How AI Could Help You Write Faster

Artificial intelligence-powered writing software can craft everything from emails to blog posts, but some observers say it could make your communications more generic. 

New AI-powered writing assistant Craftly.AI claims to automate a large part of the writing process. The company says the assistant uses an algorithm to understand and emulate your unique human communication style. It’s part of a growing number of AI-powered writing programs. 

"AI is and will be a huge part of content creation," Alexander De Ridder, the co-founder and chief technical officer of AI writing software company Ink, said in an email interview.

"It’s inevitable. That doesn’t mean that AI will necessarily replace the writers’ talent. It means that the best tools will incorporate AI to empower and write with you—not for you."

Write in Different Languages

Craftly.AI makes bold claims about its product. The company says its software can write about any topic in any language, even if you are not a native speaker, for your webpage, social media posts, blog posts, ads, and more.

And while the company says Craftly.AI can help generate content for personal use, it initially was designed as a platform for social media and marketing teams to create their customer messaging. 

"We had hundreds of users testing out our Beta in stealth mode to bring you the most enhanced AI-assisted copywriter yet. There is no end to the impact this can have, with the content being so important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), capturing queries, marketing, brands," Iman Bashir, founder of Craftly.AI, said in a news release.

"In that, we built a product to support our SEO packages that revolve around enhancing human capabilities, not replace." 

Most of the current commercial uses of AI for writing are based on simple natural language processing (NLP), Radek Kamiński, CEO of Nexocode, an AI implementation and consulting company, said in an email interview.  

Grammar-checking software Grammarly is a good example of what is currently possible to achieve in the general-purpose commercial use of NLP, Kamiński pointed out.

"In the near future, we are likely to see the expansion of such systems into more abstract levels of language, like style and pragmatics," he said. "For example, last year Google released a pre-trained TensorFlow model that turns a series of 'bullet points' into a cohesive text."

But not all AI tools are created equal, De Ridder said. "There are 'plug-and-play' AI, but they are mostly rules-based and can't necessarily account for what each unique piece of content needs," he said.

"Many AI solutions are not tailored to what the author is working on and only offer generic suggestions."

De Ridder touted his own company’s AI, which he said: "understands the semantic meaning behind the words and uses that understanding to create unique suggestions for how to improve the content you're working on, in real-time with actionable recommendations."

Will AI Kill Creative Writing?

Some observers have argued that we'll start to lose our personal style due to the increasing use of AI in writing. 

"It's definitely a valid point, but I don't think we need to be afraid of AI suddenly writing everything on our behalf," Aaro Isosaari, CEO and co-founder of Flowrite, an AI-powered productivity tool, said in an email interview.

"Even with the most advanced language models currently available, the quality of AI-generated texts can vary quite a bit depending on what you want to write, so the technology is not going to completely replace us any time soon."

With the help of recent advancements in AI writing tools, users can speed up repetitive writing such as greetings, Isosaari said. This could leave them free to focus on more meaningful, creative writing, he added.

AI-powered writing tools also can help those who have trouble producing text in the first place, such as people who need to communicate in languages other than their own or are suffering from dyslexia, Isosaari noted.

"With the help of these tools, it can be easier for people to find the right words and phrases to express themselves," he said.