Will ChatGPT Replace Writers?

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Will ChatGPT Replace Writers?

Will ChatGPT, or more importantly, rapidly developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) replace writers? 

I’ve been wondering about this since 2018, when I first read about AI in books like Superintelligence, Homo Deus, and Future of the Mind. 

I was fascinated by what AI could do and its implications for humanity. I’d thought it would eventually replace all professionals and eventually, even the human race.

And ChatGPT was the first time we saw AI in an accessible, creative, and user-friendly way. 

As a writer, it was scary…to say the least. 

So, will ChatGPT replace all writers?

No. 

Will it replace most of them?

Yes. 

Writers working on top-of-funnel, informational content? Gone. Because ChatGPT is better at documenting processes and outlining step-by-step guides than most humans. And it can complete these tasks in a fraction of the time. 

It's not wise to reject the advantages offered by AI: speed, inspiration and examples.

Every single time I’ve seen ChatGPT failing miserably, it’s because of a poorly executed prompt. 

Writers repurposing content into different formats? No longer needed because ChatGPT can do it with a flick of the wrist. 

But this is not a dismal post about how writers are doomed with the rise of ChatGPT. This is a motivational post about which writers are at risk and what you can do to pivot.

So let’s get started!

Low-risk writing roles

1. Creative writing

Every human being has a unique perspective about things, people, or places. This aspect of creativity remains untouched by ChatGPT. It cannot replicate the voice of human beings that is loaded with emotions and outlooks from a different mind. 

If you fear that ChatGPT will catch up—hone your creative skills. 

“Flexibility means moving into new lucrative markets and opportunities, if you need to. What worked two years ago, might not work today (Hi, ChatGPT).” - Mike Keenan

Writers should develop a voice they’ll be known for and adapt to a unique style that AI or machine learning cannot replicate.

2. Screenwriting

ChatGPT lacks the ability to develop the complex emotions behind the characters, associate names with personalities, create a dialogue or write a plot that is unique and out of this world. 

Screenwriting is time-consuming, and it takes days or even months to nail a single character due to complex character development and their role in a story. 

Screenwriters can secure their jobs even more if they focus on writing compelling stories and striking a connection with their viewers through audience research and a focus on human emotions. Screenwriters shape the existence of characters from scratch, which is not possible for ChatGPT, and puts this profession at a low risk of being affected by AI.

3. Poetry

AI-generated poems are usually monotonous and high on the fancy lexicon. Poetry inspires and bedazzles people with flowing verses, metaphors, and lyricism. Huddling sentences together through AI creates a few winning passages but the rest of them can be unimpressive. 

The symbolism and hidden meaning behind a poem is the most precious aspect of it. Poets evoke powerful emotions and write from their experiences, making their poetry iconic. They can enhance their importance further with a unique style and leveraging on personal experiences that nobody knows about!

4. Opinion pieces

ChatGPT cannot imitate interpretive intelligence.

If I want an opinion on a controversial subject, I’d much rather talk to a human being than a machine. That’s because personal opinion is more effective when a human voice is attached to it. The drama, the emotions, and the little side stories are indispensable parts of an opinion piece that AI will find hard to replace. 

Writers can continue their expressive commentaries on social and other pressing issues to avoid competition from AI.

5. Editorial Content

Editorial content is exclusive, and if anyone can write it with AI, it’ll lose its intended purpose. Editorial judgment is irreplaceable and acts on knowledge acquired over the years. 

Editorial writers should continue to provide this unbiased guidance to their readers and not worry about AI. They can upskill by adding more topics under their specialization belt and using AI to enhance their efficiency further.

6. Academic writing 

ChatGPT can do basic research assignments but cannot create academic papers from scratch as they involve rigorous research. These papers are bundles and boundless of ongoing research and analysis, which is possible only when the writer is proficient in the subject.

Academic writers can thrive with ChatGPT if they keep providing in-depth analysis of a subject and contributing more to its current status. 

