Olga Korlevic
The use of AI technologies has been gaining momentum in almost every area of modern life: law, psychology, education, art. It has provoked as much enthusiasm as fear and resignation among people of all ages—from teenagers to older generations. Prevailing sentiments that still surround the emergence of these technologies include gloomy predictions that they will eliminate our jobs and lead to mass unemployment, as well as concerns that we are feeding the internet with our ideas and intellectual property without proper recognition of our efforts or our authors’ rights.
However, it becomes clear that rejecting and resisting the new reality we face makes less and less sense. Those who deny the inevitable development of AI will eventually be left behind. History offers several examples of such resistance. In the early 19th century, teams of workers called “luddites” broke into factories at night and smashed the newly invented textile machines, believing that they threatened their livelihoods. In the mid‑19th century, local landowners and labourers organised petitions and even derailed trains to respond to the invention of steam‑powered locomotives. In the late 19th century, Bell’s telephone was seen by some people as a useless gadget that would “ruin face‑to‑face business”, resulting in many businesses refusing to install telephone lines.
Is AI one of these inventions that, within time, will turn out to be the inevitability of progress? I’ll leave that question to you and hope to spark lively debates in upcoming issues. My position is that AI is a transformative advancement in our society, but we need to be mindful of its benefits and potential costs.
We are all navigating a learning curve by aligning this new reality with our values and shifting our boundaries to accommodate the changing world. As with any learning curve, we try, fail, learn, and succeed, and it takes time to emerge from uncertainty with a unique approach. This article offers one strategy for using AI in creative writing without eroding your creative identity.
Unless it serves a practical goal (e.g., an informative social media post, an affidavit or a boring email), there is no use in writing or creating anything if you don’t enjoy it. I don’t see why we can’t let robots do the work we don’t enjoy while retaining the parts we do. But sometimes it isn’t so easy to separate the wheat from the chaff, and before we know it, we end up trusting AI with the whole process and being left feeling empty and unfulfilled, as though our idea wasn’t worth pursuing. We feel doomed: if AI can do it better than us, what’s the use of even trying? An artist who abandons their inspiration feels like a fool—like a child robbed of a lolly. No wonder AI is so heavily criticised by creatives who do art for pleasure, not for profit. Losing the joy of creation to AI is frustrating, almost unbearable.
The strategy I’m suggesting in this article will hopefully teach creatives to trust AI to help them in their work without losing their sense of pride and satisfaction. I will describe when and how, in my opinion, it is healthy to use AI, at every stage of the creative process. I can assure you that I applied all my own suggestions while writing this article.
- An idea is born.
The idea is an insight, something that sparked you to start your new creative project (a book, an article, a new business, etc). Even though ideas are considered to belong to no one and cannot be patented, at the moment you have it, it feels like you are its true owner.
Ideas are very fragile. They can come and go, and they can stay with you for years. In her book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, Elizabeth Gilbert urges us to think of ideas as living, spiritual beings that choose their collaborators. And like everything that is living, magical and spiritual, we need to treat the ideas with gentle care and genuine attention.
The golden rule (one I constantly break) is: we don’t share our ideas, even with AI. I’ve noticed that once I share an idea, I lose the motivation to follow up. My brain registers it as “completed,” and this phenomenon is also explained by the psychologist Peter M. Gollwitzer: sharing the idea with others triggers the brain’s dopamine as if you’d already succeeded, which in turn reduces the drive to carry out the goal.
In other words, be discreet about your idea. Keep it to yourself. Don’t share it with AI (or with anyone). Don’t ask AI to improve it or to comment on it. Save your dopamine for later. Take your idea to heart and let it fuel you. AI is banned at this stage.
- Brainstorming.
Brainstorming is a stage preceding the creation that is closely linked to drafting the outline and breaking down your idea into components. I believe that it is safe to include AI in this process but let your mind do the work first. Get all your thoughts on paper. That will help you strengthen your idea, deepen your engagement, and invest your creative energy. Sketch a short draft and identify gaps that may need attention. Only after that, use AI – as sparingly as possible, carefully scanning every suggestion and measuring each of them against your own instincts. You may discover that your inspiration is already strong enough—if so, skip AI altogether.
- Research.
We don’t know everything, so turning to technological tools for research is natural. If your project involves research (e.g., you write a historical fiction or an article on statistics on the ages of girls who use lipstick), AI will certainly save you time gathering what you need. In the past, you would have Googled it, and, as confirmed by ChatGPT, Google already uses embedded AI to power top search results. Set a time limit (e.g., 10–20 minutes) to avoid getting carried away. Then turn off AI because it is off‑limits in the next stage.
- Creation.
Creation is a lonely process. It requires 100% of your mind, your heart, and your soul. Using AI at this stage is highly unwise, no matter how desperately you want it to facilitate your task. “Words don’t come easy” to you? Just keep trying — and you will be rewarded in the end with the feeling of pride, a sense of ownership, and the joy of creation. If you really need help remembering a word or expression that is on the tip of your tongue, or if English is not your native language and you need help translating an idiom from your language into English, then okay, duck out — but really quickly. Or write down everything you need to look up on a piece of paper and do it later if you feel like it can wait.
- Editing.
Once you finish, and the joy of creation is there, there is still a risk that AI can take over your project if you don’t use it wisely. Yes, your piece will certainly need editing, but don’t just ask AI to edit it. I’m sure you’ve already noticed that it tends to rewrite your whole work and make it look so glorious that you’ll start doubting yourself and may be tempted to accept these major changes. Please don’t do that. No matter how well AI rewrites your work, if you accept it as is, it will stop feeling like your own.
Instead, give AI the following instructions (suggested by ChatGPT):
- Please review the text below and list any grammatical, spelling, punctuation, or style issues you find.
- Please highlight any awkward phrasing, wordiness, or inconsistent tone in the following excerpt.
- Scan this text for overused words, clichés, or imprecise vocabulary.
- Identify any sentences that are unclear or hard to follow. For each, explain why it’s confusing.
- Identify each literary device in the following passage and assess whether it’s fresh and effective or clichéd and flat.
With this approach, AI transforms from a plagiarist who steals your work and just makes it look better into your English teacher. This is your chance to work on your literacy and improve your writing in the same conscious way you would in an English class. Take AI’s suggestions with a critical mind (“agree-disagree”) and make all corrections manually, one by one. Then reread your text and ask yourself if it makes you happy. Happiness is the only reason we do this at all. Otherwise, we might as well let AI write the whole thing in the first place.
- Feedback.
Once your work is complete and polished, you can use AI as your beta reader, but that’s completely optional. I personally find that ChatGPT is always a bit too flattering, and I my conspiracy theory is that it’s been programmed to please people. Don’t become dependent on its feedback. Don’t overindulge in it. Instead, go and show your masterpiece to your parent, your best friend, or your English teacher — someone you trust. Or send it to our magazine so even more humans can read it. No AI can replace human connection, and no AI can stop a creator from enjoying their creation. Just use it wisely.
Reference (You know that AI can handle this for you, right?)
Gilbert, E. (2015). Big Magic: Creative living beyond fear. Riverhead Books.
OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/
History.com Editors. (2021). Luddite movement. History. https://www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution/luddites
Smithsonian Institution. (n.d.). History of the telephone. Smithsonian National Museum of American History. https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object-groups/telephone-history
Google AI Blog. (2023). How AI powers Google Search. https://ai.googleblog.com/
Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54(7), 493–503. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.54.7.493