The other day I was speaking with a friend who is in the process of publishing a series of children’s books. We discussed the best way to rhyme in poetic meter, commiserated about the dreaded submission waiting game, and joked that her daughter would probably prefer her books if they had Paw Patrol characters on the covers.

“Why don’t you pitch your books to whoever makes the show?” I suggested.

“That stuff is so formulaic. It’s probably all written by AI,” she laughed.

And just like that, the little science fiction gremlin in my head took that thought and ran with it…

Picture with me, if you will, a world where children grow up consuming only AI content. The shows they watch, the books they read, the textbooks they learn from, and the media they consume- all created by AI. AI shapes their minds. Teaches them how to speak, how to write, how to feel. How to interact with the world and how to find their place in it.

And then, flash forward to when these children are grown, creative young adults ready to make their mark on the world. They find jobs at tech companies, an internship perhaps, followed by a junior position, and as they work up the ranks and find their passions, they become the analysts and technicians in charge of creating AI.

In essence, the AI would have mastered the art of programming itself.

The minds it molded, taught to think critically, taught to think the way it wanted them to think, are now the ones teaching it, refining its code. Making it even better, even more powerful. The AI would be using human minds as an extension of its network, learning and growing outside the boundaries of its binary existence, and then inputting that data back into its framework once those minds have matured enough to feed that information back to it. In essence, the AI would have found a way to harness the one thing it’s lacking; human experience.

Feels like a plot straight out of Black Mirror, right?

I am, of course, not saying this is the future of AI. But like any good sci-fi nerd, you can’t help but think… What if?

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Recently, the Internet has been flooded with content discussing AI writing tools and how they’re changing the face of freelance writing. The big name on the scene is ChatGPT, an open AI language model designed to respond to user prompts with natural-sounding, conversational language, and the hot discussion within the writing community is if this program has the capacity to replace freelance writers altogether.

Will AI writing make content mills obsolete? Will AI force writers to lower their wages and write for nothing? Will AI be the death of the freelance writing market for good? Writers, from bloggers to novelists, are weighing in on the discussion, voicing their very understandable concerns for the future of their profession. With AI becoming so adept at producing unique, well-written content, is there really any need to hire a writer? What does a writer actually bring to the table, anyway?

It’s big introspective questions like this that have some of us running for the hills, screaming loudly to anyone who will listen that AI has killed the art of writing. That it’s blasphemy, it’s plagiarism, and it should be avoided at all costs.

It’s a little ironic how in a century where we carry supercomputers in our pockets, have voice-activated homes and facial recognition on our phones, that our instinctive reaction to advances in technology is still the same as it’s been for decades; “Oh no! This scary new machine is going to take my job”.

Despite our modern reliance on technology, it seems there is still a little Luddite in all of us, ready to jump out and smash the machines before they take over.

But the question remains; is there any basis for people’s fears, or is it simply an instinctive reaction to technology we don’t understand? AI is learning and improving every day, fast becoming almost indistinguishable from human writers. Is it really so farfetched to think it will soon be able to write better than all of us?

With all of this controversy and discussion, I figured it was about time to see what all the fuss was about and give it a try for myself.

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What can AI writing tools do?

To find out if AI is really capable of taking over the world of freelance writing, one first needs to understand what the program can actually do.

To get myself acquainted with the ChatGPT software, I wrote a little story that you can read here.

Though fiction is not ChatGPT’s primary function, I wanted to understand the program’s capabilities (and I can never resist the chance to write a little fiction), so I wrote a short story centered around dialogue, and tried to have a conversation with the software. I generated multiple responses from each prompt to see how well the program could respond to complicated inputs and then cherry-picked the AI’s best responses to create the dialogue for one of the characters.

And after an afternoon of playing around, I have to say; I was far more impressed than I thought I would be.

I was expecting stilted sentences that sounded clunky and unnatural, with little understanding of the purpose or nuance of what makes good writing. But what the program generated was well-written, high-quality prose with unique word choice and a natural flow that sounds both conversational and intentional. It takes a little direction, but once it understands the tone and style you want, it can create some pretty impressive content.

