OKAY, I ADMIT IT, I have a problem with copy generated by AI chatbots. That’s hardly surprising, you might think, after all I’m a human who has written for a living for more than half a century. But, to be clear, I’m not in fear of my livelihood - it’s just that chatbot copy is so often very badly done.
But don’t take it from me. I asked the AI chatbot Chat GPT what the problem is with writing produced by artificial intelligence (AI).
It was refreshingly honest, and instantly came up with a list of eight failings that can make AI-driven writing ‘unnatural or imperfect’.
These were, in order:
Lack of contextual understanding, which can ‘lead to responses that are technically correct but lack depth or relevance’.
Limited creativity, which can lead to predictable or repetitive outputs.
Inconsistent quality, which includes ‘nonsensical or grammatically incorrect phrases’.
Difficulty with complex or abstract concepts.
Bias and inaccuracy.
Lack of emotional intelligence, which means that it can struggle to convey empathy or understand the emotional context of a conversation.
Over-reliance on training data.
Unintended outputs that are offensive, inappropriate or nonsensical.
All of this may be true, but my particular gripe is that chatbots don’t understand the ‘art’ of writing; the rhythms and music of language. Chatbots can train on Shakespeare and Blake, but that doesn’t make them poets. They also scatter adjectives and adverbs around like a farmer sowing seed, never realising that adjectives are strengthened by the distance between them and are best used sparingly. They often produce overwritten and florid work as a result. It’s ugly writing.
Fortunately, chatbots still defer to humans, for now. I asked toolbaz.com about the problems AI has with creative writing. Its answer included: lack of originality, emotional resonance, cohesion and structure. It concluded:
“While AI can serve as a useful tool for brainstorming ideas or overcoming writer’s block, its limitations highlight the irreplaceable value of human creativity, intuition and the lived experience that often form the backbone of compelling storytelling.”
AI, it said, can ‘mimic styles’ based on training data but would struggle to develop its own distinctive voice. Quite.
Even so, there is growing evidence that websites in particular are filling up with badly-written, unedited chatbot copy, perhaps because good writers can be quite rare even in the human population. Those websites will, of course, be ‘scraped’ by the large language models used to train other chatbots. I can’t imagine that AI writing will emerge much improved.