New Fiction: Will AI be the Arbiter of Cool?

Jukka Aalho, a poet who published a book of poems written by GPT-3 — a powerful AI-generated writing tool — believes the rise of automated writing could change the way creative writers forge fiction.

Like their brethren in advertising and marketing, fiction writers may start turning to AI for analytical help to improve their writing.

AI can help fiction writers determine, for example:

~What is the best title for my novel?

~What formula should I use in the first pages of my book to hook a reader?

~What books do readers finish — and what features do those books share in common?

Observes Aalho: “There will eventually be an editor AI — let’s call it HemingwAI — that scores your text based on some fancy machine learning.

“Maybe HemingwAI can suggest a few ways of optimizing your opening scene.

“Maybe you look them through and say — well, this could work if I do it like this.

And perhaps chillingly for many authors: “Maybe your book deal states that you have to abide by the suggestions made by your editor — or HemingwAI,” Aalho observes.

(For an in-depth look at GPT-3, check out: “GPT-3 and AI Writing: Stunning, if Imperfect,” by Joe Dysart.

*In other AI-generated writing news:

*In-Depth Review: Anyword: Jeff Bullas, a long-time player in digital marketing, has endorsed a new offering in AI automated writing software: Anyword.

Observes Bullas: “With Anyword, all you need to do is add a URL from your Web site, such as a product or sales page, select the type of copy you need, and the AI software will generate original content optimized for performance.”

Observes Bullas: “Using software to write marketing copy is significantly cheaper than hiring expert writers to produce the same number of optimized text variations.

“For example, Anyword starts at just $19 a month for up to 15,000 words of copy.

“As well as cost savings, the software produces copy almost instantly — much faster than a human can.”

Adds Bullas: ” Artificial Intelligence technology combined with natural language processing takes the guesswork out of writing high-converting copy and makes your job as a marketer a whole lot easier.”

*Microsoft and GPT-3: In the Catbird Seat: Microsoft’s decision to invest a billion dollars in the makers of GPT-3 — research group OpenAI — virtually guarantees the tech goliath’s success with GPT-3, according to Ben Dickson.

Dickson is a writer for VentureBeat.

The reason? In exchange for the billion dollars, OpenAI gave Microsoft access to the source code for GPT-3 — which no other company enjoys.

Instead, researchers and entrepreneurs must license use of GPT-3 from Microsoft to create apps that sit atop the supercomputer-driven, auto-text generator.

That enables Microsoft to look over their shoulders, see what they’re up to — and use those insights to enhance existing Microsoft products, or develop new Microsoft products.

Observes Dickson: GPT-3 essentially serves as a “product research project for Microsoft.

“Whatever use case any company finds for GPT-3, Microsoft will be able to do it faster, cheaper, and with better accuracy thanks to its exclusive access to the language model.

“This gives Microsoft a unique advantage to dominate most markets that take shape around GPT-3.

“And this is why I think most companies that are building products on top of the GPT-3 API (application programming interface) are doomed to fail.”

*A Novelist’s Take on AI-Generated Writing: Like many writers, novelist Erik Hoel eyes automated writer GPT-3 with trepidation.

Observes Hoel: “The anxiety I feel toward it is different than toward any writer that once lived and breathed.

“I think it represents the first warning shots of an impending man versus machine.”

Hoel says he took GPT-3 for a test-drive by first feeding the software with a blurb detailing the gist of his first novel.

Then, he added a first few sentences from a scene in that novel and let GPT-3 do its magic.

The result? GPT-3, with a bit of editing help from Hoel, cranked-out a convincing resolution of that scene — rendered in Hoel’s writing style.

Observes Hoel: GPT-3 is a “fine first-draft writer in short bursts — especially since it can generate paragraphs about one thousand times faster than a human.”

*Free Competitor to GPT-3 Gets an Upgrade: EleutherAI — an open source software group that offers a free alternative to GPT-3 — has released an upgrade of its automated writing software.

The new version, dubbed GPT-J — boasts 6 billion parameters — and brings the software much closer to the power of GPT-3, which utilizes 175 billion parameters to write text automatically.

Observes Connor Leahy, a founding member of EleutherAI: “We think it’s probably fair to say this is currently the best open source auto-regressive language model you can get.”

*AI in News Media: Ready or Not, Here It Comes: David Caswell, an early adopter of AI in journalism, says more editors and journalists need to realize that AI is already forever altering the face of news media.

Caswell is executive product manager, BBC News Labs.

Essentially, more news editors and journalists need to grasp that the proliferation of AI in all forms of media is inevitable, according to Caswell.

The only choice at this point is to embrace AI — or get out of the way — he indicates.

Observes Caswell: “Someone is going to use all this stuff for news purposes in one way or another, and I really hope that we’re able to do it with professional values-drive journalism.

“But the same tools are available to the entire media ecosystem.

“I sometimes worry that folks don’t appreciate that it’s not decades away — it’s months or maybe a few years away at most.”

*Brand Style Governor for Writing Snares $60 Million in Funding: Yet another automation software program that specializes in ensuring company writers adhere to a brand’s writing style and tone has snared new funding.

This time, it’s Templafy — an automated writing style assistant used by big corporate players like KPMG, IKEA and BDO — which netted $60 million in new funding.

Observes Paul Sawers, a writer for VentureBeat: “Founded out of Denmark in 2014, Templafy helps businesses tightly control their corporate templates, documents, fonts, email signatures, and more, ensuring employees across departments can easily access what they need from wherever they are.”

*Retresco Upgrades AI Writing Software: AI-generated writing pioneer Retresco has a new version of its software out.

The change: The software now auto-generates full sentence alternatives.

Essentially, users input sample sentences into Retresco’s AI — and the software spits out an alternative sentence in a split second.

The capability is perfect for marketers looking for new spins on short copy text, slogans, pithy social media posts and the like.

Essentially: Don’t like the sentence you’ve got? Keep feeding it back into Retresco’s AI until it comes out with a winner.

*Amazon Releases Free Prototype AI Writer: Retail titan Amazon has released a prototype AI writer that generates writing from data tables.

Dubbed ‘Data Tuner,’ the experimental software is free for noncommercial use and available for download at GitHub.

Observes Isabel Groves, a computational linguist at Amazon’s Alexa AI: “DataTuner pushes the state-of-the-art by significant margins.”

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*Best AI-Generated Writing Software: One Marketer’s Take: Affiliate marketer Devender Kumar has come out with his own list of top AI-generated writing packages, which features Conversion.ai, Article Forge, Write Sonic, Rytr, Writer Zen and Nichess.

Conversion.ai is high on Kumar’s list, given that it enables a user “not only to generate high-quality articles but it has many other bundles of features that will help you to optimize marketing strategy to get exponential growth in your business.”

Overall, Kumar’s piece offers a representative sampling of the key features you’ll find in current AI-generated writing packages — which cost as little as $69/year.

Share a Link:  Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.

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Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

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