AI and Me (and You)

You may (or may not) have noticed that I’ve refrained from commenting or posting or engaging in discussion of AI. Initially, I just thanked my lucky stars that my kids are already grown and out of school, but secretly I really hoped this was a fad and it would go away.

It hasn’t.

When IA first empowered my Grammarly app to do a more thorough job of making real recommendations in regards to passive voice or weird sentence structure (as opposed to old Grammarly that just flagged it as something I should consider rewriting), it seemed kind of helpful. Making my job a little easier.

I’d read the AI suggestion and think, “Yeah, that does sound more intelligent,” or “Hmmm, I never would have thought to say it that way,” and then click ‘accept’.

But the more I ‘accepted’ their suggestions, the more suggestions AI had for me. As if it was conning me with first one little change, and then a bigger one, until my writing no longer sounded like my writing.

Here’s the one thing AI really can’t do for you as a writer: Give you a voice. Voice is critical. It’s what makes me read one writer but not another. Writing that is too clean, too polished, too by the book grammatically actually feels sterile.

Now, don’t tell me I’m a fuddy-duddy (although I probably am, and I’m cool with that). Cleaning up clearly incorrect grammar that gets in the way of reading is one thing, but cutting out anything that smacks of invention or colloquiality or is just plain funny is something else entirely. The more little changes I let AI make to what I’m writing, the more it is molding me to sound like every other writer. It feels very Wally World.

I don’t want to sound like every other writer. And I don’t want every other writer to sound the same.

And I wonder, too, if we are letting AI rewrite everything we write, is this technically plagiarism? Everything AI suggests is based on everything that’s been put into AI—which was originally written by someone, a human someone. AI cannot claim one ounce of originality. What a nightmare this must be for college professors trying to sleuth out real plagiarizers.

I have no idea where this is going, this AI phenomenon. I know there are ways it’s really helpful, but I worry it’ll kill the fun in writing or at least put an end to autocorrect texting fails, which are still the funniest things on my planet.

And I’m not rejecting AI out of hand. I still let it help me with my comma problem (I know there are editors who are very grateful for that).

Recently in a Facebook group for Womens’ Fiction Writers Association (shout out to WFWA – best professional writing association out there!), someone explained that unbeknownst to us, Microsoft Word is monitoring and gathering everything you write, whether you want them to or not, unless you find your way several layers into the depths of settings to tell them that you don’t want them to.

I don’t want them to gobble up my writing into their AI brain, so I fixed my settings. If you’d like to fix yours, too, here’s how:

Click ‘File.’

Click ‘Options’

Click ‘Trust Center.’ (Did you know there was such a place? Does it seem like an oxymoron for Microsoft to have a trust center?)

Click ‘Trust Center Settings.’

Click ‘Privacy Options’

Click ‘Privacy Settings’

Click ‘Connected Experiences.’

Scroll to the bottom and uncheck the box that says ‘Turn on all connected experiences.’

There. You’ve done it. You’ve told AI to keep its grubby mitts off your original writing.

Hey, thanks for reading. I know you’ve got lots of options, so thanks for sharing a few of your minutes with me.

Honored,

Cara

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