AI can make writers more creative and engaging – study

AI or artificial intelligence threatens everyone’s livelihoods, especially writers as publications have been replacing them with artificial intelligence programs. Yet, the technology may also improve one’s writing skills. 

A recent study published in Science Advances found that AI enhances one’s creativity by helping make new and “useful” ideas. 

On the downside, artificial intelligence can become detrimental to long-term creativity. In other words, future stories may become more similar to each other as more use AI tools for writing. 

How does AI impact writers?

UK-based University of Exeter researchers studied how artificial intelligence affects one’s writing skills. They tasked 300 volunteers to write a brief, eight-sentence “micro-story” for young adults. 

The experts found that AI allowed less creative individuals to write content that is 26.6 percent better-written and 15.2 percent less boring. Next, the researchers studied its benefits for professional writers.

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Eurekalert said they got another 300 participants and divided them into three groups: 

1. A group that did not get AI assistance
2. Another that can use ChatGPT to provide a single three-sentence starting idea 
3. Writers who could choose five AI-generated ideas for inspiration

Then, the researchers recruited 600 people to judge the stories based on their uniqueness and “uniqueness.” Consequently, they found the third group gained the highest creativity boost with 8.1% higher novelty.

Their stories were also 9 percent more unique compared to stories written without artificial intelligence. Next, the University of Exeter researchers measured their creativity with a Divergent Association Task (DAT).

READ: AI makes writing easier, but stories sound alike

The test revealed that less creative writers saw a greater creativity increase than more skilled ones. Afterward, the researchers used OpenAI’s embeddings API to calculate how similar were their stories to each other.

They found a 10.7 percent increase in similarity among writers who used AI-generated ideas. As a result, researchers proved that AI can improve individual creativity.”

However, Anil Doshi, Assistant Professor at the UCL School of Management, warned, “There is a risk of losing collective novelty.”

“If the publishing industry were to embrace more generative AI-inspired stories, our findings suggest that the stories would become less unique in aggregate and more similar to each other,” he added.