Using AI to Write

 Using AI to Write A Blog Post

AI generated image of our future

There has been so much hype about CHAT GPT and other AI lately; that a future of AI means an end to writing! And end to creativity! And end to what makes us human!

Is it true?

I've taken on the task of testing out a few AI systems. Nothing too in depth. You know, kicking the wheels, lifting the hood, just to get an idea of how good they really are at writing.

Perplexity AI

I've fiddled around with this AI, attempting different prompts and questions. Asking it to write me a blog post, asking it to write me a scene in a story, asking it to write me a cold call email for a big charity donation.

I was surprised at how well Perplexity wrote the email. It sounded professional, well thought out, persuasive, and ready to copy and paste.

The other requests - make up a scene in a story, and write me a blog post - were utter crap.

The request for a blog post gave me a few bullet point ideas and a very weak introductory blurb. I do have to say the ideas were decent, and Perplexity does give you links to the sites it used for research. So, I can't complain too much. It gave me a solid foundation for a blog post, but I would have to do a bit of research to flesh it out. It was far away from an easy cut and paste. I thought AI was supposed to eliminate all the work? 

The creative writing request was a pile of dog shit! I asked it to write a short scene where my character finds a hidden panel in the wall. Behind the panel is a safe. I asked for excitement and suspense. What I got back was two paragraphs full of repetitive, short sentences, and cliche lines ... "her heartbeat quickened", that kind of thing. The writing felt exactly like an AI wrote it. If I were actually trying to use this to help me write an actual short story or novel, I would have used maybe one sentence...and that's a stretch.  

Rytr.me

It's pronounced 'writer'. With a name like that you'd think this AI bot would be the new Hemingway of the digital revolution. 

It's not, but does an okay job of 'creative' writing. A similar prompt of 'write me a scene...' gave me a readable, yet still cliche filled, page of prose. However, it still felt very stiff and robotic. There was actually some dialogue, which sounded vaguely human. But the chatter had little character or personality, however, it wasn't that far off something I might write in a first draft.

Where Rytr did shine was when I asked it to write me a blog post.

First Rytr came up with a few ideas / topics I might want to add. From there I could 'expand' the ideas I wanted and Rytr took on the time consuming job of writing a little blurb. This non-fiction type of writing was great. It flowed nicely, the facts were there, and even the casual tone (which I asked for) rang true. Much, much better than the 'creative writing'.

 

So if AI is the future of writing, then us humans can feel pretty confident that we will still have plenty of job security in the areas of writing, especially writing anything creative. Non-creative writing will be made much easier if you treat AI like a tool to do the foundation work, and you just come along afterwards and add the finishing touches.