I saw an advertisement for something called Designerr. They were saying ‘Publish a book in minutes without writing a single word’.
As a writer, I think this is disgusting. I emailed them to their help line, which was the only method of getting in touch unless you wanted to sign up, and got a reply asking how they could help me. I’ve just sent the following reply.
This is not a plea for help, it’s just me giving my opinion. AI ‘writing’ books is a terrible idea. It cannot understand what it’s doing, nor the underlying craft of writing. It only knows what words usually follow another.
AI knows nothing of people and their emotions, which are important parts of writing meaningful books. The stuff it churns out is dreadful, so I’ve been told.
AI can only learn from scraping books already published by hard-working authors who spend many months, or even years getting a book to a standard where it’s ready for publishing. Many of these books that are scraped are pirated, too.
To suggest that someone can publish a book in minutes without writing a single word is disgusting, and an insult to genuine authors.
And you are taking work away from real writers!
My opinion. I suppose you’ll have yours. I’d be interested to hear from you about it.
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Dragons Rule OK. V.M.Sang (author) 
There are really amazing uses for AI, some we’ll be finding for generations, but writing a book isn’t one of them. Then again, I’ve a few dull books lately (recommened by bloggers) that I felt could have been better if they had let AI edit it for errors.
I’m curious if they replied… and if they used AI to write that reply.
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Hi. AI us good for helping with editing and has been for years. Think Grammarly, Hemmingway and spell checks. It’s just not for writing books, painting art works, nor writing music. How long before it’s sculpting using 3D printers?
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The idea of publishing books without writing a word is absurd. Unfortunately, I suspect it is being done. I wonder if those “books” are being read?
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I suspect they are, Audrey.
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I wonder if they’ll write you back, Viv.
I read one book that I’m pretty sure was written by AI, or partly by AI. It was a struggle, and about 1/3 of way through, I just couldn’t take it anymore and stopped.
The most obvious things I notice were:
–cliched descriptions
–cliched emotions (everything “weighed heavily” on everyone, for example)
–no sense at all of pacing.
The cliches make sense since AI algorithms search for the most common, acceptable, popular, and repeated verbiage. It doesn’t look for obscure writing.
The pacing is terrible, because AI doesn’t understand the whole story or the emotional impact each scene is striving for.
I think a story published in minutes without writing a single word can’t be anything more than regurgitated algorithms. What else could it be?
Thanks for sticking up for writers. 😀
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Yes, educated people, especially educated writers will spot these things, but will Joe or Joan Blogs?
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I think readers know the difference between an riveting book and one that just doesn’t grab them. They may not know WHY, but they know.
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Yes, you’re probably right, Diana. There are some, of course, who will enjoy a poorly written book. I read a dreadful one that made the NY Times best seller list, but in the reviews it had an awful lot of 1*.
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Algorithms aren’t a great indicator of quality, only quantity.
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I agree with you, Vivienne. I don’t like AI to start with but this “book in minutes” is pretty disgusting.
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My thoughts exactly.
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I agree with you.
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I find it really odd that any one would want to write a book written by AI. It’s not like self published authors generally make much money. For most of us the joy is in the creation process so I fail to see the point.
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I suspect that many people only see the highly successful writers who are household names. They see they are making quite a lot of money and wrongly extrapolate that all authors are doing so, and think that’s an easy way to become rich, or at least give up the day job.
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Yes, I think you must be correct about that. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
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I can’t think of any other reason, either. Unless they want the kudos of saying they’ve written a book!
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💝
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