AI, your (overly) helpful, slightly batty editor?

Every week, I’m sent suggestions for new artificial intelligence (AI) editors that can “sharpen” my sentences, “strengthen” my writing, highlight misused or missing words and generally limber up flabby phrases.

The most recent selections came from Newmark Graduate School of Journalism’s Jeremy Caplan. He covered DeepL Write, Quillbot Paraphraser and Wordtune Spices.

As curator of these so-called “wonder tools”, Mr Caplan also offered three other suggestions: Lex.page, Notion AI and Grammarly. Considering Grammarly has been around for a while (albeit, not with an AI makeover), I rather suspect that some of these tools may have been lurking around, on the margins of the collective consciousness (or at least on the developmental treadmill) waiting for the ceremonial blast of the trumpets as they played them into the big time.

Have they hit the big time? Should they? You can judge for yourself, based on my results with Wordtune Spices‘ work. I asked it to rewrite the first sentence of this blog. It instantly offered me 10 alternatives.

As with editing by humans, the AI’s efforts are six of one, half a dozen of the other. The changes are, for the most part, subjective. One person may prefer descriptive phraseology – the original text said  “highlight misused or missing words”;  another may want an omnibus term – “typos”, as per Wordtune Spices’  Example 2.

That said, it’s not often that a human editor, unless they were extraordinarily inept, would introduce a simple but profound error, the way AI just did. In Examples 3 and 9, Wordtune Spices, rewrote my first paragraph incorrectly: “The AI editors suggest new words to be added to my writing every week”. But that wasn’t what I said or meant at all. I said that I am sent suggestions every week for new AI editors. Wordtune Spices said AI editors send me suggestions every week.

Personally, I would check over every piece of AI-generated text, just to make sure it got it right.

1. It’s not uncommon for me to get suggestions for new artificial intelligence (AI) editors that can “sharpen” my sentences, “strengthen” my writing, highlight misused or missing words and generally spruce up my clumsy writing.
2. I get suggestions every week for new artificial intelligence editors that can “sharpen” my sentences, “strengthen” my writing, highlight typos and improve my overall flow.
3. The AI editors offer me suggestions every week to help me sharpen my sentences, strengthen my writing, identify misspelled words, and generally limber up flabby phrases.
4. Every week, I am sent suggestions for AI editors that can boost my writing with “sharper” sentences, “stronger” phrases, and highlight misused or missing words.
5. Every week, I’m sent suggestions for new artificial intelligence (AI) editors that can “sharpen” my sentences, “strengthen” my writing, announce missing or misused words and generally tighten up my writing.
6. In the past few weeks, I have been informed of new artificial intelligence (AI) editors that have been created to “sharpen” my sentences, “increase” the strength of my writing, highlight misused or missing words, and generally limber up my sluggish sentences.
7. Each week, I receive suggestions for new artificial intelligence editors which can sharpen my sentences, strengthen my writing, highlight misused or missing words, and limber up slack phrases.
8. My weekly inbox includes suggestions for new artificial intelligence editors (AI) that can improve my writing, highlight misused or missing words, and generally tighten up sloppy sentences.
9. The AI editors suggest new words to be added to my writing every week, flagging misused or missing words and generally limbering up flabby paragraphs.
10. The algorithm also suggests new ways to “sharpen” my sentences, “strengthen” them, detect misused or missing words, and generally slenderize flabby sentences.