Synonyms and antonyms
Twenty years ago I participated in NaNoWriMo. I was just remembering how I had a printed book that was all synonyms and antonyms. Handy when I got stumped on just the right word to use.
That’s how I think of editing with AI, except instead of words it’s phrases. AI is good at telling me when I’ve written something poorly, something that would be improved by just changing a short phrase here or there. I treat it the same way I’d treat advice from anyone: if a friend told me this sentence was confusing, would I change it? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
I don’t bother with that for most of my blog posts. It’s usually for the longer posts — where I’m trying to make a nuanced point and something feels off, or where the topic might blow up if it’s misinterpreted — that I’ll send the draft through ChatGPT for a sanity check. For some posts, in the prompt I will explicitly say “major grammar problems only”, to avoid getting distracted away from my own writing.
Sometimes I won’t make any changes. I just want some reassurance that my blog post isn’t all wrong.
The value of getting help from AI is that because it’s a synthesis of all the world’s information, it tends to pull you toward accepted narratives. The risk is that it will water down your own unique ideas. Overusing AI for editing will produce a kind of sameness as everything else on the web. Taken too far, it becomes slop. Lots of words that don’t really mean anything.
I mention all of this in part to be transparent, in part because it’s relevant in the context of watermarking, and in part because I think I could still become a better writer. Even after blogging for over 20 years! I love to write and to blog. AI can’t change that.