What Keeps Me Up at Night When I Think About AI

Yes, AI is coming for writers. But there are some things AI can't write (yet).

This is a post about which writing jobs are most likely to be overtaken by AI in the coming months, and which writers will survive AI for the time being. If you are a fiction writer or memoirist who is starting to wonder, “Why write? Do I have a future?”, this post is for you. If you are a paid subscriber, I recommend reading I Asked Chat GPT to Write Fiction and It Turned into a Moral Showdown and listening to AI Implications for Writers. If you are not a paid subscriber, you can access the full archives with a 7-day free trial.

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Yesterday, my husband’s friend, whose daughter is getting married soon, revealed that he had asked ChatGPT to write a father-of-the-bride speech. He asked it to create this speech based on a certain faith, one that has fewer than 10 million adherents. Although he won’t be using the speech, he found it “surprisingly elegant.”

As a writer, the “elegant” part concerns me. The phrase “not your father’s technology” no longer applies. Today’s AI language is not even last month’s technology. It is moving too fast, it is getting too good, and it poses a threat to writers in every field.

That said, some writers will be safer than others, for now. We’ll get to that in a minute. First, let’s talk about how the power players in creative fields are striking a deal with the devil.

Before the Writers Guild of American went on strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on May 2, it created a list of proposals. Among them was a statement about artificial intelligence.

Regulate use of artificial intelligence on MBA-covered projects. AI can’t write or rewrite literary material; can’t be used as source material, and MBA-covered material can’t be used to train AI.

According to WGA, the AMPTP rejected this proposal, instead “offering annual meetings to discuss advancements in technology.”

AI is moving too fast, it is getting too good, and it poses a threat to writers in every field.

In other words, AMPTP is going to use AI as much as it wants. In its own four-page response, covered in the Hollywood Reporter, the AMPTP acknowledged that AI “raises hard, important creative and legal questions for everybody.”

The question we writers were pondering a few of months ago: Will AI take my job? has become more urgent at the same time the answer has become more obvious: eventually, probably, yes.

I am a novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Based on my own experiments with ChatGPT and Google’s less clunky Bard AI, I think the writing jobs most at stake from AI are copywriters, advertising writers, content writers, and screenwriters — a particular type of screenwriter, but we’ll get to that in a minute. (We won’t even talk about mathematicians, coders, researchers, and many of the previously “safe” STEM jobs that stand to suffer a seismic shift from AI).

As it stands now, AI can write plot. (sort of), but it can’t really write nuance. In my role as the publisher of

Fiction Attic Press

, for example, I’m not concerned that I’ll inadvertently publish AI-written stories, because AI can’t write like this.

That doesn’t mean that novelists are safe. In a Twitter exchange with an AI program that ostensibly benefits authors, the representative responded: “We work directly with major publishers and have gained the vast majority of our corpus through them and use works with their awareness and permission.”

This was in response to my asking whether it was ethical for Authors AI to charge $97 per month for services that were trained on copyrighted books, when the original human creators of those books received no compensation whatsoever. The program claimed,

We follow research and copyright requirements for data mining, which requires purchase of the physical book, scanning of each page, conversion of the pdfs into OCR text, and then analysis.

When I pointed out that the royalty an author receives from a single book is anywhere from about a dollar to $2.50 and asked whether it was ethical to pay mere pennies to the authors when their copyrighted work is generating such high revenue for the company, I got no reply. And that does seem to be the current state of affairs with the AI engines, because there is nothing new under the sun: We can, so we do, and that’s that.

The question we writers were pondering a few weeks ago: Will AI take my job? seems to have become more urgent at the same time the answer has become more obvious: eventually, probably, yes.

Content writers and coders will be the first to go

The most obvious arena for a full AI takeover is in the field of copywriting and “content” writing. AI can generate a list of anything in seconds, which means all those clickbait listicles of the Buzzfeed variety can be handled in a morning by a single “editor” at a website without the need of writers.

Copywriters are already losing their jobs to AI. As AI gets better and companies get more comfortable with the ethical implications of replacing their human workforce with cheap AI language models, the jobs will disappear altogether.

