It’s difficult to picture a single author producing a full-length novel every nine weeks, but Jennifer Lepp told the Verge that’s exactly what she does.
To keep up with demand and earn a living wage, independent novelists are producing books faster than ever.
Lepp, whose pen name is Leanne Leeds, revealed to the bar that she has been utilising an artificial intelligence tool to assist with her writing, which has made her more productive. Instead of relying on a precise spreadsheet with daily word count targets in order to fulfil her difficult deadlines, she can now fine-tune bits of copy or find inspiration for a passage.
“It’s just words,” Lepp told the Verge. “It’s my story, my characters, my world. I came up with it. So what if a computer wrote them?”
Imaginary Future
The tool used by Lepp is called Sudowrite, and it is based on OpenAI’s GPT-3 machine learning model. Writers can test the software before purchasing it. Like many AIs built to create artwork in multiple mediums based on prompts, getting useful pieces of text requires practice and ability – users must learn to communicate their ideas with the AI, making the process analogous to a machine-human partnership.
Writing by AI is contentious. One professor and author interviewed by The Verge deserted social media for periods of time as a result of opposition to her embrace of AI writing.
Uncertainty surrounds the number of authors who will use AI and how it will impact future book sales, but one thing is certain: AI storytelling is here, regardless of how we feel about it.
Summary
There are numerous upcoming AI (artificial intelligence) applications and software. It is still in the infant pricing stage, as many of them are still somewhat more expensive to adopt over time. In the near future, however, if Cathie Wood‘s forecast is accurate, nearly all of us will begin to incorporate AI technology into our daily lives.