One of the most interesting things about Chat GPT’s program is its ability to learn from previous commands. You have likely interacted with chatbots previously, usually in a customer service capacity online. If you input a command the chatbot doesn’t recognize, it sends you a generic response, such as “Sorry. I didn’t understand that. Can you rephrase the question”. With ChatGPT, however, it doesn’t have a pre-programmed set of commands. Rather, it understands enough language to respond to whatever you input and can even ask follow-up questions to refine its responses.

In other words, it can hold a conversation.

In practice, this allows the AI to improve on its own generated text. It remembers what you wrote previously and uses that input to improve its subsequent response, instead of starting anew with every entry. This allows it to stay on topic and keep its answers relevant while you can dictate how you want it to edit itself instead of having to do it yourself.

The next thing that impressed me was the AI’s understanding of voice and tone. We all know what a client means when they ask for a “friendly,” “formal,” or “informative” tone, but what about “like Morgan Freeman doing a voice-over” or “like a Tim Burton character but funny”? As humans, we can understand what these creative explanations are getting at, but good luck explaining that to a computer. Until now.

For my experiment, I first asked the AI to phrase its answers “creatively.” When it managed that no problem, I asked it to write “like a friend talking to a young family member but in a formal and instructive tone.” And it still understood the prompt perfectly. The AI’s ability to change its response to be “more creative” or “less flowery” is remarkable, and even when I asked it to write “as if speaking to a teenager instead of a young child,” it provided accurate changes in word choice and tone to reflect the subtle changes I would make myself.

This is especially interesting when you consider the creative possibilities. For example, if I wanted to write a story where one of my characters was a medical student, but I didn’t know enough medical jargon or hospital terminology myself to make it sound believable, I would likely need to do some research before being able to capture their voice or setting accurately. With ChatGPT, I could write a scene and have the software reword my dialogue to sound “more like a junior doctor” or “change the setting to be in a hospital.”

I’m not saying AI will replace the need for research in the writing process- research is, after all, one of my favorite parts of writing fiction- but it does have the potential to be incredibly helpful in finetuning the little details you need to capture a time, a place, or even a person, just right.

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What can’t AI do?

Before we go any further, let’s discuss the elephant in the room:

One could use AI to write an entire piece of prose. Tools like Jasper and Copy AI have been around for years and can generate whole articles by inputting word count, title, and tone specifications and letting the AI do the rest. And though this is one use of AI software’s capabilities, it generates a certain type of content.

In simplistic terms, all an AI program is doing is taking data from multiple sources, assessing the popularity of certain topics and themes, and condensing and rewording this data into a new format. It generates content that will pass a plagiarism test and does more than simply reword every sentence, but what it can’t do is have an original idea. By definition, it is simply copying information that is already out there, so any content it creates will be a regurgitation of already existing work.

Solely AI-generated content is, therefore, intrinsically limited. It can only comment on human emotion and offer insight into human experience if someone else has already written it. It can’t offer the reader a new perspective or give any information that isn’t already known.

AI can do a lot of things, but this restriction means it can’t fulfill the essential role of what it means to be a writer.

It can’t write something worth reading.

Just like every machine needs a mechanic and every factory line needs someone checking product quality, AI still needs a human writer to take its output and make it a fully functioning piece of prose. AI can do a lot, and it’s getting better every day, but it’s not perfect. Like all of us, it still needs an editor to turn its rough draft into something useful.

ChatGPT states its limitations front and center on the homepage:

• It has limited knowledge of world and events after 2021
• May occasionally generate incorrect information
• Sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers
• Is often excessively verbose and overuses certain phrases

In other words: you need to fact-check everything it generates for accuracy, it won’t give you up-to-date information about any time-sensitive topics, and it might generate nonsense. Good sounding nonsense, but nonsense nonetheless. Hence why a human editor needs to go through each word and make sure it makes sense.

