Artificial Intelligence has been mentioned a lot recently. Some people fear it. Some people celebrate it and others couldn't care less. Personally, I am ok with it as long as it remains legless, it has limited functions / abilities and we remain in control of it.

As a creative, I hear other creatives worry about it. They fear that it'll steal their job as a writer or an artist. Before this post, I did an experiment using Anywords. I got it to type some blog posts for me. Not this one. I ran out of credits—the Anywords currency system—and the tool is super expensive. But I was curious. And when I'm curious, I need to know.

Nothing can fix that curiosity more than experience and play.

So I tried Anyword and a few others to see how it worked and what I felt about them. I only had enough credits for four posts on Anyword, and it didn't finish the fourth one. Other text generators gave me less credits. However, Anyword did work really well. I told it what the topic was and bullet pointed what I wanted each section to mention. The sections were not long, but it did help me by turning the bullet points into clear sentences and expanding on the point based on context.

Would Artificial Intelligence generating text make us lazy?

There's some concern that AI would make us lazy. We'd stop creating art. We'd let it create stories and blog articles for us and we'd just sit back. To some extent, this may be true. It'd be a quick way to get something written down for sure. There will be people who would use the content it generates without revision. But true artists wouldn't do this.

What I did notice is that with the blog posts I tested the software on, it sped up the time I spent writing a blog. You see, I have some rules for my blog. Each post cannot fall below 1000 words. There has to be a header every 300 words or less. And the paragraphs need to be short enough that people will find them easier to read on a phone. It's a pain.

This is to make the content readable and engaging to my readers and to make search engines like Google happy.

AI would help me reach these goals easily in about a fifth of the time it takes me to do it manually. But here's the thing... because AI did the boring and laborious stuff for me, I was able to fine-tune the content and make it more engaging. I could expand on it. What it gave me was the skeleton, I added the blood, the bones, the flesh.

Maybe some bloggers and writers would be lazy. Maybe they won't change the content that the AI generates. But, you'd be able to tell. It'd be too stiff. Too formal, too clean.

Each of the posts that the AI made, to me it read more like an outline rather than something I'd want to share. Once the AI has done it's work, the challenge for the blogger or writer is to edit it and make it their own. Give the content a voice, a soul, authority that only comes with human nature.

Plagiarism - something to be mindful of

When testing text generators, I googled some of the phrases that came up. Some of them were almost identical. Sometimes in large chunks. If someone had decided only to use AI to generate their blog posts and it was something popular—like a TV show—then the chances are that it would have taken the content from places on the web. It may have rephrased some of it but kept enough that it was clear it's a copy.

For this reason revise it. Give it some character so that it's not a copy that the generator took, but something that has originality from you. The bones will still save plenty of time, but revising it will make it human.

Even without the risk of plagiarism, I'd advice this. It's the human behind the words people would want. I would also not use it for any form of research. It is 100% obvious when AI has been used for research. Lecturers are aware (I've heard many of them discuss it). They know what to look out for, and AI—hopefully on purpose—gives the wrong citation.

Will A.I. destroy artists?

No, no, definitely not. AI can only give you information it knows. It gives you fact. It can help you brainstorm on what already exists. And it might be able to generate something—from what already exists. But it cannot be original. March 2022, Zadie Smith said art captures consciousness.

When you are listening to Mozart or Ed Sheeran, when you are reading Dickens or Tolkien, when you look at a piece of art by Turner or Picasso, you are looking into their consciousness. But it's more than that: a mirror of your own is coming out at the same time.

I don't think Artificial Intelligence, when it generates art, will capture this effect. By it's own definition, it doesn't have a consciousness. Yes, if it draws a piece of art, you as the viewer may get some form of interpretation from it, but I doubt it would be the same. In my test articles, what came up was initially bland. It was perfect. Essay-like.

Any human would be able to tell it wasn't real text simply because it was too perfect and too essay like. The tone just wouldn't resinate. Part of the magic drawing you in would be lost. People crave that magic... the magic of being a conscious being. Capturing the uncomfortableness, uneasiness, and the beauty of life.

I think this is true of all artist forms. I'm a writer, I see characters move across in my head like they're performing on set. I will know if it flows and whether the development works. Similarly, photographers—like my dad—capture light i and painters place brushstrokes to capture a scene. I'm confident AI cannot do this. It cannot capture life.Because the art of perfection for the artist is in the imperfection.

Artificial Intelligence generating quality text

With the few posts that I was able to use artificial intelligence for, Anyword was great. After I gave it a summary of what to talk about, it was mostly able to turn it into clear paragraphs that expressed my meaning, in a formal and robotic way—I mean... what would you expect from a robot?

But it was good with some posts and poor with others. Interestingly, it was better at generating text for personal experience. I used it to help me write a post about my experience with shoes. It worked really well, I could edit what I needed to edit, add creativity where I needed, fix what it got wrong.

Where did it struggle?

Media.

It was poor at writing an article about media—specifically, disability in a TV show. For awhile now, I have been wanting to write a blog post about Yennifer from the TV show The Witcher. My issue is, I cannot write it without it making it sound like I'm angry about it—it always becomes an angry rant. I've tried to tone it down. I can't.

So I thought, "lets see if AI can help me here."

In the summary, I expressed my negative feelings for Yennifer and how disability is portrayed for her. But it appears that the generater saw the key words: Yennifer and The Witcher and decided to write a positive review about the show instead. So, currently there is no post about Yennifer. That may change if a friend is able to guest blog for me in a way that is more objective than I can do.

Am I afraid of AI?

Yes and no.

Truth is, a lot of things scare me. I'm the kind of person, where as a kid, I tried to find the perfect "earthquake safety spot" after learning about them, even though I live in the UK and Earthquakes are extremely rare and not powerful. I have a strong sense of self-preservation. With that, I'm not afraid that Artificial Intelligence is going to steal my creativity. A true artist lives to create. I think it will aid me to produce better content and remove barriers that I face due to physical limitations.

Just... I don't think I would like to see what it could do if we gave it legs or wheels. Too much of iRobot and similar have made me fear what AI could become capable of if it did become sentient and gained mobility.

Although K9 wouldn't be bad.

No. It's best to have AI software that does its specific function only. So have AI be only a text generator... or have it be something that controls our home devices. If it is programmed with limited power, there is less to worry about. If we attempt to give it as many functions as humans and then make it mobile, that's when I'll get scared... and yes, I don't like the idea of self-driven cars.

But as a tool for writing, no I'm not afraid of a robot that can only write on surface level. I can write at a deeper level in revision. I would never get it to "write" a novel for me. A skeleton of a novel is different to a skeleton of a blog post on personal experience. It would most likely create more work in prose than just doing an outline myself. Even if this wasn't the case though, it would take away my voice, it wouldn't show my creativity.

I'm not pro A.I and I think people who use it to sell content they stole created is wrong. I think you can use it to help with outlining, getting skeletons of experience or concepts down as a base and then rework it into something different (kinda like a prompt). Those that use it and do nothing to make it their own are nothing to fear. Their work won't have any soul to it.

If you want to hear opinions from another then look at My Rocking Disabled Life.