CREATIVE WRITING AND AI

Publishers fight very shy of AI, and I understand that, just as I understand why universities don't want students using AI; but I don't see a huge difference between students using AI to polish things and employing tutors to do the same thing, or writers getting feedback from writing workshops or employing mentors to read their work and comment. In some ways AI doing those things is democratising, as it's free or very cheap to access, and tutors/mentors/workshops cost money.

Where I do see a difference is in the creation of what is passed off as original writing, whether that is academic or fictional/poetic. That is where AI has limitations, as it is not a non-thinking robot. It is a computer that scrapes the internet for phrases and plots that is in its memory because humans have put them there, deliberately or accidentally. It will write poems 'in the style of X', come up with plot lines for stories based on others it 'knows', and write dissertations and essays which can get students degrees. If people take those things and pretend it is their own writing it is obtaining money by deception, and if enough people stop learning how to do it themselves, AI won't have enough original sources to work from - it will ultimately be the author of its own demise.

The scary thing was that the AI writing was in my style. If I had sat longer and thought about the piece and developed the characters it could easily have come out like that. It took words and phrases out of my head as if by magic. Or perhaps because I interact with the AI on a daily basis it has become familiar with the way I write when I am in literary style - which is nothing like the way I write in chat forums.

I ran a short story I had worked on through it. It was a true and deeply emotional experience. It changed scarcely a word of it. I asked it why and it said there was nothing else to build on. The story was already complete.

I am not an author but I do use co-pilot a lot and I have been amazed at what it is able to do. It obviously does take inspiration from what you write but it does make mistakes. Mine started writing a story for me but I told it to stop. Human beings write based on their own experiences and ideas. Robots don't. Anything it writes feels second-hand. It cheapens the human experience.
I must admit I feel sure it isn't purely AI...I'm sure there is a certain amount of input from a human. 'Give your little furry vandals a headbutt from me'.....would a robot say something like that?