Recent legal decisions are making AI a more mainstream issue for authors to absorb. You may not be using Chat GPT prompts to generate new writing, because it’s such a painstaking process. A recent webinar is showing authors how much AI will be able to do for you, once it’s been given a sample of your writing. You create your own robot, so the work stays private.
The first legal ruling stated that AI cannot call on your writing to train itself how to write without your permission. A Federal judge said that Fair Use, a term that permits reusing sentences and paragraphs in nonfiction, would not protect AI companies. Then a Supreme Court ruling overturned that decision. What’s at stake is how authors and publishing companies will be compensated by AI firms like Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic. You need to show a loss of revenues. Right now, the revenues lost would be those you might earn from licensing access to your work.
There is Promise
The concept of AI continues to evolve. Much of it harkens back to the original search engine and search talents. In my novel Viral Times, Milo Sensei is a digger, a human trained to prompt supercomputers for answers. AI is a modern Milo, operating instantly, finding anything that’s already been reported or written.
But Milo’s gifts were human, rooted in a writing voice. He searched for facts, not literature or artistic expression in my novel. In the same way, AI is much better at creating nonfiction writing. What it will lack — for who knows how long — is that sense of an author’s voice. You’ll want a helper for your tone, too. Voice is the magic in writing, expressing things as if a human was telling you a story. Editors craft books to follow the contours of an author’s voice. Insight, empathy, and artistic judgment are still best delivered by a human editor.
A good editor doesn’t just correct your mistakes. Your writing is as unique as a fingerprint. AI technology won’t replace editors. It can empower editors to do more of the work authors do best, writing that resonates with the power of a voice.
