Katherine Wikoff

This is a long post today, but I’m sharing the entire ChatGPT “chat” from a recent writing group exercise to show my process of completing a finished piece from the “assignment” through the end. If you’re curious enough to stick with me (through the 6,000 words, which you may certainly feel free to skim!), you’ll be able to see the text take shape and grow from nothing to something. The final version of my (rather long) “flash fiction” exercise is at the end, and then I close with a few thoughts about generative AI and the future of writing, plus some thoughts about teaching writing today (from my own experiences teaching writing courses as a college professor).

So, first, which you already know if you have seen my previous “writing exercise” posts, the writing group I belong to, which usually meets every two weeks, has exercise prompts that we all prepare in advance and share each time during our meetings. I have been using ChatGPT to assist with my exercises, mostly as a fun way for me to learn the new tool. This time the prompt was to write a flash fiction story using the following elements: a storm, a cat, and a disease. What follows below is the “journey” of my finished piece from initial prompt to final draft.

I said to ChatGPT:

I would like to write a flash fiction story for my writing group exercise using these three elements: a storm a cat a disease. Can you generate ten flash fiction stories to help me get inspiration for ideas? Thank you!

ChatGPT said:

Here are ten flash fiction story ideas using your elements: a storm, a cat, and a disease.

1. The Lighthouse Keeper’s Cat

During a raging storm, an old lighthouse keeper falls ill with a fever, barely able to stand. His only companion, a stray cat, watches the beacon flicker out. As a ship nears the rocky shore, the cat leaps onto the control panel, reigniting the light just in time. The keeper, delirious, thinks he’s dreaming—until he wakes to find the cat purring on his chest, its paws covered in oil and soot.

2. Nine Lives Left

A stray cat wanders into a quarantined town, oblivious to the sickness killing its inhabitants. It seems immune, slipping through broken windows, curling against the fevered, whispering secrets in the night. When the storm floods the streets, the cat disappears—only for survivors to swear they saw its glowing eyes leading them to safety.

3. Storm Surge

A scientist, sheltering from a hurricane in her lab, watches in horror as her test subject—a genetically altered cat meant to resist diseases—escapes its cage. She’s already infected with the virus she was studying, but the cat, untouched by sickness, sits calmly as the wind howls. In her fevered state, she wonders: is the cure purring at her feet?

4. The Last Visitor

On the eve of a deadly storm, an old man waits out the night in his boarded-up home, his body weakened by an incurable illness. The power goes out, and in the darkness, he hears soft paw steps. A black cat appears, eyes glowing in the lightning flashes. “Come,” it seems to say. He follows it into the storm, leaving nothing but an empty bed behind.

5. Plague on the Wind

The villagers blame the storm for the sickness that follows—airborne and relentless. They burn everything the wind touched. Then, the cat appears at their doorstep, untouched by disease. One by one, it chooses homes to enter, curling up beside the ill. By dawn, everyone the cat has visited is either dead—or miraculously healed.

6. Whiskers and Warning Signs

She wakes feverish to the sound of her cat yowling. Outside, lightning splits the sky, the storm pressing against her windows. She tries to rise, but dizziness pulls her back. The cat scratches at the door, insistent. She finally stumbles outside—just as the ceiling collapses behind her. The cat, satisfied, vanishes into the night.

7. The Cat in the Rain

As the city drowns in stormwater and plague, a lone cat walks the rooftops. They say it belonged to Patient Zero, the first to fall ill. It lingers outside homes, staring through windows. Those who see it know: the sickness is already inside.

8. The Fisherman’s Omen

A fisherman, returning home just before a hurricane, finds a sickly cat hiding in his boat. He nurses it back to health, even as his wife warns him of bad omens. When the storm comes, it flattens their village—but their home remains standing. The cat vanishes, leaving only a single wet paw print on his doorstep.

9. The Carnival That Never Left

A traveling carnival shuts down when a strange illness spreads through its workers. They quarantine in an old fairground, where a storm traps them for weeks. Then, the cats arrive—hundreds of them. They move through the tents, eerily silent, as the sick disappear one by one. By the time the storm clears, the carnival is empty. Only the cats remain.

10. The Last Cure

A dying scientist injects her own blood into her cat, hoping it might outlive the storm of sickness ravaging humanity. As she succumbs, the cat slinks away, immune to the plague. Generations later, the world has healed, and people whisper about a strange breed of storm-colored cats—always watching, always surviving.

Do any of these spark an idea for your flash fiction? I can refine one or mix elements together if you’d like!

