AI's in the Writing Industry: Why There is Hope for Writers
With so many jobs being made redundant by machines, many of us are wondering if our careers are next. Until now, I have never considered the possibility of my writing career being taken from me by a robot, but as technology progresses, I'm left wondering how long it will be before I'm replaced by something smarter, faster, and cheaper than I am.
So, how good is AI writing?
If their memes are anything to go by, we should be fine. While there can be some genuinely funny content, it’s mostly down to chance, meaning that most of the content is nonsensical at best.
After a little research, I've found several AI generated parodies on YouTube and while they can be quite funny, that's really just because of how ridiculous they are. Here are some examples with some of my favourite ridiculous quotes:
This is the first one I watched, where a bot writes a Batman script after watching 100 hours of Batman. My favourite quotes from this have to be ‘An explosion explodes’, “Alfred, give birth to Robin”, and, of course, ‘Batman looks around for his parents, but they are still dead. This makes him have anger.’
Next, is a parody chapter of Harry Potter. Out of all of the attempts AI has made, this has to be my favourite. ‘The password was “BEEF WOMEN”, ‘Harry tore his eyes from his head and threw them into the forest’, and ‘The tall Death Eater was wearing a shirt that said ‘Hermione Has Forgotten How To Dance,’ so Hermione dipped his face in mud.’
After many videos and laughs, I realised that AI still has a long way to go when it comes to understanding human speech. While the AI’s outcome is comic and fairly popular, like any joke, the more you read of it, the less funny it becomes. Can you imagine reading a whole novel written by one of these bots? I’m fairly certain even the most dedicated readers would give up on that one. I’m not saying that human writing is perfect – in fact, sometimes it’s barely better than the Ai’s, but I think you’ll find that most of our writings – especially those that have been published by a large publishing company – are leagues above anything produced by AI.
While I hope these examples are funny, I also hope that you, like me, are now less worried about AI and feel more confident in your future as a writer.
by Yazmin White
About the briefs and co-ops
On week 1 of the Post-Digital Content module, students where asked to respond to the brief of Writers and Hope. This piece from the De Riguer co-op was selected for publication by the editorial team of the module. De Rigueur focuses on reaching the widest audience awaits. In this piece, Yazmin researchers AI writing bots and shares her findings.