We just saw a local production of Oklahoma! and the lyrics are still ringing in our heads. On this beautiful morning, when almost everything is going our way, we read another headline about AI. Suddenly, Ali Hakim’s call to arms (see our headline) seems pretty apt, at least to writers, many of whom are angry about AI’s ChatGPT, and like the peddler man, are keen to convince others how unjust the current state of affairs is. 
ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, can generate eerily human-like verbiage, making it easy to write a story, an article, or a blog post like this. Clearly, this technology is having a major impact on the publishing industry and it’s time to speak up.
But before we could write about chat GPT, we felt we needed to try it.
Here’s how AI suggested we begin a post about whether it has impacted the publishing industry:
The publishing industry has long been a space of innovation, creativity, and evolution. With the advent of artificial intelligence, particularly language models like ChatGPT, many are questioning how this technology can reshape the landscape of publishing. In this blog post, we will explore the implications of ChatGPT in publishing, examining both its benefits and challenges.
It suggested that benefits included:
- Enhanced Content Creation
- Cost-Effective Editing and Proofreading
- Personalized Reader Engagement
Curious as to how objective ChatGPT could be, next we asked for the downsides to using it in publishing:
As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, tools like ChatGPT are increasingly being integrated into various sectors, including the publishing industry. While the benefits of AI in content creation are often highlighted, it’s essential to examine the downsides that come with this technological advancement. In this post, we’ll delve into the challenges that ChatGPT presents to the publishing world.
Downsides included:
- Devaluation of Original Content
- Quality Control Issues
- Copyright and Plagiarism Concerns
- Job Displacement
As writers, Susan and I would place copyright concerns at the top of the list. And we’re not alone. Well-known authors, such as David Baldacci, Jonathan Franzen, John Grisham, George R.R. Martin and Jodi Picoult, are suing OpenAI over the alleged misuse of their work to train the popular chatbot ChatGPT. The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, was filed in and accuses OpenAI of copying works of fiction without permission.
OpenAI argues that using material found online to train ChatGPT qualifies as fair use under copyright law. Authors, believing that OpenAI should pay a licensing fee, have requested a jury trial and an award of statutory damages up to $150,000 for each infringed work.
A writer I know once told me, when she was writing a children’s picture book in verse, she purchased a manual called The Song Writers Rhyme Book. The book grouped words in which the last vowel and consonant rhymed, e.g., odd, pod, rod, etc. When her songwriting friend saw the book at her house the musician said, ‘That’s cheating!’
What she saw as a simple tool to help her complete her manuscript the songwriter saw as a fraudulent shortcut to “creativity.” As far as she was concerned, if the writer hadn’t thought up the rhyme, she didn’t deserve to use it.
Just yesterday Susan read about a moneymaking enterprise that sold people on using AI to write books they could then sell as digital copies on Amazon. My immediate response was, that’s cheating!
But then we thought, Is it? Look at writers like R.L. Stein and James Patterson who write outlines and pay other authors to do the heavy lifting and finish their books. Is that cheating?
AI can be a powerful tool especially in the areas of spelling and grammar, but can it come up with original, new ideas?
Recently, an experiment was conducted with students divided into two groups, all tasked with writing eight-sentence short stories. One group could use AI, the other had to rely on their own imaginations. Guess what? The stories that used AI were deemed more creative, however, all those stories were remarkable similar, and the more students used the AI technology, the less creative they became over all.
I wonder if these results will be repeated this November with NaNoWriMo, which is allowing writers to use ChatGPT this year. Seems like the lazy way to me…
Niki Tisza at Medium says using AI to write is ultimately cheating yourself. Scribbr.com goes a step farther saying using it is dishonest. When asked if using AI was cheating, Baylor University straddles the fence and says “it depends,” leaving it up to professors to decide.
I also tried out Text FX, a collaborative brainstorming app for writers that claims to generate sensory details about a scene. When I typed in “urban university classroom” it typed back: “the worn, wooden desk with faded, blue paint.”So maybe it is, as
Ado Annie might say, “a lot tempest in a pot of tea.” 
What do you think?