By: Rachel Slaiman and Sherring Dartiguenave
During our April 2, 2025, virtual event “The Future of AI and the Author,” the WNBA-NYC hosted Thad McIlroy, electronic publishing analyst, president of The Future of Publishing, and author of The AI Revolution in Book Publishing: A Concise Guide to Navigating Artificial Intelligence for Writers and Publishers. He spoke to members about the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on writers. McIlroy delved into the benefits, such as ease of writing, and the pitfalls, such as possible copyright infringement with authors’ works being used without permission to “teach” artificial intelligence.
With the rise in use of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, also comes an increase of fake or incorrect content in the forms of videos (deep fakes) and literature (articles). It’s easier for content creators, whether on social media or blogs, to copy each other in the quest for views, engagement, or the jackpot of going viral.
There are ample reasons to be critical and skeptical of AI. An author can put in months or even years of research and labor writing on a topic only to have another author type a prompt to generate most, if not all, of an article or book. Worse, the researcher may have their work regurgitated by AI without credit.
In most cases, the ease of inputting a phrase on any given topic and within seconds, having it generate several paragraphs can be positive. AI can be a starting point or aid a writer during the drafting process. Users can tweak results by choosing tone, length, and language translations. It should not be used as the main tool. There is no guarantee of accuracy. The user must fact-check!
AI can lead into the murky waters of plagiarism, which harms both the user and original author. Some programs allow authors to opt out of having their work included in AI roundups.
In addition to the writing process, AI benefits writers and publishers with sales data analyses, press releases, book descriptions, and even generating images for covers or featured images.
Traditionally, websites have had to prioritize search engine optimization (SEO), where keywords improve a site’s visibility in search engine results. Now, there’s generative engine optimization (GEO), which makes content more visible in AI-generated results. In some ways, it’s an upgrade of SEO. According to Google AI overview: “unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on ranking on search results pages, GEO aims to be the go-to source that AI quotes in its answers.”
Some of the most common AI Chat Tools as highlighted by McIlroy are ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, among others. Depending on the user’s level of expertise and goals, each platform has its strengths and weaknesses, and also free and paywall versions.
It is important to remember that AI can and should be used as a tool and not a replacement for original ideas and content. Authors should do their due diligence by researching, asking questions, and fact-checking in this ever-changing world of AI no matter the genre in which they are writing.
