@The Author’s Writer, August 7, 2024.
In late 2022, the AI writing app, ChatGPT, made headlines. I remember a friend showing me the app on his phone. He was so excited about this new technology that he had to show it off, especially since he knows I’m a writer. He suggested I come up with a story idea, which he promptly typed into his phone. The words magically appeared on the screen. I was amazed at how quickly the app could write. But then, I read it and was disappointed. It was grammatically correct, but the content sounded canned and boring, the kind of language a robot would write.
“Well, I’ll ask it to make your story funnier,” my friend said.
The app tried to make the story better, keeping the same basic story, but adding what it considered to be humor. Though the story was intended to be humorous, it was the same kind of humor I had heard many times before. The app wrote nothing original. Just a regurgitation. Yet I could clearly see from the enthusiasm on my friend’s face how this new fad was going to go viral.
For those folks who dislike writing or see writing as a chore or hard work or just don’t have the time, I can see how the app could be seen as a panacea. No more writing. No more thinking. Just let the app do the work. However, it became quite clear to me that the app was going to be problematic for many reasons.
What people may not realize is that writers actually enjoy writing. Writing comes from our heart, soul, and mind. It does not just involve the writing of words on a page. Writing also sharpens thinking. Writing involves analysis, argumentation, comparison, description, exposition, and making sense of research. What will happen to the human brain when it can do none of the above? I think we will find out the answer soon enough, and it won’t be a good one.
When I taught at university and in college, I could spot a plagiarized paper right away. I just had to find a way to prove it. As a graduate student teacher, I remember how one of my professors photocopied every paper ever submitted to her. So, when I received a paper that I thought was plagiarized, I showed it to her. She said it sounded familiar. Can you imagine that? She looked through her file cabinet and she found the original paper. In fact, she was just about to write a letter of recommendation for the student who “loaned” his paper to another and was glad she did not.
Later on, I typed work I suspected to be plagiarized into an internet search bar and found the plagiarism, word for word. It is like the students did not even try to hide they were plagiarizing. They just figured they would not get caught. Today there is plagiarism software, and now, with the advent of ChatGPT, there are AI detecting software programs with 98% accuracy, such as ZeroGPT.
I can spot text written with AI like a bullseye, but I wasn’t sure if anyone else could. Recently, I was pleasantly surprised. I was having a conversation with a woman who designs websites. She asked me if AI was killing jobs for writers. “Only for content writers at the moment,” I said. In turn, I asked her if she could detect AI written content, and she said indeed yes. “It sounds boring and like a textbook,” she said.
ChatGPT acquires its content via internet scraping (the taking of content posted on the internet without the author’s permission). That could mean eBooks, bookstores, online publishers, and even web and social media content. We’ll never know for sure. There are also ongoing class action lawsuits by professional authors who claim that the app stole their books without their consent that have yet to be decided in a court of law. So, there is still a lot of controversy surrounding this app and that’s why I recommend treading lightly if at all… We all get excited about new and trendy things, but rarely consider the ramifications. But what if we did?
Because ChatGPT and other AI-writing apps are new and trendy, I would advise caution because there are many far-reaching implications you may not be aware of, which I’ll discuss in my next blog.
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