4o (Note: I love this little “signature” that ChatGPT uses to sign off on its comments and notes to me.)

I said:

I kind of like #7, “The Cat in the Rain.” Let’s set this story in a French medieval town. Patient Zero needs to be referred to by a similar term that is appropriate for the French Middle Ages. Add candles, Medieval medicines, parents and children. Please generate a new version, and then we can consider any further revisions. Thank you!

ChatGPT said:

Here’s a medieval version of “The Cat in the Rain” set in a French town, incorporating your requested elements:

The Cat in the Rain

The storm came first—roaring winds, torrents of rain that turned the cobbled streets of Saint-Léon into rivers of filth. Then came the sickness.

It started in the home of a tanner’s wife, a woman now only spoken of in whispers: La Première Malade—the First Afflicted. She collapsed in the marketplace, her skin damp with fever, her breath rattling like dried reeds. By nightfall, her children were coughing, and by week’s end, half the town burned rosemary and rue at their doorsteps, praying to keep the affliction away.

And then the cat appeared.

No one knew from where—perhaps it had always been there, lurking in the alleyways, watching with golden eyes. Now it moved openly, slipping between homes, silent as a shadow. It perched on windowsills where candlelight flickered against the rain. It curled on doorsteps where mothers wept over feeble children.

The apothecary swore by leeches and tinctures of crushed pearl. The priest called for fasting and prayer. The midwife whispered of bad humors rising from the earth. But it was the cat the people feared most.

“Did you see it last night?” murmured the butcher’s wife, clutching her rosary. “By old Pierre’s house?”

Pierre was dead by morning.

The tanner’s apprentice saw it next, its black form hunched atop the wooden beams of the granary. The miller’s wife claimed it stared at her from the well. Always watching. Always waiting.

One by one, the homes it visited were marked with sprigs of yarrow and circles of chalk. Some villagers threw salt at it, some chased it with brooms. A boy tried to drown it in a rain barrel. By the time his fever took him, the cat was gone.

But when the next storm rolled in, bringing winds that howled through the chimneys and rain that battered the rooftops, the cat returned.

It always did.

Does this capture the atmosphere you’re looking for? I’m happy to refine or add more historical details!

4o

I said:

I like this. Some logical transition is needed before the last sentence in the following section: The apothecary swore by leeches and tinctures of crushed pearl. The priest called for fasting and prayer. The midwife whispered of bad humors rising from the earth. But it was the cat the people feared most. Also, why have the streets of Saint-Leon turned into “rivers of filth”? Where does the filth come from that the rain is causing to wash the streets? And one last request: can you somehow add details that make the cat appear malevolent and the rain itself appear sinister rather than cleansing. Not that the rain currently appears cleansing, but since water is often seen as a purifying force, I want this rain and water to somehow be linked with infection and contamination. Can you revise further.

ChatGPT said:

Here’s your revised version with better transitions, a clearer reason for the “rivers of filth,” and an enhanced sense of malevolence from both the cat and the rain.

The Cat in the Rain

The storm came first—roaring winds, torrents of rain that turned the cobbled streets of Saint-Léon into rivers of filth. Water gushed through alleyways, carrying refuse from the tanner’s vats, human waste from overflowing privies, and the rotting carcasses of drowned rats. The rain did not cleanse; it defiled, filling the air with a rank, cloying stench.

Then came the sickness.

It started in the home of a tanner’s wife, a woman now only spoken of in whispers: La Première Malade—the First Afflicted. She collapsed in the marketplace, her skin damp with fever, her breath rattling like dried reeds. By nightfall, her children were coughing, and by week’s end, half the town burned rosemary and rue at their doorsteps, praying to keep the affliction away.

And then the cat appeared.

No one knew from where—perhaps it had always been there, lurking in the alleyways, watching with slitted golden eyes. Now it moved openly, slipping between homes, its black fur slick with rain, its paws silent against the stones. It perched on windowsills where candlelight flickered against the storm, watching the sick through warped glass. It curled on doorsteps where mothers wept over fevered children.

Some said it had crept from the tanner’s house the night the woman first fell ill. Others swore they had seen it pacing along the edge of the cemetery wall just before the gravedigger took to his bed, never to rise again.

The apothecary swore by leeches and tinctures of crushed pearl. The priest called for fasting and prayer. The midwife whispered of bad humors rising from the earth. But as the death toll grew, fear turned its gaze elsewhere—not to the heavens, nor to the herbs, nor even to the unseen pestilence that lingered in the damp. Instead, the people of Saint-Léon watched the cat.

