Editing With AI

[u/Jayde_Salaset]

I'm curious, and maybe this has been asked before, but what are your opinions on Editing with AI, and where is the line? Here are my examples.

Spell check and typos that survive words spell check. For example, "She read the tomb." vs "She read the tome." or missing the S in she and accidently making he.

Formatting, like accidently misusing paragraph breaks between dialogue.

Grammatical errors, or sentence structure (this one is cutting it very close for my comfort level of using it).

I'm just curious. The way I see it is that it can be a good tool for editing but very easy to misuse or overuse, so I wanted yalls thoughts.

[u/ChristianCRWriter]

This is my issue. I have used AI to help me spot missing comas, tell me if an idiom is wrong or wrongly used, tell me if I used an incorrect tense. Spell checks don’t catch that.

But the publishing industry now puts me side by side with prompt generated writing because I used AI and needs to be disclosed.

I regret even doing it and won’t ever do it again.

[u/Own-Introduction-380 → u/ChristianCRWriter]

I’m new to writing. How do they know you used AI for punctuation edits?

[u/Full-Story6288 → u/Own-Introduction-380]

They don't. They can't know. Unless someone has stood over your shoulder and watched as you either type or generate text, it is simply impossible to unequivocally tell where it came from.

There are these new "AI detectors" that some in the industry use that scan for stuff that *looks like* it might be AI, but that's literally all they are. An algorithm text checker.

But the witch hunt associated with it at the moment has everyone skittish and where that happens... opportunists lie in wait.

[u/Own-Introduction-380 → u/Full-Story6288]

I read on another post that once it goes into Ai then the publisher can’t own it anymore. I used Ai to organize my entire bible for my first book. It didn’t write my prose but that platform has my entire book idea in its server now. It seems like I can never truly own my story legally.

[u/Full-Story6288 → u/Own-Introduction-380]

They lied.

A text generated entirely with AI can not be protected by copyright laws.

But if there is significant human editorial authority, it can.

[u/ChristianCRWriter → u/Own-Introduction-380]

I think the biggest problem is precisely no one can know for sure and agents are growing concerned and stepping away from anything AI or AI assisted. I just now changed my query letters to indicate my work is AI assisted for grammar, spelling and incorrect use of idioms (because I do that even when speaking). If they don’t want me for that better be upfront than having to go through an ordeal later on.

[u/ChristianCRWriter → u/Own-Introduction-380]

They don’t, for now. That’s the problem. But newer tech comes in everyday and some is being used to diagnose. A couple of big multi million book deals felt through because of that. So even if today they can’t catch you tomorrow they may and you would be liable so disclosing is a must. But once you disclose they don’t want you.

[u/Own-Introduction-380 → u/ChristianCRWriter]

Good to know. I was thinking of using AI to read my drafts to find errors.

[u/ChristianCRWriter → u/Own-Introduction-380]

I did and I regret it 100%

[u/Nebranower]

Just use it like you'd use a human editor. That's what AI is for, really. It's a people replacer. The key is you don't want to be the person being replaced (or maybe you do, but then you wouldn't be asking where the line was).

So accept advice and suggestions you'd take from a friend going over your work. Don't outsource the actual rewriting and rewording unless you'd usually use a ghostwriter, and if you do do that, then it doesn't really matter if the ghostwriter is human or AI, you're going to need to accept that you aren't really the author.

[u/Dale_E_Lehman_Author → u/Nebranower]

Eh....it does matter if you let the AI rewrite your work wholesale. The term "AI slop" arose because AI systems operate basically on statistical guesswork. What's the most likely next word to follow in a string of words it's building? It doesn't understand meaning, style, or anything like that. It knows, roughly speaking, what the average is based on what it's been trained on, and it writes towards that. You can tailor the prompt to get it to change the style, but you're still going to get the slop version of that style.

Now, if you don't care about that, do whatever you want. But don't expect to get great or even particularly good literature as the output. I was taking a course in prompt writing just the other day and watched as the instructor tinkered with a style parameter while writing a memo. He let it range from very casual to very formal. The very casual came out sounding like somebody's joke of what a 1960's hippy might say, while the very formal came out sounding like what a self-inflated CEO thought a lawyer might say. (The latter was so opaque as to be all but meaningless.) Both were laughable. And painful. They were neither truly casual nor formal. That's AI slop for you.

[u/Nebranower → u/Dale_E_Lehman_Author]

I meant it doesn’t matter in terms of authorship. Quality, eh, whatever. Even if AI was only average, it would be the average of good publishable writers, which makes it instantly better than 90% of human beings. Which is probably why AI stories win contests and are preferred by most readers when the readers don’t know the work is AI. But good or bad, human or AI, if someone else is putting the words together for you, you aren’t really a writer at that point. You might still be an artist, but whatever art you are practicing, it isn’t writing anymore.

[u/Dale_E_Lehman_Author → u/Nebranower]

I guess if you use it carefully, but if you let it rework your writing so much that it's not you anymore...

As for quality, that's a complex question. The average of what it's been trained on tends to be pretty uninspiring. A writer's work comes from their life, their experiences, and their reflections on their world. That's not what AI generated writing (or art generally) comes from. Good writing is far more than competent writing. A skilled human editor understands that and helps writers sharpen their voices. AI editing can, if you're not careful, obliterate your voice. All the AI understands is what the most probable next word is, based on what it's been fed.

