Warning: if you use tools like Grammarly, you need to check the output.

[Maelstrom556]

Exactly. The idea that AI is saying write your book with the readers in mind when it comes to "comfort level" is 100% hogwash.

I can't say this enough; this is your work, not theirs.
You're doing the hard labor, not them.
We're not designing a bathroom here, we're writing books.
Your vision matters, not the readers'.
Your viewpoint matters, not the readers'.
Your comfort matters, not the readers'
If Grammarly tells you it's "comfortable" with something, tell it to go straight to Hell and keep writing. ??

Full stop. .

True enough. Some agents may disagree, but that's part of the difference between wanting to just write to get your story out there and trying to cater to people for mass publication. But I 100% agree that if an AI is telling you about comfort levels, that's just whack. I wouldn't be surprised if that feature was added for the social brownie points.

 

[AliceMoonvale]

We use the premium version of Grammsrly here.

Under NO circumstances should writers allow the AI to do ANYTHING. Just accept spelling/grammar mistakes. That's IT. Don't ask it for anything else. Don't even except it's "comfort" bullshit either. ("I'm comfortable about..." ) Also, be aware it is very politically correct and "woke". For instance, it doesn't like the words "blindly" or " elderly" and will attempt to inform you that it's insulting.

And this is why I hate AI when it's used for the wrong purpose.

Lmao, I had a similar thing happen.

I was jotting down sentences I might use, and Grammarly flagged one I wrote.
It was something like; this such and such thing fell on deaf ears. Grammarly was like Um, y'know, that's kinda ableist language to say something like that in your writing. ?

Neat, I didn't ask. Since when did we start gatekeeping the word deaf?
It's not like I wrote: THEY COULDN'T UNDERSTAND CAUSE THEIR EARS ARE SO CRIPPLED, GANG.

I get some good laughs every so often from this program. lol

 

[LeilaniOtter]

True enough. Some agents may disagree, but that's part of the difference between wanting to just write to get your story out there and trying to cater to people for mass publication. But I 100% agree that if an AI is telling you about comfort levels, that's just whack. I wouldn't be surprised if that feature was added for the social brownie points.

Oh, totally, about Grammalry deciding to bend to the masses.
I was a literary agent for quite a while, actually. ? Yes, I would demand writers do certain things here and there that I thought would be more entertaining and "sellable". But THAT WAS MY JOB. That's the job of every agent in the business. They don't care about what you write; they only care that you wrote what people want to see. I kick myself sometimes for demanding that of writers in my past.

I guess in a way, it's total hypocrisy for me to say that only the writers' words matter.

If you're seeking an agent, ahem, I must rephrase this a bit. it's not up to the readers what you write, or up to you what you write - it's what the agent wants that matters. ? And that's unfortunate, but that's the industry.

Lmao, I had a similar thing happen.

I was jotting down sentences I might use, and Grammarly flagged one I wrote.
It was something like; this such and such thing fell on deaf ears. Grammarly was like Um, y'know, that's kinda ableist language to say something like that in your writing. ?

Neat, I didn't ask. Since when did we start gatekeeping the word deaf?
It's not like I wrote: THEY COULDN'T UNDERSTAND CAUSE THEIR EARS ARE SO CRIPPLED, GANG.

I get some good laughs every so often from this program. lol

I notice Grammarly really HATES the word "just" for some reason.

You're kidding me, right?

Me: He looked at him and said, "Look, just trust me on this one."
Grammarly: I'm comfortable if you use "Look, trust me on this one."
Me: Shut up, Grammarly, adult minds at work here, jack-ass! ?

 

[FRWriter]

Oh, totally, about Grammalry deciding to bend to the masses.
I was a literary agent for quite a while, actually. ? Yes, I would demand writers do certain things here and there that I thought would be more entertaining and "sellable". But THAT WAS MY JOB. That's the job of every agent in the business. They don't care about what you write; they only care that you wrote what people want to see. I kick myself sometimes for demanding that of writers in my past.

I guess in a way, it's total hypocrisy for me to say that only the writers' words matter.

If you're seeking an agent, ahem, I must rephrase this a bit. it's not up to the readers what you write, or up to you what you write - it's what the agent wants that matters. ? And that's unfortunate, but that's the industry.

I notice Grammarly really HATES the word "just" for some reason.

You're kidding me, right?

