Michigan College Offers Course in AI Writing

In a move that will most likely rattle untold numbers of professors, Western Michigan University has slated a course for this fall entitled “AI Writing and Response.”

The new offering is designed for students looking to use AI writing and similar tech in their future careers.

Enabling students to bone-up on the latest technologies in AI writing comes at a time when many colleges, universities and K-12 educators are shunning the tech in the classroom.

Says Brian Gogan, associate professor, English, WMU: “It was important for me to show that our students have a competitive edge moving into the workforce.”

Apparently, WMU students need to make the equivalent of a ‘pinky swear’ not to use what they learn about AI writing to cheat on assignments, research and essays that they’re assigned while attending college.

Yeah.

That’ll work.

In other analysis of AI writing news:

*In-Depth Guide: Rytr 2023: If you’re looking for virtually every single detail you can imagine about AI writer Rytr, this is the place to click.

The guide, presented by Kripesh Adwani, truly leaves no stone left unturned when it comes to examining the tool from essentially every conceivable angle.

The upshot: Rytr is one of the least expensive, highest writing quality AI writers you can use — although Adwani notes that it has a few shortcomings, including limited input options.

*AI Written Press Releases: Options for PR Pros: Roxhill Media offers an up-close look at the approach various AI writing services use to spit-out a press release after they’re prompted to do so by a user.

Featured in this wrap-up are press releases autowritten by Canva, ChatGPT, EINPresswire, TinyWow and CopyAI.

Bottom line: The piece does a good job of making clear that the kind of press release you auto-generate with AI can vary markedly — depending on the AI writer you select.

Currently, Toolify.ai offers links to 240 services that offer AI-automated writing.

*Bad Reviews From Cranky Customers?: Let the AI Bot Deal With It: Bringing lip service to a new level, Yext has released a new tool that automatically replies to reviews that customers post about companies on social media.

Essentially, the tool is designed to analyze the tone and sentiment of a post or review — and then spit-out a ‘brand-tone-appropriate’ response.

Companies using the service never even need to read any of the reviews customers post.

Instead, customers will essentially be reduced to offering praise — or complaints — to an algorithm.

*Wink-and-a-Nod: Grammarly Adding ‘Student-Friendly’ Features: Generative AI tool Grammarly — a wildly popular grammar, spelling and editing tool that has added AI-generated writing to its mix — is coming out with special features for students this fall.

Those additions are designed to help students:

~Brainstorm and plan a writing assignment

~Build a research plan for a college essay

~Offer counterarguments for an essay they’re working on

~Generate text for their essays

~Include citations for AI-generated text

The tool will also be programmed to remind students not to use the company’s AI writer — GrammarlyGo — to essentially write their paper for them.

No word yet if the tool will also admonish students that there are ‘no backsies’ once they agree not to use the tool to essentially autowrite their essays.

*Shaking the Money Tree: Local News Outlets Snare $5 Million+ From OpenAI: ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has tossed the American Journalism Project $5 million to help fund local news outlets looking to experiment with AI.

Plus, OpenAI has set side aside another $5 million that AJP ‘portfolio companies’ are eligible to use to engage in additional AI experimentation.

Observes Sarabeth Berman, CEO, AJP: “We see this as an opportunity to create a feedback loop between OpenAI and the local journalism industry.”

*Writer Revolt: 8,500+ Authors Rise-up Against ChatGPT ‘Training’ Practices: A growing wave of writers are calling-out the maker of ChatGPT and other AI writing toolmakers for using their written work without their permission — and without compensation.

For years, AI researchers have used writing found on the Web to train their AI writers to become more skillful and effective.

Observes writer John Boitnott: “The letter requests that AI companies obtain permission before using copyrighted content in generative AI programs, pay authors fairly for the use of their works in AI programs, both historically and currently, and pay authors fairly for the use of their works in AI output — regardless of whether or not the outputs infringe on existing law.”

I could live with that.

*The End of AI’s Free Lunch?: Top News Companies Looking to Sue AI Writing Firms: Add a number of top news publishers to the list of media creators ticked-off at AI firms that have used their intellectual property to train AI writers.

Observes writer Siladitya Ray: “According to Semafor, The New York Times, News Corp, Axel Springer, Dotdash Meredith owner IAC and others are in the process of forming a coalition to take on AI giants like Google and OpenAI.”

“Publishers’ primary concern is reportedly how AI will impact traffic to their Web sites from Google searches — as the AI chatbots may simply scrape that data from their pages and serve it to the user without attribution or links.”

*Columnist: AI Industry’s Commitment to Safety — All Gums, No Teeth: New York Times Columnist Kevin Roose writes that an AI industry pact with the Biden Administration to engage responsibly with the tech — triggered in part by the wild popularity of ChatGPT — has no real bite.

Observes Roose: “Overall, the White House’s deal with AI companies seems more symbolic than substantive.

“There is no enforcement mechanism to make sure companies follow these commitments.

“And many of them reflect precautions that AI companies are already taking.”

Even so, Roose observes, the voluntary working arrangement is better than nothing: “Getting the companies — Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI — to agree to anything is a step forward.

“They include bitter rivals with subtle — but important — differences in the ways they’re approaching AI research and development.”

*AI Big Picture: Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kid: You have to hand it to the people behind OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT: They think big.

The UK’s Daily Mail reports OpenAI has begun scanning and identifying images of people’s eyeballs.

The plan: Those people can use the images in future years to prove they are bonafide human beings — and not robots.

Observes writer Jim Norton: “The firm has put football-sized ‘Worldcoin’ scanning devices in locations in Britain and 19 other countries.

“Passers-by are encouraged to have their irises scanned to generate a unique digital record called a World ID.”

For their trouble, participants in Britain receive payment of 25 crypto-currency tokens.

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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.