AI Assisted Writing

Artificial Intelligence is changing everything, but does that include creativity? Let’s see how AI impacted my creative process in this project.

Problem

Exponential technologies are changing every industry. Artificial Intelligence is one of those technologies but how is it changing storytelling?

Does it help me write faster? Can it challenge my thinking? How does it impact my role as “writer”? Could I use this technology to pump out books with the pace of James Patterson?

Let’s dig in and see…

The Project: LAST YESTERDAY

I had a title pop in my brain: Last Yesterday. I had an initial scene: A man wakes up in a strange bed in the old west and a cat knocks at the door. And then, I went to Jasper.ai to start writing.

Writing with AI isn’t like autocomplete with Google or Word. Jasper.ai uses AI capabilities similar to GPT-3, a language generation algorithm. Instead of copying sentences from other places, it works on patterns relating to individual words and your writing structure. So, instead of copying and pasting from a source, it looks at the last word you wrote, the current word, and words before it. Using those words, it generates approximate next couple of sentences to form a paragraph that makes sense in that context. Jasper.ai looks at "likely words" to follow the current word and creates content based on stringing together these likely words.

For example, if I say to you: "The Barn is ___" a likely next word could be "red" or "on" or "empty". Jasper then looks at the next word "red" and says, okay what's likely next looking at the context of the sentence "The barn is red", perhaps the next words are "with large doors" or "on top of the hill". These are not copy paste, these are statistical constructs that build sentences based on likely relationships between words.

So, now back to the story, I had a title, I had an opening scene and so I let Jasper start writing. What came out didn't work for me. So I gave Jasper more guidance by providing more of the story. Remember, Jasper is figuring out what to write based on what was already written. After a few more complete ideas, I told Jasper to start and now it was creating interesting ideas. The cat talking, that was Jasper at work and became a critical element to the story.

Continuing on, I leveraged Jasper to complete ideas and take my story in unexpected directions. It was like writing with another writer who kept challenging me on my ideas.

I often find myself being repetitive in my language and wanted to strike away from that with AI. One of the things that I really like is the ability to “reword” a sentence while maintaining the sentence meaning. I could also target a grade level which made it easier to write in the voice of the young daughter using words that are appropriate for her grade level. I wrote her lines and then had Jasper rewrite them to her age level for inspiration on how to write in her voice.

About mid-way through the project, I was just using Jasper as a text editor. The early inspiration helped me discover the story and from there I was able to take it to completion as well as go back and ensure the story tied together better throughout.

Learnings

Visceral Reaction

Numerous people I talked to about this project had a very visceral and negative reaction to using AI for writing stories. Some people pointed right to 1984 by George Orwell and said “yep, that’s how books were written there too!” Being a techie, I was a bit surprised by this reaction but shouldn’t have been. When digging in to understand the root of the reaction, few people could articulate what their issue actually was but, in the end, what the issue is doesn’t matter. The reaction was enough to signal the hurdles to using AI in writing.

I originally approached using AI just like using Word or spellcheck. In my mind, it’s just another tool no different than using Adobe Photoshop or GAN images. That’s where I learned my bias as a techie put me as an outlier in my views of the technology and the end product. Good lesson and reality check for me as I explored this project.

Key learning: be ready for reaction.

What about Plagiarism!

The way Jasper works, not copying and pasting content but using likely next words, limits the probably of plagiarism but it can still happen. Always use a plagiarism checker when working with AI. I’d even encourage it outside of AI so that you can be aware of potential claims regardless of if the words 100% originated in your head. (Note: When I wrote LAST YESTERDAY, I used a 3rd party checker but now Jasper has one built in).

Key learning: know how your AI writer works (high level) and how likely you are to be exposed to plagiarism.

Key learning #2: always check for plagiarism (I didn’t really have a good grip on that prior to digging into this process)

My Role as “Writer”

This experience challenged my thinking on what makes me a “writer”. Part of the reason I say “storyteller” is because the nature of communicating stories is changing from who creates them (think about the “writer” of CreepyPasta) to how they are communicated (are Instragram Stories actually stories?).

With AI tools that use GPT-3, my role is “creative director”. I put my ideas into the story and use the ideas of others (some humans, some not) to craft the best story I can build. That means taking control sometimes and letting control go at other times. There is no real creative blocks because while I’m blocked, my contributors (human and machine) are not. Approaching projects in this manner can help me move faster.

I might write a lot more on this topic but some of my thoughts are pretty heady and I need to dig in. I don’t see AI as a threat to writers overall but I do see it is going to push everyone to up their game. I also see that it is going to downplay traditionally silenced voices because of how training AI systems works. As creatives our role will be to use the tool but not let it drown us out. More to come on this another time.

Key learning: I’m a creative and my mediums drive the collaborations & creations

Key learning #2: If ever blocked, jump to Jasper to get unstuck on demand

Faster, not always better

There is no doubt, I moved faster with the writing BUT I had to redo a lot of it as I went along. The quick boost of inspiration or push forward was helpful but also, sometimes, needed to be redone later. AI will help you get to the shitty first draft quickly but remember what it is. You’ll need to give it love and make sure that you’re not just off loading the work.

In this case, collaborate with AI don’t delegate.

Key learning: Don’t hand off. Work together with the AI writer.

Disclaimers, Ethics, and Appreciation

Right now people don’t see AI writing tools like GPT-3 as a tool. Instead they are seen as something new and potentially threatening.

In the world of business, there are excellent documents guiding Ethically Aligned Design (EAD) for AI. One of those design standards is to inform people when AI is involved in a process or decision. In our case, inform the reader when AI is involved. This is a best practice to avoid the negative emotions called out at the start of this learnings session and be very upfront about it.

On works that I build with AI, I plan on adding a paragraph to the copyright page that says: “This work was made in collaboration with Artificial Intelligence. The content has been checked for plagiarism and is a work of collaboration between a human and a machine.” Or something similar. In the Acknowledgements section, acknowledge your AI coworker just like your editors and artists. It helped you build your work. Make sure to say thanks :)

Why include this? These sections are signals to your reader that you’re doing something different. Besides the fact that giving collaborators credit for their work is just a good thing to do, giving the reader a heads up that AI was involved has dissolved a lot of the emotion I experienced earlier in the project. When I changed how I talked about the project to be “this is something I built with AI”, instead of “here’s a story I wrote” people were much more accepting of the work and curious about the collaboration process.

Key learning: Be more transparent than you think you need to be and talk to people about their feelings on a topic as your in the process of creation (standard Design Thinking practice)

What’s next?

There is a very good chance that I’m going to experiment with writing an entire book with AI. I’m considering a few projects already but whatever is written will clearly communicate that AI was involved in writing the content. I will probably create a pseudonym/personality for this AI writer and play up the fact that AI writes the story (that’s good marketing for now - but not for much longer).

I do think that AI GPT-3 capabilities will start appearing in more and more places. We will forget that we’re using them (just like Autocomplete in Gmail) and eventually it will be seen as another tool in our creative toolbelt. But for now, approach AI with the care you would approach a new wood working tool. Yes, it can be a great help but if you’re not careful it could cut your fingers off.