Writing With A Little Help From AI
Thursday 26th May, 2022 21:48
I like automation and improvement. Things like auto-correct in the browser and text editors are (usually) really helpful, and spelling and grammar tools (albeit inconsistent between Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and others) help improve the overall quality of text. But we're in an age where AI is being used to upscale computer game graphics and standard definition footage (e.g. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), with impressive results. When AI tools can take text and create images, I wondered if AI can be used to assist writing complex things like novels.
Unsurprisingly, AI doesn't appear to be quite there (yet). The text often goes off on strange tangents and occasionally doesn't make much sense. However, given enough content to work with it can help suggest the next paragraph or two, or it can help you rewrite a poorly written paragraph (e.g. rephrasing the text, or adding more description). I looked at a few tools, but only one really stood out.
Overall, the only one I'd recommend would be Sudowrite, but it's still a relatively expensive service. Assuming you're writing a novel, the $29 per month Professional subscription would cost you $348 per year. If you self-publish a novel after a year for $2.99 you'd need to sell over 100 copies before you break even. It's hard to find a reliable statistic, but most fiction books only sell a few hundred copies, and in many cases you will also need to pay to advertise your books. You might write a better book, but you could easily make a loss.
One option might be to take your finished draft and use the $9.99 per month 10000 AI words "Hobby & Student" subscription as a one-off, and using it to focus on the weaker parts of your draft to raise the overall quality. 10000 words might sound like a lot, but for every 1000 words you submit you'll likely see a thousand words of suggested text. I can easily see people burning through 10000 AI words in a day, which may explain why the 200000 AI words per month subscription exists at $99 per month.
Unsurprisingly, AI doesn't appear to be quite there (yet). The text often goes off on strange tangents and occasionally doesn't make much sense. However, given enough content to work with it can help suggest the next paragraph or two, or it can help you rewrite a poorly written paragraph (e.g. rephrasing the text, or adding more description). I looked at a few tools, but only one really stood out.
- Sudowrite (GPT-3) seems interesting, and helped me improve a few paragraphs and increase my overall word count by over 1000 words. There's a fairly generous free trial, but the service itself isn't cheap. Their EZ Cancel Guarantee does suggest it's very easy to cancel your subscription though.
- ShortlyAI (GPT-3) didn't seem that good. Given short paragraphs resulted in pretty useless suggested text. With a story background and larger paragraphs it did much better, but it didn't come up with anything I thought was worth using. It only seems to give you 4 chances to write content with the free trial too. At $79 per month on a Monthly Plan it looks far too expensive to dabble with compared to Sudowrite (the only benefit is the price includes "a daily limit that should not be reached under normal use").
- Rytr (GPT-3) doesn't look suitable for writing novels. It's aimed at copywriting and trivial things like YouTube descriptions. The examples look pretty mediocre. I decided against giving it a try.
- DeepAI (GPT-2) was pretty awful. It took a sentence and generated paragraphs of awful and somewhat strange text.
Overall, the only one I'd recommend would be Sudowrite, but it's still a relatively expensive service. Assuming you're writing a novel, the $29 per month Professional subscription would cost you $348 per year. If you self-publish a novel after a year for $2.99 you'd need to sell over 100 copies before you break even. It's hard to find a reliable statistic, but most fiction books only sell a few hundred copies, and in many cases you will also need to pay to advertise your books. You might write a better book, but you could easily make a loss.
One option might be to take your finished draft and use the $9.99 per month 10000 AI words "Hobby & Student" subscription as a one-off, and using it to focus on the weaker parts of your draft to raise the overall quality. 10000 words might sound like a lot, but for every 1000 words you submit you'll likely see a thousand words of suggested text. I can easily see people burning through 10000 AI words in a day, which may explain why the 200000 AI words per month subscription exists at $99 per month.
