There are vigorous discussions on (what else) the Interwebs
regarding the replacement of creative wordsmiths (what we aspire to be) with artificial
intelligence.
Someday, soon, even yesterday, we will be obsolete, the
writers and poets say, trembling. Look at the amazing results AI had spawned so
far: can you tell which was written by an individual human and which was
spawned from the bank of many human contributors in the past by artificial Intelligence
algorithms?
For the most mundane texts, it’s not easy to discern. AI is
(still? maybe always?) not quite up to the marvels of human creativity when it
comes to the upper ends of the never-before imagined.
The other day, I resorted to using Chat GPT* for a task many
writers dread: finding comparable titles to the one we are submitting for
agents/editors’ consideration. This new requirement in standard submission
forms had left many of us even more despondent than writing synopses. Synopses already
felt like a cruel denigration of long and layered works.
This request for comparables, “Comps” for short, never feels right. After
all, we like to think of our work as unique, one of a kind, none other quite like it. 😏
Adding injury to insult, the requirement is supposed to be for
2-3 recent tiles, published less than three years before by major publishers. Say what? How many novels are we expected to read while crafting our own?
And this brings me to Chat GPT*. This
article here is an almost perfect use of this tool. Of course, once it brought
titles to my specified search, I realized I needed to refine it. But then, the
comps were not only appropriate but led me to read a couple of the titles
because they were too wonderful sounding not to. This tool turns out to be an
effective marketer to boot.
©Josh Gosfield
When Chat GPT* replaces the older search models, it is akin
to a better factory machine. These machines can never make a handmade object,
but they sure save on the more tedious tasks that human labor will gladly give
up.
It still requires a final inspection by a real live human.
*Bing's chat feature will do this adequately also and is in some ways more up to date. It doesn't require a sign-in or charge. Google's Bard, which I haven't checked yet, is rated lower by most, but it aspires to eventually match Bing's chat.
