Editing AI-generated content

Ravi

Lately, there has been an explosion of jobs requiring editing or humanizing AI-generated content in both nonfiction and fiction.

Any suggestions on how to handle these jobs?

So far, I have given them a wide berth.

Eve

I've done that. But it's ridiculous, as it takes me almost as long as writing it from scratch. But hey, if a client wants to pay me $125 an hour to edit that crap, I'll do it. But I don't see how they think this is a better or cheaper option than just hiring a decent writer, to begin with.

In my niche, the whole AI-generated content has died out a bit. 1.5 years ago (or whenever it was), everyone started using it. And the sites that did has since lost almost all traffic. One of my clients lost 97% of their traffic, so the site is now completely dead. Everyone seems to be back to human writing now, for which I'm grateful.

Alexandra

I don't see why people would want to 'humanise' it (except maybe to pass it off as their own) because it's regurgitated human content anyway. It's all based on existing texts. The only issue is the factual veracity. You have to double-check every detail to avoid propagating false information. And that can be a real drudgery because finding the sources is time-consuming.

I also find that editing those kinds of texts alters the flow and cohesion, especially if you have a distinct writing style. That is why I advocate proceeding as you would for MTPE: do a light edit (for a result that is 'good enough') or a full edit, depending on the purpose of the text.

Ravi

Alexandra

Thank you, Alexandra.

And avoiding plagiarism could be another issue.

Alexandra

Come to think of it, some humanising is always in order, judging by what I was just presented with. Another 'brilliant' translation that made me laugh out and want to share with you. The context: a list of medical symptoms. The translation engine (a sort of AI) got the exotic medical terms mostly right, but it failed spectacularly on ... Guess what. On the phrase 'Tires easily'. It spat out German 'Leichte Bereifung' (lightweight tyres/tires). ...Grrrr...

Alexandra

Alexandra OMG! It works so sloppily (or may need glasses). It gave me 'cancer sores' (Krebsgeschwüre) for 'canker sores'!

Sang

I mostly steer away from anything AI as an illustrator, but took a job from Adobe on Upwork that required me to rate the "editability" of AI-generated vector illustration files. You know- a drawing of a boy with feet for hands and such.

I was very curious how developed AI illustrations could be at Adobe, the mother of all illustration programs.. And the trend of my designer friends utilizing AI to catch up with their corporate workload! So I took the job. And I had to rate out of 10 how easy it would be to correct/edit the files (mostly due to the structure of vector files, which means an illustration is drawn with dots and curves you can manipulate, rather than drawing by hand). MOST files were rated below 4... Illustration files consisting of 1000+ dots and lines, impossible to edit. Like Eve said, it would take as long as drawing them from scratch. My curiosity about AI has dissipated eversince...🤔

Alexandra

Sang I find that the prompting isn't as straightforward as for writing. I might need more practice, but it requires more rephrasing until you get your desired image. It's a bit like talking to a chatbot...