7. Ghostwriting

Ghostwriters are essential for the writing ecosystem. They help businesses and clients save time and money and increase revenue with their unique skills to capture a voice and create content from their client’s perspectives. 

AI cannot replicate the same voice over and over again for different topics, which creates inconsistencies and leads to more editing work. A ghostwriter does it all and 

more with their unique abilities to touch on a topic without compromising on the quality. 

Disadvantages of ChatGPT

ChatGPT quickly generates valid results for simple prompts like, “Write a poem about winters.” However artists, researchers, and writers(like me!) have found some flaws you should be aware of while using ChatGPT for important work. 

My findings are:

1. Result Duplicacy

ChatGPT aims to serve unique results that are informative and meaningful. My discovery says otherwise. 

When given the prompt, “Write a short paragraph on the use of AI in education,” from two different IDs, the chatbot’s results were merely paraphrased and lacked the distinctiveness two separate writers would have. 

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Starting with the first line, both the answers say the same thing about “AI transforming education and reforming traditional teaching methods and learning experiences.” 

As a writer, using ChatGPT for a competitor piece leads to plagiarism and fails to provide a fresh perspective to the topic. When a writer creates a blog, it’s like an A-R-T for them. Each word and line comes from their soul and connects with the reader. 

Hence, ChatGPT needs more of the imperative sense of freshness needed for a write-up.

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2. Logical questions confuse ChatGPT

A user on Reddit says, 

“The key thing that underpins all large language models (LLMs) is that they only know things by association. It gobbles up huge amounts of text and mines them for patterns. You can ask a LLM what 1+1 is and it'll spit out 2 because it has associated "1+1" with "2", because those two text strings are often together. But it doesn't understand the actual mathematics you are asking it to do. You could feed a LLM's training data with "1+1 = banana" enough times and it would be an equally valid association as far as it is concerned. “

ChatGPT is a language processing model. Its primary goal is to imitate human live conversations, learn, and grow from its experience and online information. It doesn’t have a mathematical model embedded in the foundation. Hence, it often gives wrong results for complex questions. 

As a writer, if you want to do some calculations or logical questions for a tech piece, you should double-check the answer before using it in the article. 

For example, questions like, “What is (99167804/768592085497).”

It’s better to use a calculator that purely seeks all information from AI. 

This quality is the same as a calculator. This application can do everything arithmetic, but you cannot ask it to write a short note on “Writer’s block.”

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3. You cannot copy paste from ChatGPT

Writers should talk through their writing. You need to add emotions, be accurate, and add sources. 

Your blog piece should definitely not have instances like this:

This answer retains the actual meaning of the term “Deforestation” but reads like a paragraph in an elementary book. 

If you’re a passionate climate change and sustainability writer, your expression will reflect much more emotion about the same term and the harmful effects of it. 

Before you use ChatGPT’s results, it is important to scour the text for changes and sourceless facts, add your voice, or paraphrase the whole thing to make it yours. 

ChatGPT can support long-form assignments when you want a definition or quote within seconds.

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4. Plagiarism

ChatGPT doesn’t fully plagiarize content from online sources. At Least not in the traditional way of copying. But it does paraphrase, reuse, restructure with no citations, etc.

ChatGPT works on the Natural Language Processing (NLP) model, which means it trains from the data and conversations online and generates new results from its acquired knowledge. The answers are still not original because they are based on a limited data set and have similar online search instances. 

To avoid  any plagiarism claim in the writing, writers should:

• Modify their prompts and add specific instructions on tone, time, length, etc.
• Search and add the source for any fact or quote yourself (AI models cannot cite sources)
• Be responsible and take inspiration to create your version of the text

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5. Limited knowledge 

When asked about the, “Latest news on climate change”, ChatGPT says,

ChatGPT learns on supervised labels. It goes through a training session which allows it to snapshot the information and provide information based on its knowledge tank. After the training is done, it has a “Knowledge Cutoff”. This is why it cannot provide current news or affairs on any topic.

