The Great Fiction of AI

How is writing going to be affected by AI tools like Sudowrite? Josh Dzieza has written this fabulous piece for the Verge called The Great Fiction of AI in hope of finding some answers. He tells the story of Jennifer Lepp, a fiction writer who uses these tools to help her crank out books faster:

Gradually, Lepp figured out how to steer the AI. She likened the process to divination. She had to edit and revise its output. But, even then, she found that it lightened the load of a job that, as much as she loved it, was mentally draining. She no longer ended each day struggling to summon the prose she needed to hit her target, exhausted. The words came easier.

In a decade or so there’s gonna be a big story about how someone wrote a novel with nothing but pen and paper. No AI! No search engines! No side kicks! It’ll be a huge story about how this kid locked themselves away in a cabin near a beach and literally wrote a manuscript with only their melancholy and loneliness to guide the way.

And we will look upon them and feel jealous of their bravery.