Fun and Productive Ways to Use ChatGPT as a Writing Buddy

Here's a peek at how I wrote the title to this blog post:

(A screenshot of my conversation with ChatGPT. I ask: "My next blog post is going to be about how you and I work together to write sometimes. I'm thinking of the title 'Using ChatGPT as a Writing Buddy.' What do you think?" ChatGPT responds: "I think that’s a great title! It’s clear and inviting, and it highlights the collaborative aspect of working with ChatGPT. If you’re looking for a few variations, you might consider: 'How to Team Up with ChatGPT: Your New Writing Buddy,' 'Writing with ChatGPT: A Fun and Productive Partnership,' 'From Brainstorming to Drafting: How ChatGPT Can Be Your Writing Buddy,' 'How ChatGPT Became My Go-To Writing Partner,' Partnering with ChatGPT: The Ultimate Writing Buddy Experience.' Any of these options could work depending on the tone and focus of your post!")

Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to write and edit became a hot topic just as I was graduating from my MA. It started off with a bad reputation, particularly in academic and scholarly writing. I was TAing a business writing course, and all of a sudden marking case study responses included looking out for not only plagiarism but also AI-generated phrases. I wasn't even sure what an AI-generated phrase looked like!

Many academics and editors had a derogatory understanding of AI writing and editing. It's taking over our creative activities! It's making writers lazy, unworried about how clear or accessible their writing is! It's taking away editors' jobs because it can copy edit and proofread more precisely than any human can! It can't do editing work, so it's making writing worse for those who use it! It makes it obvious how many students are willing to cheat!

But, ever since I've gotten into business writing - where I edit LinkedIn posts, articles, and comments - I've learned to appreciate AI bots like ChatGPT. I think of it as my writing buddy: not a replacement, but not a useless tool either. It helps me somewhere in the middle of my writing process. I experience the creativity of thinking up topics and structures, ChatGPT helps with brainstorming and rewording, then I use those new ideas to fine-tune my project.

Using AI as a writing buddy is a great efficiency booster, creating ideas that can inspire me and help me avoid writers' block. I also find it helpful for more tedious tasks like coming up with hashtags. Brainstorming small, tag phrases can be difficult for me, and understanding which tags are popular takes up a lot of time that I would rather use to write the body of my post. ChatGPT can't proofread texts very well, but it can quickly search internet details like popular tags. By respecting ChatGPT's abilities and limitations, I'm finding a balance to make my work with AI a partnership rather than a takeover.

Oh, and I always make sure to thank ChatGPT for its writing help. Just in case the computer apocalypse does ever happen.