In recent years, generative AI has taken the world by storm. With the ability of mimicking human writing in the matter of seconds, AI has been heavily utilized to assist with content creation in the writing industry. Generative AI software has seen tremendous growth as it has grown more advanced and available to the public. (The photo above was even created by AI art platform Midjourney) If you’re in an industry reliant on content generation, such as in writing and publishing, you may be concerned about AI and the role it will take in those industries. As we approach a more technological future, will we soon see generative AI take a substantial role in the writing industry?
What exactly is Generative AI?
Generative AI is artificial intelligence with the ability to create a variety of different forms of media, including music, videos, art, and most importantly writing. Upon its debut in the 1960s, generative AI consisted mainly of chatbots that were poor at conversation. Eventually technological development had allowed these computers to be more powerful and efficient, but it wasn’t until the discovery of generative adversarial networks (or GANs) in 2014 that generative AI had seen such exponential improvement. Before the discovery, AI only had the ability to refer us to human generated content. Now that AI has been taught to encode and process language, tone, and other aspects of human writing, generative AI has been able to produce content almost indistinguishable from human written documents. Upon the success of ChatGPT, a generative AI software capable of creating said content, the publishing industry has seen a tremendous boost of productivity.
Benefits of AI
Generative AI will have a significant impact on the writing industry in the future. There are many ways that it can improve and speed up the process of content generation as we see its technological development. Some ways it can be beneficial are
Ending Writer’s Block: Oftentimes, writers can have a hard time coming up with ideas for a project or piece. Generative AI can fix that. If you aren’t sure what topics to cover or points to make, AI could provide a list of ideas that set the framework to your next piece of content.
Setting the Tone: While many generative AI programs will focus on purely content generation, GrammarlyGO, a new program yet to be released by Grammarly, claims that not only can it draft prompts like ChatGPT, it can also revise texts in order to fit a specific tone and formality. For example, GrammarlyGO can shorten or lengthen content while also maintaining a wide range of tones, from confident, to friendly, to empathetic.
More Productivity: Overall, generative AI is more than competent in content generation, as it can provide mass content very quickly at little to no cost. By doing this, generative AI could easily do the work that most of us find tedious and dull and allow us to focus on more important tasks.
Drawbacks
While there are many ways that generative AI can benefit the writing process with many more implemented in the future, there are a few drawbacks or concerns about its prevalent role in the writing industry. A few issues that draw concern are
The Loss of Writing Jobs: Today, AI has been able to do its job on par with other writers in the industry. They provide mass content creation at little to no cost. Because of this, article based companies have been looking for people who can utilize AI to create content rather than the writers who do the same. More specifically, certain news-writing algorithms seek to replace human journalists. Because of its better speed, quality, price, and overall productivity, it’s unarguable that the job of a journalist is at risk.
Loss of Human Creativity: As we become more reliant on AI to do our job, the content produced will ultimately lack originality and meaning. Human generated content is often characterized by its depth, being driven from the emotions and experiences of its author. With AI, we lose that sense of humanism for a robotic replication of it.
Perpetuation of Laziness: While generative AI can be a helpful tool, it’s often used in both academic and writing settings as a way to avoid producing original work. Because it isn’t considered plagiarism, generative AI can avoid being detected if utilized properly. Max Song, the CEO of Carbonbase, a company that utilizes ChatGPT, admits that using AI results in a reduction of free thinking and makes many people very lazy. He also says that it could lead to a more homogenous society where everyone becomes reliant on AI for their ideas.
As the future draws closer, AI reaches new prospects. Sequoia Capital illustrates the sequence of how AI implementation will occur in several modes of content generation.
Through this chart, it’s likely that generative AI will become more prominent in the writing fields, as its potential is increasing and set to continue increasing at an exponential rate.
The Double Edged Sword of Generative AI
The writing and publishing industry are about to see a substantial change in the way they produce content. Generative AI has paved the way to revolutionizing the industry. With the ability to create useful content while being cheap and efficient.
On the other hand, the dependence of generative AI raises concerns about ethical writing and the meaning of original content as well as the jobs lost in the industry. As AI plays a prominent role in the writing and publishing industry and later, our lives, it’s best if we find ways to balance the benefits while keeping the human creativity that most consumers yearn for. When implemented correctly, generative AI could give us the best of both worlds.
Works Cited
https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3216275/chatgpt-valuable-tool-double-edged-sword-needs-careful-nurturing-maximise-its-benefits-industry
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3690270/grammarlygo-and-the-coming-wave-of-generative-ai-productivity.html
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/artificial-intelligence-vs-human-creativity-paradox-john-henderson#:~:text=of%20emotional%20connection.-,Creativity%20is%20often%20driven%20by%20emotions%20and%20personal%20experiences%2C%20and,create%20meaningful%20and%20impactful%20content.
https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/definition/generative-AI
https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/generative-ai-a-creative-new-world/
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