The Core

The second, reproduced verbatim above, caused an editor to exclaim that she had received worse copy from professional writers.

And that's why I find Google's comments about AI-generated content outdated. Apparently so does Google

Danny Sullivan, Google’s public search liaison, says that more sophisticated writing tools that can suggest large chunks of text shouldn’t harm a page’s ranking if used to genuinely help web surfers. “If the primary purpose of the content is for users, it shouldn’t fall afoul of our guidelines,” he says. “If it’s the best and most helpful content, then ideally we would be showing it.”

Like many things that can be automated, I think we will settle into a fairly long period where AI will be better than some humans and worse than others and every year the latter category will get smaller and smaller.

I wonder not what that means for marketing copy, but for Kindle Unlimited. The copy in the example is not at all inventive, so I don't know how good the AIs are or will get at actual storytelling, but sooner or later it may take up that market or, perhaps, be the de facto first draft author for many KU novelists. I pick on that because the game there is generally authors who excel and volume, have some decent story, but tend to be a bit formulaic and poorly edited.

I was recently listening to a story of an author who was making a very comfy income on KU with thousand of readers and reviews, but when she got picked up by a mainstream publisher who asked people to actually pay for the books, nobody bought any. In other words, people are willing to read her books if they are already bundled with a subscription, but not if they have to pay for the individually. That strikes me as a whole author ecosystem that was created by Amazon KU and could be wiped out by AI if the AI storytelling skills get halfway decent.

There you go. So many are utterly formulaic. Perfect for AI.

The thing about screenplays, though, is there is huge money on the table. So paying the writer who has had a hit already is safe. It's the "nobody got fired for choosing IBM" problem. But for the free and almost free writing, like Kindle Unlimited, there is no barrier to entry, no long-standing culture, no investors to mollify. So I think technically screenplays are way easier. Socially mediocre books are easier.

My guess with screenplays is some known writer will find that she can generate 50 scenarios in a few hours, read through them to find a good one, then generate large parts of the screenplay, then get in there and tweak it and demand her normal fee.

I mean, in many cases now it's quite easy to find AI generated text. Marketing and SEO already uses it quite plenty. You can tell that by blogs that are created not for people to read, but for Google.

It would be interesting though to see how AI would be able to create screenplays like you've mentioned. Current writing is horrible when you compare it the previous decades. Simplified and written by big kids.