“Did you see it last night?” murmured the butcher’s wife, clutching her rosary. “By old Pierre’s house?”

Pierre was dead by morning.

The tanner’s apprentice saw it next, its black form hunched atop the wooden beams of the granary. The miller’s wife claimed it stared at her from the well, its dripping whiskers casting thin, twitching shadows. It left no paw prints in the mud, but the water where it walked took on an oily sheen. When it passed, candle flames flickered, burning low and sickly green.

One by one, the homes it visited were marked with sprigs of yarrow and circles of chalk. Some villagers threw salt at it, some chased it with brooms. A boy tried to drown it in a rain barrel. By the time his fever took him, the cat was gone.

But when the next storm rolled in, bringing winds that howled through the chimneys and rain that hissed against the rooftops like whispered curses, the cat returned.

It always did.

I’ve refined the transitions, justified the filth in the streets, and made both the cat and the rain feel more sinister and tainted. Let me know if you’d like any further tweaks!

4o

I said:

This is really good, I really like it! Still considering revisions, although only to make this even better. In the last two paragraphs, I’d love to have some sort of hint as to why the cat comes back with the storms. Also, the phrase “it always did” implies that the cat is somehow immortal and has always arrived with every storm. I’d rather have the first storm described in this story be the first time the cat appeared. At the end, can you instead imply that the cat always returned after that, not that it always did. And the ending would be stronger if the knowledge that the cat would always return afterward was implied rather than directly stated. Can you revise for a new version? Don’t write over the previous versions. I like seeing every single version as its own entity so I can look back over the progress we’ve made in each draft. Thank you!

ChatGPT said:

Here’s your latest revision, incorporating your request to hint at why the cat returns with the storms and refining the ending to imply its continued return rather than stating it outright.

The Cat in the Rain

The storm came first—roaring winds, torrents of rain that turned the cobbled streets of Saint-Léon into rivers of filth. Water gushed through alleyways, carrying refuse from the tanner’s vats, human waste from overflowing privies, and the rotting carcasses of drowned rats. The rain did not cleanse; it defiled, filling the air with a rank, cloying stench.

Then came the sickness.

It started in the home of a tanner’s wife, a woman now only spoken of in whispers: La Première Malade—the First Afflicted. She collapsed in the marketplace, her skin damp with fever, her breath rattling like dried reeds. By nightfall, her children were coughing, and by week’s end, half the town burned rosemary and rue at their doorsteps, praying to keep the affliction away.

And then the cat appeared.

No one knew from where—perhaps it had always been there, lurking in the alleyways, watching with slitted golden eyes. Now it moved openly, slipping between homes, its black fur slick with rain, its paws silent against the stones. It perched on windowsills where candlelight flickered against the storm, watching the sick through warped glass. It curled on doorsteps where mothers wept over fevered children.

Some said it had crept from the tanner’s house the night the woman first fell ill. Others swore they had seen it pacing along the edge of the cemetery wall just before the gravedigger took to his bed, never to rise again.

The apothecary swore by leeches and tinctures of crushed pearl. The priest called for fasting and prayer. The midwife whispered of bad humors rising from the earth. But as the death toll grew, fear turned its gaze elsewhere—not to the heavens, nor to the herbs, nor even to the unseen pestilence that lingered in the damp. Instead, the people of Saint-Léon watched the cat.

“Did you see it last night?” murmured the butcher’s wife, clutching her rosary. “By old Pierre’s house?”

Pierre was dead by morning.

The tanner’s apprentice saw it next, its black form hunched atop the wooden beams of the granary. The miller’s wife claimed it stared at her from the well, its dripping whiskers casting thin, twitching shadows. It left no paw prints in the mud, but the water where it walked took on an oily sheen. When it passed, candle flames flickered, burning low and sickly green.

One by one, the homes it visited were marked with sprigs of yarrow and circles of chalk. Some villagers threw salt at it, some chased it with brooms. A boy tried to drown it in a rain barrel. By the time his fever took him, the cat was gone.

But when the next storm rolled in, the wind carried something more than the scent of wet earth and rotting straw. It brought a whisper, an echo of something unseen, slinking between the shutters and under doorways, a thing neither wind nor rain.

And when the storm reached Saint-Léon, the cat was there.

This version suggests a deeper connection between the storm and the cat without fully explaining it, making the ending feel inevitable rather than outright stated. Let me know if you’d like any further refinements!