As mentioned above, AI can only offer ideas and opinions already in its database, so nothing it generates will be innovative, unique, or mind-blowing. And that’s ok. Sometimes. If you’re writing a piece intended as an overview, an informational piece, or a listicle of known ideas, you might not be looking for innovation in every word. Sometimes, general ideas and a collection of themes are what you want. Not every article ever written needs to change the face of the world.

But when you are looking for innovation, when you want a fresh take or a personal insight, AI is not going to cut it. The suggestions, by default, will be generic, and if you leave them as they are, your work will be generic too.

The best compromise is to use AI as a starting point. Let it give you inspiration and options; let it spark your creativity, but make sure to take that spark and make it your own.

AI can give you an outline, rephrase a stubborn sentence, or help you capture a tricky tone, but you are the writer. You know what you want to say and how you want to say it. You know how you want your readers to react and the purpose of the piece you’re writing. You have your own voice; it’s what got you this far.

So let the AI help you be more you.

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How to use AI in your own writing

One important thing to understand about AI writing tools is that it’s not a one-and-done situation. It’s not a case of 100% AI or 100% real writer. You don’t have to steer clear of AI like the plague for fear that it will infect your pristine prose with computer-generated garbage, and you don’t have to say goodbye to creativity and jump on the AI bandwagon, never again writing your own words or ideas.

There is a middle ground.

AI tools are just that, TOOLS. And with a little discretion, you can use them to help you be a better writer.

Reword and rephrase

In the same way we might use a thesaurus when stuck on a tricky description or Grammarly to remind us where to put our commas, AI tools can be incredibly helpful with rewording suggestions for clarity, interest, and tone.

When you have a sentence that just isn’t working for you, it sounds awkward or falls apart somewhere, but you can’t work out where, this is the perfect time to play around with AI. Plug your faltering words into the program and click rephrase.

You don’t have to copy and paste what it generates, but you might find a spark of inspiration in one of its responses. And as the program can remember previous inputs, you can rework your sentence multiple times, honing in on specific aspects each time you rephrase. “More conversational,” “less wordy,” “more like a wandering tinker peddling their trinkets.” The more specific you are the better, or more ridiculous, the response you’ll get.

Voice and tone

Capturing a specific voice or tone can be challenging if it’s different from how you usually write. Once you have a tone in mind, either from a client’s brief or your desired audience, you can use AI to reword your current work to capture that voice or provide suggestions on changing your phrasing to suit a different audience.

You don’t have to use the generated text word for word, but you can learn from the word choice and style the AI comes up with and bring pieces of that style back to your original work.

Research, outlining, and a good place to start

Another way to use AI is to help with research and creating an outline.

Let’s say you are tasked with writing a piece on “5 innovative ways to incorporate spinach into your diet”. Assuming you’re not a spinach expert, you would probably start with a little research, looking at previously published posts on similar subjects to give you some inspiration.

AI can do this initial process for you. Just like doing a quick Google search to find out what others are writing about, AI collects inputs from multiple sources to give you a quick overview of the topic.

Allow me to demonstrate:

“Hey Chat GPT. Tell me 5 innovative ways to incorporate spinach into your diet”:

Spinach Smoothies: Blend spinach with your favorite fruits and yogurt for a delicious and nutritious smoothie.

Spinach Pesto: Make a pesto sauce using spinach, basil, Parmesan cheese, and pine nuts for a flavorful way to add spinach to pasta, pizza, or sandwiches.

Spinach Stuffed Foods: Stuff vegetables like bell peppers, portobello mushrooms, or chicken breasts with a mixture of spinach and cheese for a delicious and healthy meal.

Spinach Chips: Make your own spinach chips by tossing fresh spinach with a little oil and salt and baking in the oven until crispy. A great alternative to traditional potato chips.

Spinach Salads: Add fresh spinach to your salads for a burst of flavor and nutrition. Toss it with other ingredients like fruits, nuts, and cheese for a delicious and satisfying meal.

