How we use AI at Prosewell
Hi, I'm Matt. I'm a novice writer and world builder by night, software developer by trade, and the creator of Prosewell. I understand that the use of AI in writing communities is controversial. I want to lay out exactly how we use AI at Prosewell.
I see a spectrum of opinions about the role AI should play in the craft of writing:
- Camp A - The author uses no AI for anything. Period. No research, no editing, nothing. Not even spellcheck.
- Camp B - The author allows absolutely no AI-generated prose in their published writing. AI is an acceptable tool for research, editing, organization, etc.
- Camp C - The author develops a rough outline for a story arc, but allows AI to write some or most of the published prose.
- Camp D - The author uses AI for everything. Literally everything. If the output isn't good, they just refine the prompt, or ask the AI to refine the prompt for them.
I am firmly in camp B. I think reasonable people can disagree between A and B. I think C might be a fun creative exercise for people who don't consider themselves writers. I don't have anything nice to say about camp D. So I won't say anything.
I began the process of writing about a year ago, and I was disappointed at the options for tools. You either have classics like Scrivener pretending AI doesn't exist, or you have new things like NovelCrafter that invite you to have the AI write the book for you.
Not to get too existential on you, but this kind of false choice and lack of nuance is the reason the world has descended into... You know what, never mind.
Anyway, I built Prosewell to be the writing app I was looking for, but couldn't find. If I'm being completely honest, it's also been a great way to procrastinate and not make progress on my book. Gosh, writing is hard...
I agree with the best practices laid out by the Authors Guild. And I agree with Brandon Sanderson, hallowed be his name, that AI can be used in an editorial function to help you grow as a writer.
As the creator of Prosewell, I can make you this promise: We'll never build features that allow AI to usurp authorship from you. In practice, this means we will build features like:
- AI automatically links your notes and your prose so you can stay organized.
- AI flags issues with your writing as a line or developmental editor.
- AI acts as a research assistant.
- A "turn my outline into prose" button or a "complete this chapter" button.
- An "automatically create my character's backstory" button.
- AI that smoothes out or autocompletes sentences or paragraphs for you.
- AI editor feedback that offers to "fix" it for you.
Another promise I can make is that AI will never be trained on the writing you author in Prosewell. While the software will include passages of your writing into the prompts we send to the AI system, our agreements with those service providers ensure that your writing will not be used in future training sets.
This is a major reason why I built Prosewell. Many writers unknowingly expose themselves to risk by "copy-pasting" between Word and a free ChatGPT window. When you use those free consumer tools, you are often, and perhaps unknowingly, donating your intellectual property to their next training model. The old tech cliché is still true: if the product is free, you are the product.
I built Prosewell to be different. I think there is a solid middle ground here where we can leverage AI in an ethical way without outsourcing the creative work to the machine. If you think so too, please give Prosewell a try. We are just starting out, and feedback is very welcome.
- Matt