In an article on the 10 Roles AI Is Most Likely to Replace for Business Insider, Aaron Mom and Jacob Zinkula Business Insider start with the traditionally “safe” jobs touted for the last twenty to thirty years as the gold mine of the professional world—”coders, computer programmers, software engineers, data analysts.” All of those parents who pushed their kids kicking and screaming into STEM in the last few years may wish they had allowed their kids to follow their own paths.

That said, no traditional professional path is entirely safe from an eventual AI takeover. Second on the list are media jobs: “advertising, technical writing, content creation, journalism.” (It is not difficult to imagine a flipped economic class system, in which jobs that still must be done by human hands—traditional “blue collar” jobs—are the most profitable and the most coveted).

The Good News: AI can’t write Patriot, The Bureau, or Barry

The best stuff on television can’t be written by AI. The TV shows Patriot and Barry, both of which are brilliant and groundbreaking, come to mind. Part of what makes these shows so unusual is that they work against stereotype. AI is great at regurgitating stereotypes: hard-boiled cops, repentant sinners, kindly grandmas — but absolute crap at developing character complexity. AI can’t, at this time, write with the speedy wit of West Wing or the nuanced brutality of The Shield. It can’t write with the weird vitality of Everything Everywhere All at Once or the uncanny realism of the French television series The Bureau.

The worst TV and screenwriters, like AI, are great at regurgitating stereotyples. The screenwriters who won’t be needed anymore are those who are already recycling old TV tropes — the dime-a-dozen cop shows with cardboard good cop/bad cop pairings, the paint-by-numbers romances where the female lead is a children’s ballet teacher, florist, or pastry chef and the male lead is an architect or woodworker. I stopped watching FBI shows on TV a long time ago because most of them are obviously written by people who have never talked to an FBI agent and are instead basing their stories and characters on other TV shows they’ve watched.

AI is great at writing what it has already seen before. My concern is that, working in cahoots with publishers and producers, it will eventually get better at writing stories, characters, and dialogue that feel complex and nuanced. Unfortunately, the publishers and producers don’t even need to be in cahoots with the creators of AI language learning models for this to happen. The cat is out of the bag. Way out. Even if they wanted to put it back in the bag (as I assume publishers will want to do), it’s much too late.

The adaptation conundrum

The biggest problem by far for screenwriters, however, lies in the adaptation. Hollywood in recent years has relied heavily on source material instead of original screenplays. A lot of literature has entered the public domain in recent years that is ripe for adaptation, including works by Agatha Christie, Virginia Woolf, F Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Franz Kafka, Edith Wharton. Movies enter the public domain too, which means studios can remake old films.

Yesterday, I experimented with a classic novel now in the public domain. I asked an AI program to adapt the novel into a screenplay. It took about fifty prompts to get there, but at the end of two hours I had a complete screenplay. It wasn’t original, mind you: the dialogue was flat and lifeless, the characters ill-defined. It was rife with dull repetition. It was a terrible screenplay. But what AI was able to do with a modicum of skill was outline the acts and scenes, then turn each scene into pages of script. A studio could easily generate hundreds of such scripts, then go to a writer and ask them to “punch up” the dialogue.

AI can’t write memoir

I imagine that memoir will become bigger business in the publishing houses. After all, AI can’t legitimately write memoir. It can write a pathetic semblance of one, if you give it the right prompts, but it can’t write memoir worth reading. And obviously, the contract between memoirists and readers is much different from the contract between novelists and readers. A reader of memoir wants a good true story told by a real person about their real life. A reader of novels wants a good story. Eventually (though certainly not yet), AI may very well be capable of telling a good story.

AI can’t write tone

My husband just read me the first ten pages of a novel he’s working on. It made me laugh out loud. It was odd and brilliant. It was, as they say in the publishing world, “high concept,” but beyond that the writing had tremendous personality. AI can’t do that…yet. Even if you ask AI to “write in the style of Nabokov,” it still sounds like AI. That may (and probably will) change. In such a world — a world where AI can mimic the best of the real-life writers of the past — writers who have something original to say, and an original style in which to say it, will win out. They will still have a place (I hope).

