Writing with GenAI - Why & How?
Writing with GenAI - Why & How?
Exploring new frontiers of imagination
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And read the twitter thread for the week by our member Subhashish. You can also watch his masterclass on Network Capital here.
There is a world of GenZ TikTok in which young people are reimagining history and asking ‘what if’ questions about geo-politics.
“What if India ruled Great Britain?
“What if Mexico invaded the U.S.?”
“What if Somalia conquered Europe?”
The creator behind what.if_ai (one such TikTok account that is reimagining history and geopolitics), claims that most of their ideas come from commenters.
They follow a simple process of creation. After researching a given history, they use ChatGPT to generate scripts, and Midjourney to produce the accompanying visuals. Prior to these tools, the account may have required a team to produce videos, including researchers and script writers, as well as illustrators and video editors. “Now someone like me, with no artistic background, can create content that gets millions of views just from my own imagination,” they said. “Anyone can do it. I’m just early.”
In another part of the world, where TikTok is banned, young Chinese people are using GenAI to mourn and find closure with the dead. Mixing an assortment of emerging AI technologies, people in the country have been building chat programs — known as griefbots — with the personalities and memories of the deceased, hoping for a chance to speak to their loved ones again.
Instead of seeing GenAI as a threat to human creativity, there is a growing internet subculture that augments it to tap into the humane aspects of the creation. There is a rising movement that is changing our process of creation and creativity from our unilateral exercise in solitude to an interactive experience of expression.
Why should you use GenAI to write?
As a soon-to-be author, the biggest challenge I face with writing is just simple act of getting started. I often struggle with the introduction. The first paragraph and the first sentence. I spend hours writing and rewriting, the first 100 words to get the right hook and syntax. The first 100 are the hardest. The next 10,000 are relatively easy.
With ChatGPT a quick hack I found is to give to writing prompts for my first sentence and see how to completes it. That helps me visualise the structure and reduces a process that took me hours, to an activity that takes minutes.
So the obvious answer is, yes. Yes, please use GenAI to write, create, sketch. It will only make you better.
How should you use GenAI to write?
This part is more tricky. The best analogy I can think of is that using GenAI to write is like cooking. Sure you can use a few recipes and YouTube cook-alongs, but to make food that gives you joy and satisfies the soul, its about having an intuitive understanding.
So as you, start with the training wheels on GenAI writing here is a recipe you can follow -