July was a touch better than June, another 7,400 words added to Descent: Diaspora whilst at the same time giving the final editing touches to Descent: Diathesis.
The month clearly had it’s fair share of distractions, the onset of the Olympics being one of them, a resurgent (and ill-advised) desire to physically interact with authors near me being another, and the more critical being a failure of my backup schedule. All easily fixed by an off button, a mute button, and ‘buy another USB stick’ addition to the shopping list.
It’s getting close to cover-art reveal time for Descent: Diathesis so, all things going well, in a month of two there’ll be a cover to enfold the text. The hardback limited edition is up for printing first so, if you’re like me and enjoy the feel of a hardback and getting a discount, there’s a bit of a special offer going on here you should have a look at. Commercial over.
This month AI’s been getting under my skin. Not a personal attack mind you, or even sucking up my work and using to educate the machine that will kick me out of the market, but rather the inexorable rise of AI as a plug-in to software I already use. I’m not a Microsoft fan (for various reasons) so I can’t speak for them, but the current editing suite I have calmly and quietly folded in an on-line AI link to each and every app – word processing, spreadsheet and drawing – which nearly made the whole thing AI enabled without me knowing. Big problems as you know, AI + Author = no publishing, at least from any reputable publisher.
The drama was averted with a simple fix – don’t use the suite while I’m on-line – but that’s a bit like avoiding drowning by not having water in my home so, thankfully, a judicious tweak of cookie and antivirus software has killed off any link happening in future. The bigger issue is that newer versions of the suite, and software patches, incorporate the link to AI in a way that can’t be undone. Lesson? Keep the original copy of the app software (preferably on a CD, remember them?) so I can reload the original app when my machine needs replacing.
But (and you know with me there’s always a but).
WordPress has gotten into the act. Typing this in I now find that they’ve added an AI “assistant” that’s repeatedly telling me not to use complex words or unconfident words. I’m not convinced word with more than three syllables are complex, and despite a search of my thesaurus (yes, old school hardback one) I can’t find a more unlovely term for lack of confidence than unconfident, so perhaps the AI is more A than I. That aside it’s another small step into embedding an unwanted overseer into another part of human activity, and a further erosion of an author’s need to control and craft their own work.
In the case of WordPress specifically, does this mean that anything written on WordPress can’t be relied upon as being 100% the author’s work? Does it mean than any blog, post or note can’t be leveraged into a published work as it can’t be guaranteed it’s not partly AI derived? Maybe picking on WordPress is lazy of me, but can the same doubts be raised about any author using any software suite? Food for thought or nightmares perhaps, but what seems to be clear is that in the next five to ten years the whole question of “non-AI generated work” may be moot.
Anyway, enough of my ramblings for this month, I’ve got a book to write, an Olympic daydream to deluded myself with, and an automatic coffee maker calling my name – won’t be a minute HAL.