Me: He looked at him and said, "Look, just trust me on this one."
Grammarly: I'm comfortable if you use "Look, trust me on this one."
Me: Shut up, Grammarly, adult minds at work here, jack-ass! ?

Grammarly always tries to tighten and condense your writing.
It's created and programmed to deliver as much content in as few words as possible.

Any word not strictly required for your sentence, like "just," is deemed irrelevant and thus unwanted.

There are countless other examples. I've learned to ignore these suggestions. A story is not a tool to deliver information in the fastest and most direct way possible. It's supposed to be fun to read! A little exaggeration goes a long way, and sometimes it's just required to use stronger words to get your point across. Blindly following Grammarly and thinking you are improving your story is a huge mistake. It might work for business emails, but not for creative writing.

That's exactly why I ignore the Blue lines and focus solely on the red ones, which are actual mistakes (most of the time ;)) ....

 

[Maelstrom556]

Oh, totally, about Grammalry deciding to bend to the masses.
I was a literary agent for quite a while, actually. ? Yes, I would demand writers do certain things here and there that I thought would be more entertaining and "sellable". But THAT WAS MY JOB. That's the job of every agent in the business. They don't care about what you write; they only care that you wrote what people want to see. I kick myself sometimes for demanding that of writers in my past.

I guess in a way, it's total hypocrisy for me to say that only the writers' words matter.

If you're seeking an agent, ahem, I must rephrase this a bit. it's not up to the readers what you write, or up to you what you write - it's what the agent wants that matters. ? And that's unfortunate, but that's the industry.

I notice Grammarly really HATES the word "just" for some reason.

You're kidding me, right?

Me: He looked at him and said, "Look, just trust me on this one."
Grammarly: I'm comfortable if you use "Look, trust me on this one."
Me: Shut up, Grammarly, adult minds at work here, jack-ass! ?

Oh, I certainly have no intention of seeking an agent. I'm happy (enough) putting work up online for five people to enjoy for free. Don't think anything would be worth paying for anyway, and that's okay.

Also, why is it so against "just"? Is it something to do with the term "Social Justice Warrior" or something? I seriously cannot figure it out otherwise.

 

[LeilaniOtter]

Grammarly always tries to tighten and condense your writing.
It's created and programmed to deliver as much content in as few words as possible.

Any word not strictly required for your sentence, like "just," is deemed irrelevant and thus unwanted.

There are countless other examples. I've learned to ignore these suggestions. A story is not a tool to deliver information in the fastest and most direct way possible. It's supposed to be fun to read! A little exaggeration goes a long way, and sometimes it's just required to use stronger words to get your point across. Blindly following Grammarly and thinking you are improving your story is a huge mistake. It might work for business emails, but not for creative writing.

That's exactly why I ignore the Blue lines and focus solely on the red ones, which are actual mistakes (most of the time ;)) ....

I honestly think you summed it up perfect. Go with the red errors, not the blue ones. *^^*

Oh, I certainly have no intention of seeking an agent. I'm happy (enough) putting work up online for five people to enjoy for free. Don't think anything would be worth paying for anyway, and that's okay.

Also, why is it so against "just"? Is it something to do with the term "Social Justice Warrior" or something? I seriously cannot figure it out otherwise.

I mentioned in another thread someplace that as long as one other person loves what you do, you are deemed a successful writer. And I mean that.

 

[pangmida]

All modern "AI" hallucinates. The really high-end stuff hides it better, but the free and cheap tools don't. And so they will introduce stupid, blatant errors into your stories - one I read earlier today described a character running from 5:50 am to 7:30 am, and repeatedly called this "three hours." I commented to check with the author, and sure enough, they used Grammarly.

My first suspicion was actually that the whole work was just AI-generated - there were a few other blatant errors like this that didn't look like the kinds of errors human authors make.

I thought Grammarly mostly gives grammar/spelling corrections and sometimes alternative word suggestions. I’m not sure if it would call 5:50-7:30 am “three hours?” That might not solely be a Grammarly thing, I’m just saying…

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I suspect Pocket FM modeled part of its "Outliner AI" on Grammarly. See some of the same things creeping up there - though it does occasionally make some good suggestions (especially with ambient sounds and sound effects).

