Unless you’ve been on another planet for the last year, you will know there’s been a lot of buzz lately about Artificial Intelligence. Particular attention has been gathering in creative arts communities. AI is a means of generating artistic content by computer-assisted means, using artificial intelligence models built by machine learning algorithms that rely on a vast bank of existing content that has been loaded into them. These new tools are being used to generate everything from images to video and music. It can resurrect dead singers, or create deepfakes of celebrities and politicians saying things they never would and – of course – AI can generate words. If it can mimic Sinatra’s voice, why not Hemmingway’s style? After all, compared with all the computer processing power needed to generated music and video, creating words must be easy, right?

Well, not so fast.

There are many problems with AI, that affect both readers and authors. Authors are faced with the ethical challenges of the use of their copyrighted material. Many AI systems are currently trained using works appropriated without consent, credit, or compensation, sureptitously infringing upon rights of authors. The legalities of doing so are still being sorted out, but there is a sense that technology is moving faster than copyright law can keep up with. For readers, the quality of the generated content can leave a lot to be desired. The quality of the output is dependent on the caliber and amount of the input data, or to use the old computer adage: garbage in; garbage out. AI system are notoriously weak at determining truth and detecting error. Even if an AI model is well-designed for writing, and is well-trained on a large variety of works, can AI ever effectively compose an original, coherent short story, for example, that could convince you it was written with the insight and storytelling skill of a human author? We are not quite there yet, and it remains to be seen if we ever will, if it will ever achieve what is anticipated from it. Perhaps machine learning systems will merely always mindless parrot what went before, feeding forever on their own generated ouroboric content, remaining ever devoid of deep understanding, inspiration, or true creativity.

But even if AI could convince you that a human wrote the words, it creates another problem – that of authenticity. Perhaps the greatest consequence of AI ever succeeding in writing compelling and consistent content, it will leave readers wondering if what they read is genuine, or original. The proliferation of AI content may only lead us to question reality and to seek the genuine. Wordfyle will always aim to be that source of genuine content, written by a person.

Here at Wordfyle we are ostensibly all about the words. But actually, while words are our business, they are not our primary focus. First and foremost we are about people. Words are important for sure, but more important is where words come from, and where they go. Without people, there are no words. Words come from people, to be read by people. Words communicate, ideas and emotions, connecting writer and reader. They entertain and they challenge. They give joy and incite fear. They are weapons of the mind, and ministers to the heart. Words are not – and never should be – considered mere content to be consumed. But in the brave new world of AI, that is precisely what words are reduced to, and readers reduced with them, to mere inhuman consumers. And as for writers … such a worldview dangerously renders writers redundant. AI is no longer about people. It doesn’t regard the reader as a human person. It can’t relate to a reader and how a reader would think and feel.

Make no mistake: AI is an unavoidably useful new tool for humanity, and there are appropriate uses for AI here at Wordfyle - grammar checking, generating evocative cover art for the vast number of stories in our collection, and - not least - in detecting submissions that are generated solely by AI! At Wordfyle we are committed to providing writing that is generated by only one kind of AI – “Actual Intelligence”. We don’t do artificial words on our platform, just stories and ideas from real people. We are committed to supporting writers. Writing is the most human of arts, that touches readers’ minds, hearts, and souls. People communicate at an emotional level when we speak and hear through stories and words, and that must continue.

The purveyors of our brave new future tell us we are moving from the Information Age to the Intelligence Age, a new golden age of prosperity for mankind – thinking optional! It remains to be seen whether the promised results of AI can live up to the marketing hype. One thing for sure is that we will need real human writers to do what they have always done, to hold a mirror up to our world, to help us to understand and evaluate it. And - as a last resort - human writing can always deliver escapism with stories that give us reprieve for a time from a world where the machines have taken control!