4o

I said:

I like it! I just thought of a good ironic twist. Can we incorporate the idea of a cat’s “nine lives” and a hinted implication that this is how a cat acquires those nine lives, by being present at human death, and possibly even causing that death, although that should be ambiguous. Maybe the cat just recognizes the opportunity to be present at the moment of a person’s death and takes advantage of it to build up its inventory of “lives” available to it. Be sure to maintain a sinister tone appropriate to medieval France. Thank you!

 ChatGPT said:

I love this ironic twist! Here’s the next revision, incorporating the idea that the cat gains its nine lives by being present at death while keeping the cause ambiguous. The sinister medieval tone remains intact.

The Cat in the Rain

The storm came first—roaring winds, torrents of rain that turned the cobbled streets of Saint-Léon into rivers of filth. Water gushed through alleyways, carrying refuse from the tanner’s vats, human waste from overflowing privies, and the rotting carcasses of drowned rats. The rain did not cleanse; it defiled, filling the air with a rank, cloying stench.

Then came the sickness.

It started in the home of a tanner’s wife, a woman now only spoken of in whispers: La Première Malade—the First Afflicted. She collapsed in the marketplace, her skin damp with fever, her breath rattling like dried reeds. By nightfall, her children were coughing, and by week’s end, half the town burned rosemary and rue at their doorsteps, praying to keep the affliction away.

And then the cat appeared.

No one knew from where—perhaps it had always been there, lurking in the alleyways, watching with slitted golden eyes. Now it moved openly, slipping between homes, its black fur slick with rain, its paws silent against the stones. It perched on windowsills where candlelight flickered against the storm, watching the sick through warped glass. It curled on doorsteps where mothers wept over fevered children.

Some said it had crept from the tanner’s house the night the woman first fell ill. Others swore they had seen it pacing along the edge of the cemetery wall just before the gravedigger took to his bed, never to rise again.

The apothecary swore by leeches and tinctures of crushed pearl. The priest called for fasting and prayer. The midwife whispered of bad humors rising from the earth. But as the death toll grew, fear turned its gaze elsewhere—not to the heavens, nor to the herbs, nor even to the unseen pestilence that lingered in the damp. Instead, the people of Saint-Léon watched the cat.

“Did you see it last night?” murmured the butcher’s wife, clutching her rosary. “By old Pierre’s house?”

Pierre was dead by morning.

The tanner’s apprentice saw it next, its black form hunched atop the wooden beams of the granary. The miller’s wife claimed it stared at her from the well, its dripping whiskers casting thin, twitching shadows. It left no paw prints in the mud, but the water where it walked took on an oily sheen. When it passed, candle flames flickered, burning low and sickly green.

One by one, the homes it visited were marked with sprigs of yarrow and circles of chalk. Some villagers threw salt at it, some chased it with brooms. A boy tried to drown it in a rain barrel. By the time his fever took him, the cat was gone.

A priest, desperate to rid the town of its curse, called upon the bishop for guidance. The answer came in an old legend, buried in vellum and dust: “A cat has as many lives as the dead it has watched take their last breath.”

Nine, if the stories were true.

No one could say how many it had now. No one wanted to know.

But when the next storm rolled in, the wind carried something more than the scent of wet earth and rotting straw. It brought a whisper, an echo of something unseen, slinking between the shutters and under doorways, a thing neither wind nor rain.

And when the storm reached Saint-Léon, the cat was there.

This version strengthens the cat’s sinister nature and its possible connection to death, while keeping the cause-and-effect relationship ambiguous. The legend of the nine lives adds depth and a sense of inevitability. Let me know if you’d like any more refinements!

4o

I said:

I absolutely love this! I think we’re finished. Thank you again!

 ChatGPT said:

I’m so glad you love it! This was a fantastic concept, and your ideas made it even more haunting and rich. Best of luck with your writing group—I hope they enjoy this eerie medieval tale as much as we did crafting it! Let me know anytime you want to collaborate on another story. Happy writing! 😊 (Note: This was ChatGPT’s emoji. I love that ChatGPT is such a cheerful bot!)

4o

 *  *  *  

But, of course, I wasn’t really finished. I continued fiddling a bit—especially with the ending, which I like much better now.

