ChatGPT and other generative AI models are becoming part and parcel of our everyday lives. Many of us are already finding these products infiltrating our working lives, and writers in particular are keen on these tools.
It can seem like a dream: a tool that will effectively act as an editor and proofreader, saving you time, effort and, of course, money. It can produce content quickly, and if you don’t look at it too closely, the content can appear pretty impressive.
But is it worth it for the cost? Not only are these tools incredibly bad for the environment and helping perpetrate misinformation online, but they’re also awful for your mental wellbeing and mind.
A recent study from MIT shows that writers using ChatGPT over using Google, or other manual methods of research had reduced brain function and lost the ability to think critically. This was only over a short period of time, and so it’s probably safe to say that the results will be even more stark over the years that many people have already been using it.
While the study is just one, and not necessarily fully representative of everyone, the results do make sense. After all, if you’re being handed the answers, you’re highly unlikely to start thinking critically and using your own brain. We’re creatures of habit, and if we’re given the answers on a plate, we’ll eventually stop thinking for ourselves.
Much like people who use calculators all the time and lose the ability to carry out simple sums, people who use ChatGPT all the time are likely to stop thinking and struggle with future creativity.
While large technology companies compare AI to washing machines or cookers, they ignore the fact that those appliances improve safety and don’t diminish actual skills. It’s also critical to remember that many huge technology companies investing in or developing AI tools have a vested interest in making you think that they are useful and important. They’ve spent too much money to go back now, but that doesn’t mean that these solutions are useful or good for society, especially not writers.
There is also the ethical issue to consider. ChatGPT and other LLMs (large language models) use other people’s writing and just spin it up into something that’s just different enough. That means that not only will your work be completely unoriginal, but it’ll basically be plagiarised from other writers.
Not to mention, ChatGPT is already experiencing what is known as model drift, where each iteration learns from content churned out by the previous version and gets worse.
So, what does that mean for writers? The job demands creativity, and if we lose that, what are we going to do? As such, I think anyone in the writing industry should avoid using ChatGPT for writing.
That isn’t to say that you can’t make the most of it for other tasks. It can be helpful for some tasks, such as managing data, but when it comes to creating anything, it’s neither effective nor ethical.
The same goes for creating cover designs. Personally, AI images are incredibly easy to spot, and given that there are so many great artists out there, I think authors should just hire them rather than wasting resources getting AI to make themselves something substandard.
Most writers are avoiding AI, but there are instances where self-published authors and get rich quick con merchants are being caught out using LLMs. If you’re thinking about using it to save time and get your books published quicker, think about how it’ll affect your critical thinking skills.
While I’m not a published author, I write for a living in the SEO space, and spend most of my life writing in some shape or form. Thanks to my extensive practice, I have found it easy to speed up over the years, and having spent some short time using ChatGPT and Claude to try and produce more quicker, I gave up pretty quickly because of the poor quality.
If you struggle to write and find it hard, you should definitely practice more, rather than using ChatGPT as a short cut. It’ll only make you worse in the long run. I’d recommend avoiding ChatGPT, but I’d be interested to hear different opinions, so please feel free to comment with yours!
