Dear Subscriber,
Hope you’re having a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday with friends and family.
I want to discuss a little about the new AI phenomenon sweeping the country. As a former Supervisor of Management Development at Caltech, I keep up with the latest technical advancements these days. One that will have the most effect is the advent of General Artificial Intelligence. I’ll talk about how I see it happening in publishing, mainly in the Romance genre, as this is where I think it will be used in ways that may help or hinder things. If authors don’t use it, then others, mainly technical folks will use it.
In my opinion, AI will affect the Romance genre first, as it’s the least original in concept, structure, and plot/characters.An algorithm will be coded so that the “writer” can use the basic plots, then do research about which are selling the most copies to the millions of Romance readers out there in the world.Plug in the same types of characters and their physical, personality, and actions, details to get a “new and improved” novel. Do the same with the setting and “love scenes” (with different grades of “calm, steamy, or hot”) and plug those in (they write themselves almost).Finally, do the same with the types of covers that sell the most copies, and tweak them differently but with the same basic design.Romance readers “expect” there to be the same pattern in the fiction, so this will make using artificial intelligence very easy to duplicate the patterns and forms to please the readers who enjoy “sameness” as opposed to surprising originality and mixing of genres, which most literary and/or advanced creative writing does.
I have been using this technology on my own work, and if you use it properly, it can be quite a boon to the final result. For example, most recently, I wrote two stories based on the same prompt to be included in an anthology based on the following suggested concept:
Uncanny & Unearthly Tales (4th volume)
“Each story should feature a tale delivered from a character who stepped through a door and found themselves someplace unexpected.
On their journey, they will notice a book called Midnight Labyrinth. No requirement to read or interact with it; it just needs to appear.
Genre-bending is welcome! Sci-fi, steampunk, horror, fantasy, etc.”
With the aide of AI, I was able to not only improve the content of my entries (two maximum were allowed), but I was also able to get them both past the first hurdle of readers to the final round of “choices” by the editor. This happens to less than two percent of all entries in professionally paid anthologies, so this shows me that my use of ChatGPT.AI could have made the difference.
If you want to read the book on this phenomenon, you can see more information here.
If you’re a reader only, and you want to subscribe to a story-per-week or story-per-month by me, then go here for more information.
Thanks, and I hope you get the big part of the wishbone!
James Musgrave
San Diego
