spot the fakes, the poorly developed writing, the arguments made with nonsense sources attached. But as writers of all genres begin to use the tools AI offers: grammar checks and automatically generated query letters; structures and writing prompts; blurb generators and comparison finders; we begin to feed AI the high quality work it needs to improve. We hear tales of writers finding spoilers for their own work in progress being fed back to them in prompts. And we begin to lose the rights to our very own creations. 

As a writer new to the world of fiction, the developments in AI are concerning. But I have faith that the community will continue to come together and celebrate the achievements of human writers, not artificial ones. And I hope that the skills and talent I see in the people around me will shine brightly in a way that machines will never be able to replicate.