How Will AI Tools Affect the Freelance Writing Market?
A veteran writer responds
I used an extensive AI writing program yesterday for the first time. I qualified that sentence with “extensive” because we’ve all been using AI to help us write since the invention of spellcheck. And like spellcheck, I’m pretty sure AI tools can be a help or a hinderance to quality writing. The program I used is Jasper. It does quite a bit more than check spelling and grammar, but did it write complete stories for me? No. Would I ever attempt to use it that way? No. Will some people? Absolutely. And that’s where this story actually begins.
The misuse of AI will increase, and so will the demand for quality writing
I recently wrote about the huge demand for writers right now. I’ve been a freelance travel writer for over thirty years and I have never seen anything like the market we currently have. Sure, you can easily say that’s because of pent up travel demand. But the thing is, I could get well-paid writing gigs on any subject matter right now. Editors are pitching me.
AI that can produce a news article or blog post is not new. What is new is that the technology has finally trickled down to a price point that works for at least some freelancers. I could search for almost any topic and…