 

[DireBadger]

The problem is, if you write they way people really talk you just sound like an idiot.

and if you read it back to yourself you realize it makes you sound like an idiot.

and then you realize a hard and painful truth. Most people talk like absolute idiots 99% of the time

 

[MFontana]

The only thing I'd ever recommend using is Spell-check or Grammar-check features in most word-processor programs (IE: Word, GoogleDocs, etc).
Don't use AI for that stuff.
Ever.
Most of the time though, you can also tell those grammar check 'errors' to go fuck off back to whatever void-space they crawled out of. The spelling ones are usually helpful to reference, especially when you're writing / editing 5000+ word chapters and may have missed something on your own.
In my experience, neither of those tools has ever tried to write anything for me, or co-opt any of my story projects.

 

[DireBadger]

I recommend adding the following line to your manuscripts on a random author's notes chapter:

NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

 

[Maelstrom556]

I recommend adding the following line to your manuscripts on a random author's notes chapter:

NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Is there actually a way to enforce this? I'm no expert, but isn't it nearly impossible to tell if someone has used a particular work or set of works to train a gen-AI? I guess if it deters some, that could be enough, but if it's easy to get away with, people are just going to ignore it. At least with visual art, you can use Glaze and Nightshade to poison the supply without taking too much away from the quality.

 

[Zinless]

I'll let this image speak for itself.

 

[Eldoria]

View attachment 43911

I'll let this image speak for itself.

Grammarly is all about efficiency. But fiction is all about aesthetics. Lol

 

[LeilaniOtter]

I recommend adding the following line to your manuscripts on a random author's notes chapter:

NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

I think this is a brilliant idea, despite the fact we'd never be able to enforce something like this. It's like putting out a large bowl of candy outside with a sign saying "Please take just one piece of candy", and then your bowl is empty in minutes.

 

[Deleted member 165068]

I haven't touched anything on Grammarly or ProWriting Aid in a while but what I noticed when I did it would definitely take longer sentences and rephrase them to always make them simpler. It's all trying to do what Microsoft Word spell checks did years ago, except on overdrive, with it almost never allowing longer sentences or phrases to exist even though they might be important to have.

 

[Zagaroth]

Free grammarly as a final-sweep before it goes to Patreon and my editor is fine, because I'm just checking the red underlines to find things like having typoed one word into another word, so it wasn't caught by the spell checker.

I ignore yellow underlines entirely, and I'll glance at blue underlines but rarely use them.

But using it as a major writing tool is just asking for trouble.

View attachment 43911

I'll let this image speak for itself.

Yeah, this feeds into my "rarely use blue underline suggestions". :D

 

[Arkus86]

As is the case with any tool, and especially anything that involves AI. It's a tool, and it can be a very useful tool when used properly, but you cannot blindly trust it, because contrary to popular belief of lazy and/or stupid users, it's not a magical perfect solution to everything. (Yes, I had a colleague who relied blindly on ChatGPT at work. Upwards of maybe half of any output was either misleading or outright wrong.)

 

[DireBadger]

I think this is a brilliant idea, despite the fact we'd never be able to enforce something like this. It's like putting out a large bowl of candy outside with a sign saying "Please take just one piece of candy", and then your bowl is empty in minutes.

I think it's a matter of culture. If you do that in Utah, you are likely to still have candy at the end of the night.
In DC? you could barely turn your back and not only would the candy be gone and the bowl missing, but someone would have pissed on the sign.

Besides, large-model AI's are a fad. in 2 years, 'fast memory' will have expanded to the point that you will get better results from local software... It's not there yet, but it's clear that large model AI's are going the way of the 'supercomputer', but much much faster.

Grammarly is all about efficiency. But fiction is all about aesthetics. Lol

AI is odd, though. it's not replacing 'art' it's replacing mass-produced crap, just like automation always does.

the only 'art forms' that are truly being threatened are the ones that barely qualify as art, and the hacks that have used them to become famous are the ones that are fighting hardest to get their replacements outlawed.

 

[LeilaniOtter]

Besides, large-model AI's are a fad. in 2 years, 'fast memory' will have expanded to the point that you will get better results from local software... It's not there yet, but it's clear that large model AI's are going the way of the 'supercomputer', but much much faster.

AI is odd, though. it's not replacing 'art' it's replacing mass-produced crap, just like automation always does.

the only 'art forms' that are truly being threatened are the ones that barely qualify as art, and the hacks that have used them to become famous are the ones that are fighting hardest to get their replacements outlawed.

I think you might have nailed something here. The A.I. bubble is most certainly going to burst, with what you said, because people will not be able to keep up with it. They'll need stronger, faster computers, and won't be able to afford them. No wonder A.I. stocks are being watched like hawks right now.