3 Reasons AI Sucks at Editing Your Book - Magic Words Editorial Services
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Magic Words Editing: 3 Reasons AI Sucks at Editing

3 Reasons AI Sucks at Editing Books

Posted March 25, 2024 at 6:30 am in Edit That Book, Editors and the Editing Process

If you’re looking for a cheap and easy way to get your book edited, you might wonder if ChatGPT (or Grammarly or ProWritingAid) does as fine a job editing your book as a human being. The short answer: nope. AI-based or AI-enhanced editing programs might be okay at catching minor grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. But right now they can’t do much more than that. Here are three reasons AI sucks at editing and why it will always let you down:

Character Names

AI software programs like ChatGPT won’t tell you when “Catherine” becomes “Katherine” halfway through your story. In my job as a living, breathing human editor, I catch these mistakes often. Because they happen all. the. time. A computer has no idea when or how to track this, whereas I keep a thorough list of all your character names and spellings, plus important physical traits like eye color, hair color, etc.

Timelines

AI software programs like ChatGPT won’t alert you when a character says something’s going to happen on Tuesday and later in the book, it happens on Saturday. As a human editor, I keep a detailed timeline of your book’s events to make sure it progresses logically.

Fact-Checking

AI software programs like ChatGPT won’t check the accuracy and consistency of dates, place names, or even if the moon was shining on a night your character says it was. Yep! I’ve done that. A moon timetable is one of my most-used bookmarks. I look up street names, city features, animal facts, slang terms and their use, star charts. You name it, I’ve googled it. AI doesn’t care, nor would it likely give you accurate information if it did.

All of the above ways AI sucks at editing I handle easily as part of my most basic editing package, a Nuts and Bolts copyedit. It’s nothing fancy.

But it’s smart enough that no, a robot can’t do the job.

If you’d like your manuscript polished to a human standard, learn more about a Nuts and Bolts copyedit here.

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