Sturm and drang?

But is all of this just sturm and drang? Are writers just being luddites, fearing the big bad wolf of technology? I’ve spent some time with ChatGPT, BardAI, and a slew of other AI language learning platforms. I’ve also heard from coders whose months-long work has suddenly been reduced to hours by feeding ideas and images into AI.

Writers’ alarm over AI is definitely not sturm and drang. AI is coming for our jobs. It’s too soon to tell which ones will be safe for a decade or so, and which ones will be historical artifacts not five years from now, but five months from now.

What Bard AI said when I asked if it would take my job

I leave you with this essay generated by BardAI. It took under 30 seconds, from prompt to finished essay.

Prompt: Write a 1000 word essay on how AI threatens the livelihoods of writers.

Here’s the response. I’ve bolded a couple of the more alarming sentences.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has had a profound impact on many industries, and the field of writing is no exception. As AI-powered writing tools become more sophisticated, they are increasingly capable of producing high-quality content that can rival the work of human writers. This has led to concerns that AI could eventually displace human writers from their jobs, leaving them without a livelihood.

There are a number of reasons why AI poses a threat to the livelihood of writers. First, AI-powered writing tools are becoming increasingly affordable and accessible. This means that even small businesses and individuals can now afford to use these tools, which was not the case in the past. Second, AI-powered writing tools are becoming increasingly sophisticated. They can now generate content that is indistinguishable from human-written content, and they can do so much faster than humans can. This means that businesses are increasingly likely to use AI-powered writing tools instead of human writers, simply because it is more cost-effective.

The threat posed by AI to the livelihood of writers is not just theoretical. In recent years, there have been a number of cases where AI-powered writing tools have been used to replace human writers. For example, in 2019, the Associated Press announced that it would be using AI-powered writing tools to generate up to 30% of its sports content. This decision was met with protests from human writers, who argued that it would lead to job losses.

The threat posed by AI to the livelihood of writers is real, but it is important to note that it is not inevitable. There are a number of things that writers can do to protect themselves from the threat of AI, including:

Developing specialized skills. One way to protect yourself from the threat of AI is to develop specialized skills that AI cannot easily replicate. For example, writers who are experts in a particular field or who have a unique writing style may be less vulnerable to being replaced by AI.

Focusing on creativity. Another way to protect yourself from the threat of AI is to focus on creativity. AI is very good at generating content that is factually accurate, but it is not as good at generating content that is creative or original. Writers who can focus on creativity and originality will be more likely to succeed in the future.

Collaborating with AI. Rather than seeing AI as a threat, writers can also see it as an opportunity. AI can be used to automate tasks that are time-consuming or repetitive, freeing up writers to focus on more creative and strategic work. Additionally, AI can be used to generate new ideas and perspectives, which can help writers to improve their work.

The rise of AI is a challenge for writers, but it is not an insurmountable one. By developing specialized skills, focusing on creativity, and collaborating with AI, writers can position themselves for success in the future.

In addition to the above, here are some other things that writers can do to protect themselves from the threat of AI:

Stay up-to-date on the latest developments in AI. The field of AI is constantly evolving, so it is important for writers to stay up-to-date on the latest developments. This will help them to understand how AI is being used in the writing industry and to develop strategies for adapting to these changes.

Network with other writers. Networking with other writers can help writers to stay informed about the latest trends in the industry and to learn from each other’s experiences. This can be especially helpful for writers who are new to the field or who are looking for new ways to generate income.

Be proactive. Rather than waiting for AI to take their jobs, writers should be proactive and take steps to protect themselves. This could involve developing new skills, building relationships with potential employers, or starting their own businesses.

The rise of AI is a challenge for writers, but it is not an insurmountable one. By taking the steps outlined above, writers can position themselves for success in the future.

So there you have it, writers. Position yourself for success, wait for the literary apocalypse, and while you’re at it, you might want to write a memoir.

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Michelle Richmond is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels and two story collections. She mentors writers through Fiction and Memoir Master Class.