I asked AI to write like me. This is what happened.

In case you’ve been cryogenically frozen during interstellar travel, let me catch you up: Back on earth in the year 2023, everyone I know is talking about Artificial Intelligence, or AI for short.

It’s here. It’s freaking some people out. It’s causing others to whoop for joy, as they figure out ever more ways to use it and profit from it.

Meanwhile, experts are already issuing stern warnings. According to some, AI is rapidly evolving toward sentience, or already is.

Are we finally staring into the future long predicted by science fiction writers, where HAL won’t listen to Dave, where the Terminators take over, where androids dream of electric sheep?

Most immediately worrying for us ever-anxious storytellers: Is AI going to make writers obsolete?

It’s tempting to pooh-pooh this concern with a wave of a flesh-and-blood hand and a blithe “robots can’t make art,” but it’s a serious question.

We’re already seeing lawsuits and union strikes that attempt to draw boundaries about how and when AI can be used in creative work without infringing on writers’ livelihoods, ownership, and artistic control.

Yet many writers are themselves shyly—or enthusiastically—tinkering with AI. Is it a useful research assistant? Can it help brainstorm a title?

What about a plot? Maybe it could even write a first draft? It’s a slippery digital slope indeed.

➡️ In a spirit of scientific inquiry, I decided to put AI to the test. I asked Chat GPT to write like me. The results freaked me out and made me feel oddly flattered.

What writers need to know about AI is the topic of my recent livestream. I share the weird results of my Chat GPT experiment, too!