One of the things that is unfortunately becoming more common with the creation of programs like ChatGPT is the idea of using A.I. to write a novel for you. The problem with using such software is that, even if you end up with a novel, it's a novel that you didn't write. You're not a writer. You're not an author. You're, at most, a concept creator. You're taking a general idea and having software write the actual story. It's blatantly dishonest to call yourself the author if you didn't actually write the novel. At best, if you're one of those people who end up self-publishing an A.I. written novel, you should be honest by saying something along the lines of "Concept by [your name], Written by ChatGPT". Anything less than that just essentially makes you a plagiarist.
However, that's not to say that such a process (well, a similar one, at least) is entirely unheard of in the writing industry. There are a number of established authors who use ghostwriters or secondary writers/collaborators who take story summaries and turn them into novels. Famous established authors such as Tom Clancy and James Patterson are known to use ghostwriters from time to time, where Clancy or Patterson contribute a story summary or a limited number of chapters to a collaborator who essentially fills in the parts in between. Ghostwriters also can be used when an author has passed away with an unfinished story/novel. "Latitudes" by Michael Crichton was finished after Crichton died. Theoretically, programs like ChatGPT could be used in that manner, but even then, the use of A.I. is still heavily frowned upon by the writing industry.
I personally don't use A.I. at all for writing any of my novels, as I see no need to do so, but I can see where there are ways that some writers, especially newer writers, could use it to assist them. If, when going over your finished story, you find the occasional paragraph that just feels sloppy, and you're not sure how to fix it, using A.I. to generate some variations of the paragraph could make it a helpful tool... as long as you're not just copying and pasting what you get. But if you use it as a reference to give you some ideas on how to better word the occasional sloppy paragraph, it's not such a bad thing. In a way, it's not that unlike using using Cliff's Notes (for you younger people reading this who have never heard of these, they were essentially pre-internet summaries of books/novels that gave the general plots and storylines in a pamphlet form so you didn't necessarily have to read an entire book or novel to get what it was about) as an assistance tool when writing a book report. Again, as long as you didn't just plagiarize the summary from the Cliff's Notes into your book report, it proved useful. A.I. as reference material? Not so bad. A.I. as shortcut or replacement for actually writing? NO. Bad. Very bad. No cookie for you.
That's not to say that I haven't used A.!. at all. While I don't use it at all for writing, it is a useful tool for generating concept art that can be used for character description or cover design. For me, when I come up with a cover art idea, I create the cover art in Photoshop and either generate elements to include, like a background or a sky, or take the finished concept from Photoshop or a photo I've taken and run it through an A.I. program to generate some variations on the concept. It can be useful on the design process if you are using a variety of different mediums such as photos, drawings and 3d models to create a cover concept. As an example, in the book trailer that I made, I took a stock photo image of a small cave entrance and ran it through an A.I. image generation software to get this image:
It looks like a regular photo, but it is, in fact, an entirely A.I. generated image.
Or, after hours of experimentation with various A.I. image generation models, this concept art for the kingdom of Vedyria:
So, A.I. can be useful when it comes to things like location concept art, character concept art, and so on, especially when combined with image editing software like Photoshop that you can use to touch things up. And trust me, touch ups are often necessary when it comes to A.I. generated art. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details. The Vedyria concept art included here is pre-touch up. If you look closely, you'll probably notice little errors like towers connected to nothing, incomplete flags, stairways and walkways leading to nowhere, double doors, random windows and so on. So even if you use A.I. to assist you in image creation, there's still going to be a lot of work that will need to be done, and it's best if you learn how to use Photoshop or a similar image editing software if you're going to use A.I. It should be seen as a single tool in your toolbox, not a replacement for doing the actual work yourself. Nothing worth doing is easy.
But when it comes to the actual writing of your novel, if you want to call yourself a novelist or an author, it's still best to do the actual writing yourself. Taking shortcuts like using programs like ChatGPT to do the work for you might get you some brief sales on Amazon if you self-publish, but it won't be too long before readers start seeing that there's no consistency to your writing style, or there's a variety of nonsensical paragraphs, or that the story itself makes no sense, and it will ultimately lead to a bad reputation for you and what you are showing the world. And if that happens, even if you eventually start to write your own novels without A.I. help, you will have already lost the faith of your readers, who now see you as a fraud and your books will end up as yet another piece of junk to be thrown on the literary garbage heap.
Note:
This was entirely created by me in Photoshop.
No A.I. was used in the design or creation of Lia's pin.
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