Most writers have editors, and book editors do an enormous amount of the work, but AI editing appears to be seen as questionable.

Writers, even, the very best of the best, who produce bestsellers and magazine articles that fly off the shelf or the page, all have editors—real, flesh-and-blood people with blue pencils. Well, they probably don't use blue pencils anymore because most of the editing would be done on a computer, utilizing some type of software. Therein lies the main issue that I have with the current, extremely rigid algorithms being used to peruse writing. Allow me to explain.

Most of us write independently, in our own domicile,, with no interventions from an editor or other person involved in the creative process. That is, most of us, but not anyone who may write for an online publication or other corporate entity that uses in-house writing. Of course, you will have input and a team working with you on your writing production; that's a given.

However, when you create your own work and submit it to different publications, you might receive polite rejection emails. Why might that be, if your writing is sterling according to their guidelines and you are writing in a generally acceptable style? One question I have is: Are you using editing software?

Editing software, such as ProWritingAid or Grammarly (they keep copies of all of your writing on their platform on the Internet), or Quilbot are all helpful in aiding you in being less complex, more direct or in a style that will be more reader friendly. In fact, Quilbot can turn your text into any of nine different styles and also add specific synonyms if you wish. Many of the software packages will allow you to add to their dictionary and write in a variety of different styles so that you don't have repeated instances of it requesting a word or denying a word.

It is an aid; it is not doing the work for you. And they can also correct your grammar. How many of us are grammarians, anyway? In fact, ProWritingAid’s website indicates that they are providing tools and reports to improve your writing or, as they say, your "confidence." They do not claim to do the writing for you, but I have to wonder how an algorithm will read what they have helped edit when it is finished.

On their website, they also give an example of someone who has used it extensively. "Learn how ProWritingAid has helped bestselling author Leeanna Morgan edit her 59 published novels.” I would suspect that it did exactly what it is supposed to do: provide editing.

Of course, I don't know if these were self-published novels, if she has an agent, or if a brick–and–mortar publisher is involved with them. All things to consider. A video on the site indicates that she had no prior writing experience and that this software was extremely useful; she has won writing competitions while using it, and she has sold half a million copies of her books. That is truly impressive. But I'm not sure how this experience with the software package prepares her to go teach at writing seminars.

I use this software, also, in addition to Grammarly and, occasionally, they seem to fight over what I'm writing, and I have to accept either one or the other. The great thing is that they can give me multiple ways to rephrase something, and their suggestions are always wonderful. How often do I use the word wonderful?

I don't know if the software learns about my writing style as I use it because I haven't noticed that it is something they do, but that would be extremely helpful. They do indicate that they don't use their software along with your writing to train the algorithm.

In fact, I have to question who writes the code for the algorithms that signals something is AI written. Yeah, I don't know who does that, but I have to wonder because it seems to me that it's overly anxious to find things that are “non-human.” I am providing a YouTube video for a good illustration of how detection software works, and what people are trying to do with it.

https://youtu.be/NJ7zhifv1Y4?si=OX6DJDUVeQAawaw

Additionally, because plagiarism and AI-written books and articles are so evident on the Internet, an entire range of AI-detection software is now available at a price. Most of the programs will give you a free trial, but "free" generally means they want you to provide a credit card so that they can automatically charge you once your free trial is over. The fees can be quite high, up to $150 a year, which they charge immediately.

Please be aware of any free programs that are being offered. As I've said before in many of my articles, "downloadable free" doesn't mean it's free; it just means you can download it. Please, don't be led into something, where you are not given all of the information before you make a purchase.

And there are even AI-detection software programs that claim to be able to do better than the other AI detection programs out there. Yes, there is a race to the top, but I have to question all of them. If you use something like ChatGPT, be prepared for your work to be detected and marked as inauthentic.

Should you decide that's the way you want to go and you want to use Chat GPT, you will need to take whatever is generated by that AI platform and transform it into something truly your own. It can serve as a very good basis to give you an outline for something or to help you make certain points, but don't use everything verbatim that has been provided. You will be caught.

It's a great aid, and I have used it to help provide outlines for things I am writing. But I do not take the totality of what they've provided and present it as my own.

Sometimes, you will write something, and you think that, perhaps, you might want to change it in some way. This is where Quilbot can come to play. If you paste the text into an online screen, it can paraphrase it in a variety of different creative writing styles. You don't have to accept the first bit of writing that it produces. You can indicate you want to rephrase everything again and you can do that several times until you are satisfied with what has been provided.

Remember, you are the creative person, but all of us need a bit of editing and, perhaps, grammar help and that's not a problem. But if AI detection programs are scouring the web, and they find something similar, they may indicate it's not human produced product. Be prepared for that.

Now, I expect, I will be hearing from AI detection staff who will advocate for the utility of their programs and how it prevents inauthentic and nonhuman writing product. So be it.