How AI can help writers

Matthew Arnold Stern
5 min readFeb 24, 2024
Examples of AI-generated character reference images with Microsoft Designer

AI. Does it have any use for a writer besides being the antagonist for a dystopian sci-fi novel? Many of us have concerns about AI stealing jobs and copyrighted material. We’ve had plenty of controversies about AI’s use in cover art, audiobook narration, and the generation of entire books and videos. But does AI have any beneficial use for writers?

As someone who has been using technology for writing since my first word processor on the Commodore 64, I say yes. There are ways to use AI to enhance your productivity and creativity.

In fact, you may be using these features now without knowing it. Many word processors, email editors, and other writing products have auto complete. You start typing a word, and the program completes the word or the rest of the phrase.

Popular grammar checkers like ProWritingAid use AI to identify writing mistakes and recommend corrections. Some have features that can rephrase paragraphs based on tone or a style guide.

These tools don’t replace a professional editor, but they can help you write as clean a manuscript as you can before getting it edited. And when you don’t have access to a professional editor, these tools can reduce glaring mistakes.

While we’ve been using web search for nearly 30 years, AI search is much better. I’ve been experimenting with Microsoft Copilot

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Matthew Arnold Stern

A novelist and award-winning public speaker and technical writer. My novels Amiga and The Remainders are available now.