Awesome. In less than 30 seconds, you have a list of ideas. You could keep this list as it is, using the headings as an outline and simply bulking out each section. Or, more likely, you could take inspiration from the AI content and make it your own.

And just like that, you’re ready to start writing. The AI has done the work of condensing hundreds of articles down to their base parts and has given you a brief overview of the topic in seconds. You could accomplish this yourself on Google, but AI can do it quicker, read far more articles, and won’t get distracted by anything irrelevant.

You could also use the AI-generated content as a list of things not to talk about. If you want to ensure your ideas are new and innovative, look at this list as an example of what information is already available online and intentionally write something else. I don’t know how many truly unique ways there are to eat spinach, but it’s always useful to know what your competitors are writing about.

Inspiration and ideas

Another way to use AI is to help you come up with inspiration and ideas for your next piece.

Let’s say you know the rough topic you want to write about, but you don’t know what the focus of your piece should be. Inputting your topic into the AI program and ask it to come up with some suggestions, and see if anything takes your fancy. It’s the same as surfing the web or reading a magazine looking for inspiration, just a more direct approach.

If something sparks your interest, great, you’ve got your next writing idea. If not, then you only wasted 10 minutes, and you can go back to daydreaming, walking the dog, or however else you let creative inspiration come to you.

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The most important thing to remember about AI is that it’s a collaborative process. The usefulness of the generated text is directly related to the details of the prompt, so the more detail you can tell the program about what you want, the better the result will be.

And vice-versa: garbage in, garbage out.

The art comes in taking inspiration from the software, using it just as you use any other tools of your writing trade, and incorporating it into your writing process. Use it to help you, use it to make your job easier, and don’t be afraid of playing around with it and finding the best way to make it work for you.

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The future of AI writing

Now we’ve taken a look at what precisely these AI writing tools can do, what their limitations are, and how you can use them in your own work… the big question still remains:

Will ChatGPT make freelance writers obsolete?

And the answer?… is No.

Let me explain why:

If a company wants content that is nothing more than an overview of what is already written online, wants clickbait-style blog posts to fill space on their site, and prizes quantity over quality, then AI is going to work wonders for this purpose. In less than a minute, it can generate a well-written 1000-word post to specific format, tone, and style requirements. Even the most experienced content writer will find that output hard to beat.

But AI can’t do this alone. It needs writers to input said topics into the software, to fact check its output, and create a cohesive document. It needs humans to do the editing and make sure it’s not spouting unintelligible rubbish. And this might well be the future of content mill style writing.

Many content mills already pay extremely poorly per word, exemplifying that they respect quantity over quality. AI tools enable writers working on these types of projects to increase their output tenfold by doing most of the heavy lifting for them. Just like the invention of the sewing machine revolutionized the garment industry, AI writing takes on the tedious work of research and outlining this type of content and lets the writer focus on editing and proofreading, allowing them to generate far more words per hour than if they had to do all the research and writing themselves.

The content that’s created won’t be revolutionizing the Internet, but at $0.001 a word, it wasn’t doing that before anyway.

AI can therefore take on the burden of content mill style creation and let writers focus on what they always wanted to focus on in the first place. Writing that matters.

You don’t have to work your ass off for less than 1¢ a word because the clients that don’t value quality content will no longer be in the equation. They will be happy with AI-generated content, the same way when you shop at Walmart, you’re happy with mass-production plastic that will likely break before you get it home. If you wanted handcrafted bespoke items, you wouldn’t be at Walmart.

I strongly believe that instead of lowering freelance rates, AI writing tools like ChatGPT will actually increase what freelance writers can charge. Clients who care about the quality of their content will make the conscious decision to hire a real writer, and knowing that these clients prize quality over quantity will give freelancers the backing to charge what their time is worth.