If you want to cite the latest trends and learn about new topics, developments in the world. It's better to use a search engine than using ChatGPT. 

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How can writers use ChatGPT like a tool?

ChatGPT is resourceful for writers. You can get definitions, summary, a new quote, or do comparisons on it within seconds. You can become a great writer by utilizing ChatGPT and other tools like Wordtune. You just need to know the right ways to use them as a writing assistant. These ways are:

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1. To generate topic ideas

You can generate topic ideas for almost any genre by providing your topic and brief details on the type of ideas you want. 

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ChatGPT gives you specific and straightforward ideas to use for your blog posts and rank at the top of searches. Since it doesn’t sugarcoat each word, you can get hundreds of ideas without worrying about making modifications or wasting your time on idea research.

You can review these topics and select the ones that are most relevant to your target audience and trending among them.

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2. Generate outlines

You can generate the framework or outline for your next article with the help of ChatGPT. You can provide instructions for subheadings and areas to avoid creating a precise version. The more you elaborate a prompt, the better results you get. 

This screenshot shows you how to get these results.

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Result:

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It’s not the outline I've used, but the inspiration is there. I’ve extracted the main points and given them my touch to make it sound more personal. If you don’t like the first outline, you can always ask it to refresh and create a new one.You can also provide context about headings and subheadings to make it more comprehensive. 

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3. Keyword research

Keywords help optimize your content and target the right searches. The use of the right keywords in the content helps enhance the rank, increase relevance, stick to the topic, and target a niche audience. 

You can use ChatGPT to search short-form keywords, long-tail keywords, competitor keywords, and more.

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This will help you get ideas on new keywords and blog posts to write about and also define areas where your audience is more interesting these days.

However, ChatGPT only makes sense for generic search. You can do better keyword research with sophisticated tools with features like SEO score, keywords usage, SERP analysis, etc. If you want to create a long term keyword strategy, it’s best to combine ChatGPT results with other tools.

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4. Create meta titles

If you give a prompt with the topic, ChatGPT creates catchy and simple meta descriptions and saves your time. 

Here’s an example:

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You can combine different meta descriptions or ask for new ones that fit your needs. 

This is not all, you can also use ChatGPT for title generation, editing your copy, creating brand jingles, ad copy, or a script for Youtube videos. It can help you accelerate business and scale it with maximum time utilization. 

Does Google penalize AI content?

To reward online content, Google follows the E-E-A-T (expertise, experience, authoritativeness, trustworthiness). It rewards helpful content, no matter how it is produced. It does not penalize AI content but appreciates the human effort to keep online content unique and spam-free. 

To avoid attempts at rank manipulation and AI techniques, Google uses the SpamBrain System, which reduces spam and malicious content. It helps with spam links and results in 40% scammy results that could be more meaningful. 

Search engines do not hate AI content. They just love genuine emotions and knowledge more. That being said, you can combine your writing vision with AI content to make the best use of this online resource and bring more clarity, so—experiment and play with AI powers, but don’t let it take over you. 

Writers can thrive with the assistance of AI

AI will not replace writers anytime soon, but writers who use AI might. A writer’s emotional touch and emotional intelligence will always stay in demand. AI is the means to provide efficiency and create better results cutting down on research time and bringing more attention to detail. 

AI is a pivot point in writing where writers can tackle long and detailed assignments in less time thorough research with AI. Moreover, AI does good work of creating basic content and ideation, which writers can use to build their personal brand and score more deals. 

“Why won't AI replace writers?

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”  - E.L. Doctorow

AI can be a writer’s headlight in that fog and help them reach the destination faster than the estimated time with its insights. 

Lastly, don’t dread the existence of AI; up-skill, learn, and implement new ideas and information to be an evergreen writer.

“If you really care about writing, you'll keep a firm grip on the steering wheel, and only let AI give you some turbo throttle.”  - Ben Pines