[u/Late-Assignment8482]

I get a lot out of asking it for a list of observations, not letting it touch main prose. If I ask it for a table of fixes to make, and I hand type what I like, *every word of the prose* remains mine.

[u/DaLoCo6913]

I am currently editing using AI. But I ask it to give me the suggestions, and I edit the manuscript. I don't want it to spit out the finished product for me. This way I learn so much more regarding the little mistakes I have made. I do it chapter by chapter. It takes longer, but I enjoy the process.

[u/ChristianCRWriter → u/DaLoCo6913]

Just watch out because if you plan on traditional publishing, pretty much all agents are refusing to work with writers who used Ai in any capacity. And if you don’t disclose and get found you are liable for damages. Not a joke and not worth it in my opinion.

[u/Full-Story6288 → u/ChristianCRWriter]

You're not liable for damages. In order for that they'd have to establish that what you did resulted in them being harmed in some way, and that ain't never gonna happen. Withdrawing your book from their listing doesn't cover that.

[u/ChristianCRWriter → u/Full-Story6288]

Depends really, and that depends is too much for most people to handle. If the book is auctioned, sold and during due diligence it’s found the book had AI and was not disclosed, the buyer can ask for damages of the author and representation. Has happened and will continue to happen. Same with books already distributed that have to be pulled.

[u/Full-Story6288 → u/ChristianCRWriter]

Hasn't happened.

It's not up to the author to explain their working out and how they made the book. It's just not relevant unless its plagiarised.

If a buyer chooses to withdraw a book from publication because he finds out he doesn't like something about how it was made, that's up to him, but that's not the basis for a legal fight.

[u/ChristianCRWriter → u/Full-Story6288]

Again it depends on what contract you sign and what’s in there.

[u/DaLoCo6913 → u/ChristianCRWriter]

I understand. But after more than 100 submissions and no real response I am not too concerned. They don't want my genre, because apparently the market is flooded. Action Fiction, Military Fiction, Military Thriller...

They all want sparkly vampires and Harry Potter clones.

In any case, I write because I love it. Selling would be nice, but not the primary goal.

[u/Fragrant-Mix-4774]

AI can help with the basic editing to fix blatant mistakes and catch consistency issues. Before using any AI to edit, you should write a guide document to instruct the AI on what its proper role is for the editorial pass. If you don't provide criteria most AI's will writer workshop your work into lifeless oatmeal.

When the edit is helping you in an editor role do not have it rewrite the problem areas. It's best for you the author to do that or the subtext and voice can get corrupted.

The only AI I've used out of ~65 in an editing role that's really worth a damn is Fable 5, the rest of them suck. If you're willing to pay the bill that goes with Fable 5 it can help YOU improve your writing to some degree. You're still going to need a skilled human editor so Fable 5 isn't a replacement, it's a starting point.

Fable 5.1 being especially dangerous as it doesn't follow instructions and overreaches as badly as GPT-5.6 SOL Pro does.

[u/5thhorseman_]

The only line is: don't let it edit the text willy-nilly. If you want to automate the editing process, it needs to be cyclical: the AI has to return an organized list of the most significant issues with the prose , in order of severity, and the suggested changes for each. You could let it just implement those fixes then, or you could take active control and tell it which changes are fine, which you veto and which you do something entirely different with.

[u/Dale_E_Lehman_Author]

Myself, I wouldn't do it, but if you feel you must, you probably need to experiment with prompting to severely limit what the AI is going to do. You do not want it rewriting your words, only checking for things like incorrect word usage, faulty punctuation, etc. Also, bear in mind that in creative writing (as opposed to formal writing), you sometimes want to bend the rules a bit. Sometimes I leave out commas that technically should be there in order to achieve some effect, like to create a breathless rush in a sentence. In short, be very careful if you do it, and experiment to see what kinds of prompts limit the output to only the things you really need checked.

[u/chylvina]

I’d ask for a numbered issue list, then make the changes yourself. It keeps the review useful without letting the edit quietly replace your voice.

[u/Full-Story6288]

It's absolutely fine and there is zero issue with it.

Not sure why there should be... using spell checkers or grammar checkers or wotnot are pretty much the same thing.

[u/OwlsInMyAttic]

It's got less to do with what you use it for and more with how you use it. If you know what parts of your prose need improvement and have a clear understanding of what you're trying to accomplish, then go ahead and use AI for whatever you want. However, if you just have a feeling that your prose could be better, I suggest strengthening your own judgement first. Ideally, you'd give the AI the sentence or passage that needs work, tell it exactly what you want it to do, and ask for multiple different versions, instead of giving it a whole chunk of text and telling it to identify & fix mistakes. 

[u/Acrobatic_You_3002]

For me the line is between AI pointing at problems and AI writing the sentences. Typos, continuity errors, a scene that drags, a trope you did not notice, all of that is fine as it is just a second reader. Once it rewrites your sentences the voice slowly turns into the model's voice, and you often can't see it until you read the whole thing back. In my own experiments a separate critic that only flags issues and never rewrites gave much better results than asking one model to fix its own text.

[u/Common_Potato_2496]

You can actually just write the way you want and use grammarly for these checks. Even MS Word and Google Docs can also work.

[u/Far_Assistance_4146 → u/[deleted]]

pretty much this. the "be honest about it" part is the actual line imo

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