I’m trying to understand several new technologies that will have an impact on authors and creatives in the next few years. And I’m starting with the language generator AI’s.
I have read and tried to understand the use of AI for creatives and writing over the past couple of years, but I have had rather a lot of emotional grief to deal with and was unable to spend much energy on writing at all, let alone looking to the future. I’ve been on a one day at a time life but luckily we humans are adaptable and I am now ready to leap into 2023 with enthusiasm for writing and where new technologies may take authors in the coming years.
Two days ago, I bought Joanna Penn’s book ‘Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and Virtual Worlds’ and my brain is buzzing with the possibilities these technologies could bring to writers.
It’s scary, but then isn’t anything we don’t quite understand scar? But we won’t stop it from happening by sticking our heads in our physical books or wailing and gnashing our teeth.
I think we need to know, to understand, to explore, experiment, be aware and embrace the future.
I tend to want to leap into new shiny worlds of understanding and then become overwhelmed and usually sink under and give up. But not this time. This is too important for authors, and I can learn from past mistakes.
I shall take tiny steps and blog my progress so I have no excuse to throw my hands in the air and say…I can’t do this.
For me the tiny steps look like this…
1-reading Joanna Penn’s book a few times
2-taking notes from the book
3-looking at the mentioned links in the book
4-having a play with Open AI’s GTP-3 and seeing what the possibilities are for me now
5…to be decided after steps 1 – 4 have been completed.
This morning I opened the first email of the year from the Alliance of Independent Authors and saw this headline -
Self-publishing News: Someone Has Written and Illustrated a Complete Children’s Book with AI. Tech engineer and entrepreneur Ammar Reshi has used ChatGPT and Midjourney to write and illustrate a children's book.
What is your immediate reaction?
Do you feel cheated? That the book is false? That it cannot be any good? That it’s not a real book?
I want to see it and read it and look at the illustrations. Check it out.
I know there are many unhappy authors out there today, worried, scared, angry but finding out its limitations and possibilities is a more positive way forward.
I remember the outcry when eBooks first became available and people were angry, saying paperbacks would disappear…they haven’t. This is a different threat, there could be a tsunami of books and ours lost as flotsam on the shore but there will always be readers who want people written books and stories. We will need to work harder at finding the audience for our books and this means we must embrace all the new technologies and ensure they work for us.
I’d love to hear your opinions and understanding on this subject.
My thoughts so far...
- This technology is not a perfect independent AI, it needs input from creatives, ideas, plot, character ideas, a theme and at the moment the story needs to be a short simple one. It has lots of evolving to do before it can generate a novel.
- Authors could these AI’s to create tighter plots, fill out a character with realistic traits, bounce story ideas with, basic editing, or translation (which Joanna Penn has done with success).
- Using an AI to help with editing and translating will mean an editor or translator is more affordable as they will spend less time on the manuscript which in turn means we can afford to get more books edited and translated so the professionals will receive more work and the quality standard of our books may increase.
- Short, non-fiction books could be generated by these AI’s freeing the author to spend more time creating and fine tuning, and less time fact finding, quote finding, compiling a bibliography etc.
- AI tools will enable an author to keep better track of and expand their earning potential of their intellectual property rights.
- AI’s are a tool.
- This technology will not stop creatives from being creative. It won’t stop storytellers from telling a story. It won’t stop humans from being human.
(Illustration by Monika
Grafik – pixabay)
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