What AI CAN’T Do

I’m all for big, bold tech tools, but ChatGPT and other AI tools can’t do everything—including write your book.

Case in point: The other day I used to ChatGPT to draft a short story for me, just for kicks. I was impressed—it quickly spat out a well-organized narrative that was coherent and almost gripping. It caught me off guard, how well it read.

Then I read it again. Upon further inspection, you started to see the cracks. It sounded too chatty, too loosely pulled together, and almost schizophrenic in some places.

I realized my quick-scan read is how most of us read today. We scan the miles of content that go by us. We have to—we can’t absorb all of it, even if we wanted to. We have to pick and choose what we sit with and really absorb.

And with books, that’s what we’re soft-wired to do. You see a full-length book and you know you’re about to commit time and substantial attention to it. Whether you read a book on your Kindle or the old-fashioned paper way, you’re still committing to a read.

You use AI to write an entire book? It won’t stand up to anyone’s read. The cracks will start to appear, just like they did for me.

I know AI can help organize ideas into a mechanistic perfection, and have used it for such. As a writer by trade and habit, my mind needs some lassoing at times, especially at the beginning, when I’m sifting through ideas. We all need that help, actually. But what AI gives you is a starting point, not a finished product.

You really want to create something that withstands a person’s attention and gives them a happy ROI? Make sure your book has plenty of human “cooks” in the book-making kitchen. Even if you’re writing completely on your own, go to others for reviews and feedback, and get trained eyes on it for proper editing and proofreading (No, Grammarly can’t do it all!). It will be worth yours and your audience’s time.