Writers, How Are You Using AI?
A call for the tech tools, tricks, and hacks that are helping you work smarter.
I’m curious. What AI tools are helping you? It doesn’t have to be specifically for writing (I know, I know, AI-generated writing is a scourge, I'm not defending it). I’m asking about any AI or technology that makes your creative or professional life easier. What’s saving you time, sparking ideas, streamlining tedious processes, or keeping you organized?
Personally, I’m pretty basic with my tech: Google Docs (writing), the iPhone Notes app (note-taking), and Notion (calendar, coordinating work projects) do most of the heavy lifting. For a while, I was using ChatGPT regularly for interview prep, research, and headline generation, but then I got burned badly by an AI hallucination, and that made me wary.
If you’ve found something that’s helpful, please drop it in the comments and let the rest of us in on it.
No need for a full product review, just a quick note about what you’re using (and what for). I may feature your answer in a future Author Insider roundup post, with a shoutout and link, if you’d like.
Looking forward to seeing what everyone recommends!
I use AI to do research but verify all quotes / statistics independently. I find it helps me brainstorm ideas and find supporting statistics which would have taken me hours to find in the past.
Two and soon to be three not very exciting but effective use cases. I use Perplexity (because it is supposedly the most accurate) to do basic research that I would have done earlier with a search engine. It gets me all I need, but I'm not looking for cutting edge scholarship;. Second, because of Steven JOhnson's presentation to NBIC, I bought a Notebook LM subscription. Best thing there is that it did podcasts of the penultimate drafts of my book. Terrific. Great summaries. Funnier than my prose. Even saw some themes I didn't. Made the final draft a lot better, albeit on the margins, not core content. Third, I'll soon invest in an AI startup that will help peacebuilders and others work through tons of data in making what we call conflict assessements. Not the kind of writing I do, but looks very promising for specialists like those at USAID, if they still had their jobs of course. NOTE HOWEVER: I haven't done any of this systematically, so if club members have good on ramps to that, I'd love it!!!!!!