So here, finally, is the “final” finished version—and I love it! (I’ve noticed that I keep saying “I love it!” after practically every draft, LOL)

Also, just to spruce up today’s blog post, I asked ChatGPT to generate an image to illustrate my story. My prompt was: “Please create an image to illustrate my “Storm Cat Disease Ideas” story “The Cat in the Rain,” set in the small town in medieval France. The tone should be sinister, malevolent. It should show the village, the black cat, candles in the windows in the early evening, not completely dark. Also, show the mist associated with the cat’s evil presence. Thank you!” (I always say thank you to ChatGPT 😀) The image returned was wonderful, but the cat’s eyes were white. In the story they are golden. So then I had to ask ChatGPT to change them, but then of course, ChatGPT had to change the whole image, because as I’ve learned, ChatGPT can’t keep the entire original the same and change just one thing. It apparently has to generate a whole new version each time, which is frustrating but is the way it works. So now I have a slightly warmer, less sinister image, but hey, I’m definitely grateful to have an image I can use to illustrate, so I need to stop with the complaining!

ChatGPT-generated image to illustrate my “Cat in the Rain” story

My final version: “The Cat in the Rain”

The storm came first, with roaring winds and torrents of rain that turned the cobbled streets of Saint-Léon into rivers of filth. Water gushed through alleyways, carrying refuse from the tanner’s vats, human waste from overflowing privies, and the rotting carcasses of drowned rats. The rain did not cleanse; it defiled, filling the air with a rank, cloying stench.

Then came the sickness.

It started in the home of a tanner’s wife, a woman now spoken of only in whispers: La Première Malade—the First Afflicted. She collapsed in the marketplace, her skin damp with fever, her breath rattling like dried reeds. By nightfall, her children were coughing, and by week’s end, half the town burned rosemary and rue at their doorsteps, praying to keep the affliction away.

And then they noticed the cat.

No one knew where it was from. Perhaps it had always been there, lurking in the alleyways, watching with slitted golden eyes. Now it moved openly, slipping between homes, its black fur slick with rain, its paws silent against the stones. It perched on windowsills where candlelight flickered against the storm, watching the sick through warped glass. It curled on doorsteps where mothers wept over fevered children.

Some said it had crept from the tanner’s house the night the first woman fell ill. Others swore they had seen it pacing outside the cemetery wall just before the gravedigger took to his bed, never to rise again.

The apothecary recommended leeches and tinctures of crushed pearl. The priest called for fasting and prayer. The midwife muttered about bad humors rising from the earth. But as the death toll grew, fear turned its gaze elsewhere—not to the heavens, nor to the herbs, nor even to the unseen pestilence that lingered in the damp. Instead, the people of Saint-Léon watched the cat.

“Did you see it last night?” murmured the butcher’s wife, clutching her rosary. “By old Pierre’s house?”

Pierre had been dead by morning.

The tanner’s apprentice saw it next, its black form hunched atop the wooden beams of the granary. The miller’s wife claimed it stared at her from the well, its dripping whiskers casting thin, twitching shadows. It left no paw prints in the mud, but the water where it walked took on an oily sheen. When it passed, candle flames flickered, burning low and sickly green.

One by one, the homes it visited were marked with sprigs of yarrow and circles of chalk, futile efforts to ward off doom. Some villagers threw salt at it, some chased it with brooms. A boy tried to drown it in a rain barrel. By the time his fever took him, everyone understood that attempting to remove the cat from their midst marked one for death.

A priest from the priory on the riverbank, desperate to rid the town of its curse, called upon the abbot at Sarlat for guidance. The answer came in an old legend, buried in vellum and dust: “A cat has as many lives as the dead it has watched take their last breath.”

Nine, if the stories were true.

No one could say how many this cat had now. No one wanted to know.

Then, as suddenly as it had come, the cat disappeared.

The storm passed; the dead were buried. Shutters did not rattle; doors did not creak. The sickness was gone. The townspeople decreed, with approval from the priest, that while cats were necessary, black cats were not. One by one, as they were captured and taken in sacks to the pond beyond the pasture to be drowned.

Days slipped into weeks, weeks into months, and the town remained untouched by further misfortune. People began to heal—and forget.

Autumn came. The scent of damp straw and cold ashes lingered in the chilled air as Saint-Léon slept. Nestled beneath thick quilts, their chimneys puffing the last embers of the night’s warmth, the villagers slumbered behind stout doors. Safe. Secure.

But in the early darkness of approaching winter, a thin mist began to rise and curl from the fields, weaving slowly among the sheaves, gathering and thickening in the stillness, settling at last into the shape of something patient, something hungry. It wound through the alleyways, skirted past the well and around the graves, pressed against the cracks beneath the doors. A hint of foulness in the air, a shroud of vapor slinking along the high street and slipping into Saint-Léon as easily as breath into lungs.

