So, it’s 2024. The year of AI.

Yeah, I know. You could have said that about 2023. And maybe we’ll say that about 2025. But the way things are accelerating, it really feels like this year will be the one. The turning point in awareness and mass adoption of artificial intelligence, and next chapter in humanity’s story.

Or, it could just be another year. Either way, we march on.

After the tumultuous events of last November’s OpenAI drama, the tech world settled back into “the race” for AGI. At this point, almost every large tech company is heavily invested in AI and angling for ways to capture the largest share of what’s seen to be a trillion-dollar industry.

But how will mass adoption and normalization of AI affect writers? Are we in danger of replacing all artists with generative AI?

The short-term answer to that question is “probably not.”

As I’ve written before, there is no evidence that AI can create without the training palette provided with humans. By that measure alone, we human writers are still needed. But there are definite areas where we will see a reduction of human-based writing tasks. For instance, AI can generate amazing templates for emails, business letters, resumes, etc. It can help to edit, rewrite, and polish your writing, like the Writer’s Suite of GPTs does. And yes, it can beat out bad to mediocre novels that you can then profit off of.

But AI cannot write a Pulitzer-prize winning novel. It can’t craft the deeply-moving prose about an experience it has not shared, nor understand the complexities of the human soul. Sure, it can identify the emotion of the poem it’s reading or song it’s listening to, but AI can’t feel it — at least not “AI” in its current form.

As for the long-term…

The future is hard to predict and always has been. Flying cars and moon colonization hasn’t happened, but smart phones did — giving us real life “communicators,” “PADDs,” and “tricorders” from Star Trek.

It’s impossible to know exactly what a post-AGI world will look like, and how capable a general intelligence AI might be. Would it be capable of complex and original generations? Could it actually understand what it reads or sees, and use that thought process to replicate human decision-making?

There are too many unknowns to answer that question right now. What’s clear is that, for the immediate future, two things hold true:

1) The mass adoption of AI is coming.

Whether this year or the next, the majority of mankind will incorporate artificial intelligence into their daily lives, forever altering their habits, needs, and desires. As this occurs, human service roles that AI can be replaced will be replaced.

For writers, this means news articles, copywriting, about 95% of blogs (this one included) are at high risk of being automated. Why pay a human when an AI will do just as good a job, or almost as good, for free?

The same goes for entertainment. If you’re a fan of formulaic television shows, you’re in luck. AI will beat them out so fast you’ll be able to request a custom CSI show set in you’re very own town and have AI create it.

If what you’re after doesn’t need to be great, you might find that a steady stream of AI-generated stories, films, and music is “good enough” for your needs. Especially if it comes cheap. Which brings me to the second truth….

2) In the flood of mediocrity, quality will shine brighter than ever before.

Yes, that means as writers we’ll have to up our game and provide something that AI can’t. Now that ChatGPT has done for writing what Youtube did for film and video, you can expect the world will be flooded with low-quality, auto-generated content. And, like it does on Youtube, that low-quality content will meet the needs of millions.

But not all. Not even most. People crave quality content, as exhibited by the subscriber count of Youtube channels that provide it. The same will prove true for all artists facing the AI dilemma, be they writers, illustrators, musicians, etc.

We also don’t yet know how the legal ramifications of AI writing (and other AI art generation) will play out. There are multiple lawsuits in play against companies like OpenAI and Microsoft regarding copyright infringement. It could end up that writers whose material was used to train large-language models are awarded a settlement and compensated for their contribution. This could change laws and open an entirely new revenue stream for not only novelists, but bloggers, journalists, and anyone who has had their writing used for training AI.

Regardless of its eventual legality, don’t expect your AI competition to go away. The reality is writers must raise the bar in quality to grow and retain their audience. If people don’t see the difference in quality between a human-written novel and an AI-written one, they’re going to choose whichever is cheapest. (Hint: It won’t be the human-written one).

Put simply, great writers will be fine. Good writers will need to adapt. Bad writers will struggle, and may have to seek another line of work.

Luckily, the same tools that work against us can be put to work for us. When used correctly, AI is an amazing tool for writers. Below, are just a few use cases for it that are applicable to writing.

1. Content Generation: AI can assist with generating ideas, plots, characters, or even entire drafts, allowing writers to explore more creative avenues or overcome writer’s block.
2. Editing and Proofreading: AI tools can provide grammar checks, style suggestions, and even consistency checks in narratives, significantly reducing editing time and improving the quality of the writing.
3. Research Assistance: AI can quickly gather, summarize, and reference material relevant to a writer’s project, saving time on research.
4. Language Translation: AI-powered translation tools enable authors to reach a global audience by quickly translating their work into multiple languages while maintaining the nuances of the original text.
5. Market Analysis: AI can analyze market trends and reader preferences, helping writers and publishers make informed decisions about what topics or genres might be successful.
6. Personalized Feedback: AI can simulate reader responses to the text, providing insights into how an audience might react to certain story elements or writing styles.
7. Interactive Storytelling: For writers in the gaming and interactive media industry, AI can be used to create dynamic narratives that change based on user interaction, creating a more personalized experience for the user.
8. Publishing Support: AI can streamline the publishing process by automating layout designs, optimizing for SEO, and even predicting market success based on comparative analysis with existing literature.
9. Enhancing Creativity: By suggesting alternative phrases, words, or sentences, AI can help authors think differently about their writing, thus enhancing creativity and expanding their stylistic range.
10. Audiobook Creation: AI can convert text into speech, enabling writers to produce audiobook versions of their work without the need for expensive production and narration.

In fact, I used AI to quickly generate the list above, saving me a few minute writing this blog.

2024 isn’t the end of the world for writers. But it is a new world — one in which we all need to adapt. Good or bad, AI is here to stay, and the time to begin working with it, instead of fearing it, is now.

Happy New Year!