Three Ways That AI Will Improve Your Writing and Workflow
When AI was first introduced to the public, I can admit that I wasn’t a fan. I felt like if someone used AI it was considered cheating or taking the easy way out of writing. Outside of what was talked about in the news, I never looked much into it. I attended a conference for work in 2023, and one of the presenters was a CEO of a company that works closely with AI. They use it to create email mailings to send to students in customer relationship managements systems. During the presentation, he demonstrated how we could use AI to help create a subject line that would grab the audience’s attention. Once he typed a prompt in, it only took the AI a couple of seconds to spit out a subject line that was really good. Once it produced an email, I was even more impressed. I was surprised at how well it was written. He framed it as AI could be used as a tool or as an aid in my work, and I was sold. AI can help improve your writing and workflow by assisting with idea generation and outlining, the editing process, and with research and fact-checking.
Idea Generation and Outlining
If you know there’s a topic that you want to talk about but don’t know how to start off or from what angle you should approach it, you can use AI to help generate ideas. You can start off with a broad topic and ask it open-ended questions until you can get down to a specific topic. I find the more specific you can get with what you’re looking for, the better. Like mentioned previously, if you’re looking the perfect subject line or headline to get the reader’s attention, then you can have it give you ideas. It can help you organize your thoughts by outlining what you’ll be talking about.
Editing Process
AI can be used as a tool in the editing process. It can check for grammar, punctuation, and language. You can use it to help reduce the word count in your work. If you have something that’s too long, then you can type it in and ask the AI to shorten it, it will do just that. It can give you ideas for how to refine your work. You can really use it as a second set of eyes in this key stage of the writing process. It might even catch something that you may have overlooked.
Research and Fact-Checking
You can use AI as an efficient way of doing research and fact-checking your work. Try asking AI questions about what information you have to gather research. It could give you information that you may not have found or known about. Use it to verify that all information is correct. It can also provide you with sources for you to do further research on your own.
There are different AI generated websites that you can try including ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Don’t be afraid to test them out. It’s amazing what they can do. In my opinion, it’s okay for AI to be used for things that don’t try to replace the writer. It’s just software, so it should never be the sole resource we have. I don’t think it’s something that should be used as a replacement in any case. If used correctly, AI can be one of the most efficient tools to have in our writing toolboxes.
