Whatever type of writing you do, you’ve almost certainly come across ChatGPT – a conversational AI (artificial intelligence) tool that can take a “prompt” and return human-sounding writing.

Maybe you’ve tried it out, or you’ve read a bunch of worrying headlines. Perhaps you’ve started using ChatGPT (or another AI tool) in your own writing process.

You might well have deep concerns about the use of ChatGPT and similar tools. I don’t want to dig too deep into the potential ethical issues with ChatGPT (that’s a whole article in itself). But I expect you, like me, feel a certain sense of horror at the idea that the writing industry might be taken over by AI-driven content.

The idea of getting an AI to produce my blog posts is distinctly weird. What I love most is the actual writing part of the process. When I’m working on articles, I wouldn’t want to cut my writing time by 90% only to spend way longer on fact checking and editing … that doesn’t sound like fun at all.

And when it comes to writing fiction – I do that because I love it. Sure, I want to use my writing time well, but that definitely doesn’t mean generating text as fast as possible. It means enjoying what I’m doing, and crafting something unique.

So here’s the good news! ChatGPT doesn’t need to do the writing for you.

There are lots of ways you can use it to enhance your writing time – not to take over from you.

Tip: If you don’t have a ChatGPT account already, it’s free to get one. Just head to the ChatGPT login page and click Sign up. You can use your existing Google or Microsoft account, or create an account using your email address.

Don’t Use ChatGPT to Do the Actual Writing Itself For You

A lot of people think of ChatGPT (and similar AI tools) as software that can produce completed articles, emails, web copy, or even potentially short stories for them.

But it makes a lot more sense to think of ChatGPT as a virtual writing buddy.

You won’t get ChatGPT to produce the same quality of writing you can produce. Not without spending a ton of time refining prompts and editing the results – by which point, you might as well have just written it yourself.

But ChatGPT can be a great tool for helping you get past writers’ block, brainstorm ideas, check you’ve not missed any key points when outlining a piece, and so on.

Here are some creative ways to use it.

Read the rest of the post here.