Artificial Intelligence for Writers

My Take on AI

I don’t advocate using AI to write the text of a story for the following reasons:

I don’t believe it’s ethical to put my name on something I didn’t create.
Having an AI write for me doesn’t allow me to practice and elevate my craft.

However, I do believe AI is a useful tool when used responsibly. All writers use tools like a thesaurus, a spelling checker, or Google Search. Do these tools mean the writer isn’t using their own words? AI tools can be used to assist the writer, especially with tedious work, like finding inconsistencies or plot holes.

The prompts and suggestions below are meant to demonstrate some of the capabilities (and limitations) of what AI can do.

Tools

Website Gemini.Google.com

Best Features remembering long conversations, deep research, producing images, and audio overviews of uploaded documents.

Limiting Features Google has built several models, each with different capabilities, so you may have to switch between them. Experimental models use your data for future training. Login (Google account) gives you access to advanced features, past chats.

Enable Privacy In the left menu, click on Settings & help > Activity > Turn Off

Website Copilot.microsoft.com (for Windows 10 and 11, it’s also an app on your computer)

Best Features Excellent voice chat; one-click use from the Windows taskbar

Limiting Features Small query size (~2000 words); on the web, best experience is with the Edge browser

Privacy only for paid users (and free users who haven’t logged in) can opt out of model training [more info]

Website Chatgpt.com

Best Features Scene and text analysis, creating images (limited), canvas to do collaborative editing

Limiting Features advanced features like canvas or image creation have limited daily use. Login gives you access to advanced features, past chats, more than 5 queries.

Enable Privacy Click on your profile image; Settings > Data Controls > Improve the Model for Everyone > Off

Website Claude.ai

Best Features uploading large documents, text analysis, understanding creative writing, creating visual diagrams of story structure

Limiting Features Claude’s servers are often overloaded, so usage limits are often reduced, and model output is downgraded; requires login email or Google account.

Privacy Click on your profile > Settings > Privacy. Disable “Help Improve Claude”

Ideogram create images from text descriptions

suno.com generate songs from lyrics

NotebookLM generate reports (and podcasts) from your uploaded files

Google Illuminate create audio overviews of webpages