Epilogue (on the prologue, ironically 😊)

I told my writing group that I couldn’t think of any practical use for this exercise, as it’s too “nothing” to count as an actual short story. Nothing happens, nothing changes, there’s no insightful twist. Just a feeling of malevolence and maybe a bit of intrigue.

But then Jo suggested that it felt like a prologue, and maybe it could be the prologue of a novel. I liked that idea a lot.

Of course, I’m not writing a novel about medieval or even modern day France, but maybe I could find a way to use it in my own novel (that I’ve been writing forever but recently have started using my writing group’s exercise prompts to write ChatGPT-assisted scenes for, which I’ve shared here on my blog) as some sort of thematic element, which might then logically justify opening with this “Cat in the Rain” story as a prologue. We’ll see.

My Thoughts on ChatGPT as a Writing Teacher

Meanwhile, ChatGPT has made my own creative writing so much fun. My writing group is starting to ask: Did you write this, or did ChatGPT?

Which is a hard question to answer, especially when considering the moral judgments of character, authenticity, and dishonesty that are almost always associated with assumptions regarding what properly constitutes “one’s own writing.” Because remember: I did my PhD dissertation on plagiarism. There’s a lot of anger and morality surrounding the concept of “authorship,” even to the point of comparing plagiarism to murder. I kid you not. Murder. What a person writes is something very intimately connected to the essence of the person himself in many people’s minds. Yet, there’s no way to detect with complete accuracy whether any given text was actually written by a certain person. The space between text and author makes it impossible. Therefore, anything that blurs the connection any further threatens to obliterate it entirely, making plagiarism (and by extension, ChatGPT) an existential danger.

Think of how personal it feels to have your writing criticized. Learning to see my own texts as something other than myself, something separate from my ego, was one of the most important things I learned in graduate school. It’s part of a writer’s training, and it’s a difficult skill/perspective to develop.

Gaining that separation is kind of like being a parent, I guess. At some point you have to recognize that even though you created this human being, they are not YOU, they are themselves, independent of you, and not subject to your ownership or control. You can love them, respect them, be proud of them. But they are not you, and you have to guard against the impulse to take pride in them, as though their attributes or achievements were your own.

My personal take on that question (Did you write that, or did ChatGPT?) is: Yes. I did write that.

I used a tool, but I shaped the story myself. Sometimes alone, sometimes with ChatGPT taking on the execution.

And I guess I don’t make a distinction between “writing” and “editing.” They are two sides of the same coin and, for me, are not linear processes with distinct edges or stages. I am writing, editing, fiddling, and refining constantly as the finished version of a text begins to reveal itself. “Writing” and “editing” are meaningless labels in my opinion; maybe “fiddling” or “refining” would better capture what’s actually going on.

True, the very first draft of this “Cat in the Rain” story returned by ChatGPT was largely ChatGPT’s in terms of the actual text generated. However, even then, you’ll note that the setting of a small town in medieval France was my own idea, as were the additional subject matter details I specified: candles, medieval medicines, and parents and children. So, although ChatGPT took on the first draft for me, and much of that draft did remain in my final version of the story, I’m the one who continued to direct the drafting work, following up with revisions of my own—sometimes asking ChatGPT for continued development of ideas, sometimes replacing ChatGPT’s words with others I thought worked better, sometimes adding entire new sections myself.

The upshot is that generative AI is going to change the writing process (and the creative process in general) in ways that won’t be clear for a long time. Right now most of my “study” of generative AI as a scholar is very much participatory, trying to figure out how the tool works by using it myself.

However, I’ve also begun recognizing the “tells” of AI-generated texts, and it’s clear that the GIGO (garbage in garbage out) principle is manifestly at work in those cases where something is clearly AI written. Generative AI texts that are produced by people who don’t know or don’t care about quality writing (so, for example, poorly written student papers or the numerous “nothing” articles and posts turning up in my social media feeds) tend to be smoothly and correctly written in terms of style, but they are empty. Generic. Cliché-ridden. Bland. Filled with hyperbole. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Already teachers/scholars are beginning to talk about these features of AI-written text, and I’m starting to include such discussions of bad AI-generated texts in the writing classes I teach. Students are using AI tools, but they have been scavenging their instruction from various “tips” they find on social media. My feeling is that if the tool is here, and they are going to use it anyway (badly), then maybe my job is to is to help them understand more about how it works, about what makes good writing good and bad writing bad, and how the tool can be used to complement and amplify their own writing skills, knowledge, and creativity.