If you want 2000 words for $2, then go to Walmart. You can get that from Jasper or ChatGPT in less than a minute. If you want a thoughtful, innovative, and insightful piece that will take 8 hours to research and days to perfect, then they should be willing to pay what a writer’s time is worth. And separating clients that want AI content from those that don’t will quantify what a real writer brings to the table.

What AI content lacks is the exact thing you get from a real writer. You get personal insight, opinion, and experience. You get innovative ideas and thought-provoking essays. You get a human perspective and stories that connect.

AI can’t look at the world and tell you something that you never knew before. It can’t hypothesize about the future or offer emotional stories of heart and humanity.

It can read, copy and reword, but it can’t understand.

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I have noticed a slew of writing jobs recently that specifically state: “No AI written content allowed. We will know!” and these postings exemplify just how misunderstood AI writing currently is. What these job posts should say is “No bad writing. We will know!” because that’s what they really mean. They don’t want robotic-sounding prose that reads like it was written by a computer, but as I’ve mentioned throughout this article, that is not what AI writing tools are about.

A human writer can write terrible prose just the same as AI can. Just because a real person wrote it doesn’t make it good.

I’m sure we’ve all read articles written by real writers that read like keyword-stuffed nonsense, or grammatical minefields that hurt our eyes to try and make sense of. A real writer can and should bring personal perspective to the table, but that doesn’t mean their sentence structure and word choice can’t be improved with a little help.

Any job that states they don’t want AI-generated content is really saying that they don’t want solely AI-generated content. They don’t want someone to copy and paste ChatGPT-generated text and leave it at that. Which is totally understandable. But what irks me is this insistence that AI is something inherently wrong, something poisonous to your work that will be spotted from a mile off and brand you with a scarlet letter.

As with all writing, the quality of the end result is the point, not how you go about writing it. If you write a brilliant piece of work and used AI to generate your outline, so what? If you didn’t add your own perspective or original ideas, it wouldn’t be good, so what does it matter how you started or the process you went through to craft your work?

In the same way, if you write an article by hand, not reading a single other article on the topic or running your work through a spell checker, so what? If your piece is bad, it’s bad. Who cares how you wrote it?

It’s the quality of the end result that matters. Not the process you used to create it.

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Can AI tell a good story?

So that being said, what do we think about AI and fiction?

Not to bury the lede, but I think we fiction writers are safe for a little while longer.

For AI to even come close to generating good fiction, the programmers have to understand precisely what makes The Shining one of Stephen King’s masterpieces, while Carrie lands a little flat. They would need to quantify the difference between Victoria Schwab and E. L. James, and understand what makes Tolkien the master while Simon R Green is simply fun to read. When thousands of critics worldwide can’t agree on the essence of these differences, I think it is safe to say it will be a while before AI has an opinion on the matter.

Even removing the issue that “good” fiction is entirely subjective, I don’t think anyone, even Tolkien himself, has figured out the exact formula for crafting a compelling story. While you could compile a list of grammatical rules and style observations, analyze character arcs and plot points, and break things down to their basic three-act structures, there is no black-and-white rule for turning an ok story into a great one.

You can’t predict which stories will touch the hearts of your readers and which will miss the mark. There is magic to the science of storytelling, and magic doesn’t lend itself to binary rules.

AI can write a story. Beginning, middle, end. Set up, conflict, resolution. But it’s miles away from being able to craft magic.

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So, No.

ChatGPT is not going to make freelance writing obsolete.

There will still be work for freelance writers, either from clients that want AI content and are looking for editors and proofreaders, or from those that recognize the skills a writer can offer and are willing to pay for it.

AI can help writers in various ways. It can help with a catchy title or rephrasing a tricky sentence. Like Grammarly, Hemmingway, spell check, or any other online service you currently use, AI assistants are just another tool to be integrated into your writing process and used when the fancy takes you.

AI is not here to take our jobs or murder the art of the written word.

They are not tools to be scared of, and you shouldn’t be ashamed of using them to improve your work.

AI is here to make your life easier.

And, if you let it, to help you be a better writer.