AI has been dominating the headlines for a few years now. Everywhere you turn there is an AI addition to a platform or a software update that adds an AI feature. Companies are turning to artificial intelligence more and more for writing copy, creating programmes, marketing campaigns, research, you name it, this invisible free employee seems to be able to do it.
When ChatGPT was first released we were intrigued. It was just as we were launching as a company. We had to do everything from scratch; website, marketing etc all with a very limited budget so we played with the capabilities of this new tool.
It was undoubtedly helpful. Neither of us has a background in marketing so it was particularly helpful in helping us think about how we phrased adverts etc. We should say at this point, we never used the text as it was given to us, we always rephrased it. While we are clarifying a few things, it is worth saying that none of our programme materials had any AI content (apart from our ebook on AI which has a passage explaining how ChatGPT thinks it can be helpful for writers.)
Our problem with AI
Where do we begin? As two people passionate about supporting writers and helping them follow their dreams of writing a book (or any other writing ambition), the fact that there are companies that create 100% AI generated books, particularly nonfiction books, makes us sad, and a little uneasy. No-one can connect with a human reader the same way a human writer can. No-one can tell your story better than you can. There isn’t a computer programme around that has your lived experience and can share your expertise as beautifully as you can.
Which leads us nicely onto the breach of copyright on countless creatives’ hard earned content. There is a huge difference between willingly giving up your copyright and choosing to feed your writing into artificial intelligence and it being taken without your consent. (Just to be clear anything you upload or ask on these platforms you are giving away your intellectual property and the laws around copyright are ever changing, and vary from country to country, when it comes to AI).
We have been lead to believe that it saves so much time, and there may be certain tasks that it does incredibly quickly, but my question to you, as a creative, is, does it do them well? Do you feel proud of something that has been conceived by ChatGPT? Do you feel that glow of satisfaction when you have completed a task that has been AI created, even in part?
We’ve even been sucked into the AI trends on social media. We created dolls of ourselves, why? At first they were quite cute, but even we were bored of it by the time we posted them. What a ludicrous waste of time and energy, ours and global energy!
Which leads us nicely on to the environmental factors. Do you know it uses equivalent to one bottle of water to write on prompt with AI. In addition to the water consumption, it also uses a lot of energy. It estimated more than 20% of Ireland’s energy usage is now on data centres. In these times when we are supposed to be so focused on climate change, how does it make sense to be constantly using these chatbots to do things that we are capable of working out? If we aren’t personally able to, then there is another human who can be asked. Which gives someone else a job. Instead companies are using artificial intelligence to do all their copywriting and often it shows.
Isn’t it possible to train AI to sound like you?
Yes it is, you even create a whole video that looks and sounds like you, if you upload enough content, but it still isn’t actually you. I am a little scared by some of the suggested uses of this tool. There is talk of creating generated versions of murder victims so that they can be witnesses in their own trial in the news this week. People are creating AI versions of loved ones who have passed to keep them “alive”. I would never tell anyone else how to grieve, but I fear we are crossing a line we can’t come back from and in a few years we are going to have some huge regrets and it will be too late. Even well trained AI isn’t perfect, and it definitely isn’t human.
One of the things we talk about a lot in the BOOK FORGE, is the beauty of imperfection. Everything natural is imperfect from the most beautiful flower or waterfall, to you. It is the imperfection that makes it beautiful and the same goes for your writing. You see, when you write, your energy is captured in the words and is then received by the reader. The receive a little of your emotion, your heart. You might think this is crazy, but I assure you it’s true. We did a little test in our Booksmith Academy Facebook group last year where we both write posts and wrote them using the business profile so we were anonymous. Our cohort had been with us for several months by then, and in every case they immediately guessed which one of us had written the post. Our words are part of us.
How it impacts us, as creatives
The final nail in the coffin for us though was realising that the “use it or lose it” saying is true for creativity and imagination, not just physical actions. As people who love words, and have achieved a high standard of writing, we were starting to question our own abilities. Checking things we knew were ok, and that were the way we wanted them to be, asking for confirmation. While we’re talking about writing competence, we’re getting a little fed up of hearing that you can tell when something has been written by AI because it uses the em dash. It may be hard for some people to believe-I’m sure it is-but real writers use the em dash all the time (did you see what I did there?).
How long before we lose the ability to write original content all together. We may be a pair of peri-menopausal sisters, with brain fog like a pea-souper some days, but we are human, we are real, and we are passionate about our writing. We may not have the marketing skills of a pro, but we are passionate about our work and we are happy to allow our light shine bright enough to attract all the right people to our flame without using anything artificial to help us. We may miss the odd typo, our marketing may not be as slick as some companies, but we’re human and we’re passionate and hopefully that will attract the right people.
There are some truly brilliant uses for AI in the world. Speeding up research for medical companies, processing enormous amounts of data for governments etc. We don’t have those needs, we are a small business built on relationships and warmth. If we ever grow to a size where we really can’t find enough hours in the day to do everything, we will employ a human to do the things we are less competent at. We will no doubt be giving you an update on this situation in time as it is such a fast moving topic, by the time we have written this there will have been developments. But this is our current stance. We will not be using AI out of choice for the foreseeable future.
We would love to know your thoughts about this topic though because we know it is something that many people are very passionate about and we are happy to be talked around, we have gone round in several circles on this already. By all means disagree with us, that’s what humans do after all, they have different opinions, different perspectives and that is what makes us so brilliant.
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