Writers whistling past the graveyard when it comes to AI — i.e., pretending that a mere machine will never be able to compete with their wit, style and moxie — encountered a number of rude awakenings in Q3.
PR Newswire, for example — which for decades has provided human-written press releases for tens of thousands of companies — came-out with a new auto-writing productivity suite that bypasses human writers and simply hands-over all the press release writing to AI.
Meanwhile, a major Web-authoring service released a similar suite of tools designed to auto-produce entire SEO-friendly blog posts — including imagery.
And writers like Jack Apollo — who have seen the writing on the wall and realize it was etched there by computers — have already thrown in the towel and are now training AI computers to write better.
In the process, those writers are also engineering their own obsolescence.
Perhaps even more ominous from a job security perspective: ChatGPT released yet another, smarter upgrade, which can think on the PhD level when it comes to dealing with physics, chemistry and biology.
The ChatGPT upgrade also scored a 95-out-of-100 on the Law School Admissions Test.
For those who’ve chosen not to whistle past the graveyard, the road ahead is crystal-clear: AI-generated writing is destined to vacuum-up millions of editing and writing jobs in coming years.
And countless writing pros looking to stay in the business will need to stay up-to-the-second on the latest in AI to ensure they can unearth the remaining nooks-and-crannies where they can continue to ply their trade.
In some cases, this will mean gravitating to the dwindling supply of writing jobs where human writers still have an edge over AI — such as news reporting that hinges heavily on possessing a wide array of human sources willing to provide breaking news insights and data.
And in other cases, accommodating AI’s brave new world will mean becoming the resident expert at your company or business on all things AI writing — as well as on all things other AI that can be used in concert with AI writing tools.
As for writers hoping-against-hope that all these AI breakthroughs are little more than a bad dream: They’ll be increasingly seen as once-useful team members from a quaint, bygone era.
Here’s a closer look at these stories that helped shape AI writing in Q3, along with others chronicling AI’s ongoing, wholesale reimagining of how writing — and all knowledge work, for that matter — will be done:
*PR Newswire Ditches Human Writers for AI Writing:
Public relations juggernaut PR Newswire has released a new suite of AI tools designed to help customers write and distribute press releases.
The AI undergirding the company’s new tools is Google Gemini.
A historical note: In the olden days, before the advent of AI, human writers were the ones who wrote press releases for PR Newswire.
*Blink-of-An-Eye: Popular Web-Authoring Platform Now Automates Posts: Wix has upped-its-game with a new AI suite “that can produce entire SEO-optimized blog posts, right down to the imagery,” according to writer Jess Weatherbed.
One compelling reason to add a blog: Web sites that feature blogs get 86% more organic traffic than those without, according to Einat Halperin, blog general manager, Wix.
Adds Weatherbed: “The new blogging tools also allow business users to connect their blogs to the Wix business solutions platform, enabling them to access features like sending promotional emails to subscribers and linking blog content to pricing plans.”
*Writing Career Suicide — Now With Algorithms: Writer Jack Apollo George has been granted the dubious honor of training AI to make himself obsolete.
Specifically, George is inputting examples of his own writing to help AI chatbots express themselves more eloquently.
Observes George: Working for an AI company as a writer is “a little like being told you are going to be paid a visit by Dracula — and instead of running for the hills, you stayed-in and laid the table.”
*Freelance Writing Dreams Disappearing in a Puff of Code: Add freelancers to the growing list of workers discovering that AI is less a ‘helpful buddy’ and more a ruthless job stealer.
Case in point: Since the advent of ChatGPT, job opportunities in freelance writing have declined 21%, according to a newly updated study.
Observes writer Laura Bratton: “Research shows that easily-automated writing and (computer) coding jobs are being replaced by AI.”
*Fake Writers, Real Profits: Book Writers Plagued by AI Rip-Offs: Many writers selling their books on Amazon say they’re increasingly finding AI rip-offs of their work for sale.
The primary culprits: Suspiciously prolific ‘writers’ who pump-out hundreds of titles per year — but don’t seem to exist in the real world.
Observes writer Kevin Maimann: One of the most prominent suspect authors is “Mari Silva, who has 532 titles on a vast range of spiritual and cultural topics spanning world history, but no visible online presence outside of a vague Amazon author bio with a generic silhouetted photo of a woman.”
*Upgraded ChatGPT Thinks at the PhD Level: OpenAI is out with a new upgrade to ChatGPT that features extremely advanced, in-depth thinking — and outperforms PhD students in physics, chemistry and biology.
The software undergirding the new upgrade — dubbed OpenAI o1 — also offers head-turning new performance highs in math and computer coding.
While the jury is still out on the upgrade’s impact on ChatGPT’s automated writing skills, people who make lots of money every day by relying heavily on writing — i.e., lawyers — will want to take a close look at this enhancement.
The reason: According to OpenAI’s in-house tests, this latest version of its AI software scored 95-out-of-100 on the Law School Admissions Test.
Yikes.
*Google’s Latest Sleight-of-Hand: Transforming Your Article Into a Co-Hosted Podcast: Google AI has come-up with a remarkable new feature that auto-transforms your article, blog post or other text into an extremely engaging, co-hosted podcast.
Essentially, the new tech studies your text, then uses two, extremely lifelike and animated robot voices — one male, one female — to discuss the key points and themes in your piece.
Far from a gimmick, the new feature of Google’s Notebook LM platform can enhance any text-based digital property looking to add highly professional, co-hosted, audio podcasts to its mix.
Click here to listen to an article transformed into a co-hosted podcast, courtesy Google.
*Free-for-All: Open Source Promises Wide Array of AI Writing Tools: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg predicts that writers and others will continue to have a number of AI choices as the tech grows ever–more sophisticated.
A key player in AI writing/chat tech, Zuckerberg has released his AI code as open-source — available to any and all to use and alter.
Observes Zuckerberg: “I don’t think that AI technology is a thing that should be kind of hoarded and — that one company gets to use it to build whatever central, single product that they’re building.”
*82% of College Students Add AI to Their Toolkit: A new Quizlet study finds that 82% of college students are now using AI — with 58% of high school students also onboard.
Observes Meghann Lomas, senior director of product management, Quizlet: “College students are adopting AI at a rapid pace, illustrating that this technology isn’t a trend but rather a profound shift in how they learn and engage with curriculum.”
The survey was based on responses from 1,000 students aged 14-22 and 500 teachers — all based in the U.S.
*AI Big Picture: AI’s Price Wars: For Consumers, Rock-Bottom is the Place to Be: Consumers currently have the upper hand when choosing their preferred AI engine.
Makers of the AI — which undergirds most of the world’s most popular AI chatbots — are essentially giving away developer access to their AI based on hopes that there will be profit in the tech long-term, according to Aidan Gomez, CEO, Cohere.
Observes Gomez: “It’s gonna be like a zero-margin business because there’s so much price dumping. People are giving away the model (AI engine) for free.
“It’ll still be a big business, it’ll still be a pretty high number because people need this tech — it’s growing very quickly — but the margins, at least now, are gonna be very tight.”
Snickered one consumer: “I feel your pain.”
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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.