#WritingCommunity I’m on a fair number of professional Facebook, and other pages for writers, and whenever I mention using AI to help authors, who truly have no budget for an editor, the editors go crazy. I’d like to point out to any here that if somebody absolutely can’t afford you you’re not losing business. I had one editor on Facebook screaming at me telling me that if people couldn’t afford an editor, they should ask a friend. Not everybody has friends who can edit. 😱 😳😮
@J_Windrow That's a very interesting idea. I haven't been impressed with the quality of AI writing. It's excellent... for a machine. Nothing I would ever want to read, however.
I never considered using it to edit. Thanks! I will have to give that a try. Editing is a long and tedious process (having done it myself). I'm not inclined to dump it on a friend if I can get a machine to do an okay job. I'd polish the final project myself.
@Myana @J_Windrow I won't use AI to edit; that should be done by a person, but I will use it for proofreading. It's good at catching punctuation and spelling errors, word repetition, weird grammar.
@ianthealy @Myana as long as you can financially afford to have an editor then good on you. I am saying that there are a lot of people who absolutely cannot afford an editor. They go to the library and they compose on library computers and they keep their books on USB drives and they live in subsidized housing and they worry about weather next meal was coming from. They are not hiring an editor.
@J_Windrow @ianthealy Agreed. People will often respond, "Then get a friend to do it for free." But editing is a huge task, particularly if it includes proofing. I don't want to dump that on a friend.
With one exception (which I did pay for) all of my fiction editors were assigned to me by my publisher. One was quite helpful; others were not helpful at all. That experience makes me think there's a decent chance AI could be as useful.
@Myana @ianthealy I've had good editors and bad. Mostly the folks at newspapers were excellent. Tech writing, almost all good. The proofreader at the legal company was so horrific I almost withdrew the book because she had no idea about black letter law.
I have a lot of editing skills. Prefer not to self-edit that much. Do have friends with the skills. AI is something I'm exploring but I'm careful with it because it can do wonky things.
@ianthealy @J_Windrow Having never used an AI to edit, I'd be willing to have it give it a shot.
I haven't had good luck with human editors (for fiction; the editors on my non-fiction were indispensable). So much of fiction is a matter of personal taste, not objective facts. The only thing I don't trust an AI can do is tell me when something I've written is confusing.