Everyone is eager to improve; and this is why many of us are turning towards AI recommendations for modifying sentence structures, grammar, and vocabulary. Can it be that instead of improving our personal phrasing and fluency in writing and thinking, by using AI text editor software, we neutralize our characteristic way of wording ideas? If everyone is using this software, can it be that, eventually, all digital text will sound and look the same?
I started using software such as ‘grammar.ly’, yet only recently I started wondering about the implications of using AI software to improve text documents. How much of the text still belongs to me after using ‘grammar.ly’ to re-phrase my paragraph a number of times? Can I even still say I wrote it? Is it my text – or the AI’s?
A person’s writing is, in theory, unique, and this is why certain traits of a person can be distilled from their wording and style (1). This is called stylometry and with it, it is possible to link different documents to the same person, their demographic, even age groups and sex (2). The usage of deep learning allowed stylometry models to become even more sophisticated, so much so that these models now allow digital forensics to analyse harassment emails in order to determine whether those have been written by the same author (3)(4)(5).
However, what if that author uses a generative AI model, even ChatGPT, to write the message? To what conclusion would digital forensics come to, could they still bypass the AI shield and connect the text to the human author? What does it mean when we hide behind the AI?
I am certain that, despite the higher use of AI in digital writing, we could be able to advance other technologies in order to bypass the ‘AI shield’. However, the higher use of AI in digital writing might mean the loss of many writing styles, including human writing styles.
The issue we are now facing is the lack of motivation to write long texts and articles. Even now, many people make use of AI to automate writing their emails, assignments and even private messages.
What happens to academia when AI –think of the AI-Bing search– has full access to the internet and is able to source and cite properly? Imagine being able to prompt your research question and receive a master thesis within minutes – written by an AI. The way I see it, this is the direction we are headed towards; from simply using ‘grammar.ly’, or advancing with ChatGPT and others.
Sure, AI is a great tool to automate, especially administrative tasks, but when it comes to expressing our ideas, we should exercise our human potential, despite the ease of AI usage. Otherwise, we will run the risk of losing our edge.
1: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6234430
2: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221298006_Stylometric_Analysis_of_Bloggers%27_Age_and_Gender
3: Tweedie, F. J., Singh, S., & Holmes, D. I. (1996). Neural Network Applications in Stylometry: The “Federalist Papers.” Computers and the Humanities, 30(1), 1–10. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30204514)
