Over ten years ago, when I visited Japan, I met a woman from the U.S. When we were chatting about books, I learned from her that a well-known best seller book, I had once read, was written by a ghost writer. She knew the writer who did it.
I believed what she said as she had no reason to lie. Also, because I remembered that I had a weird feeling when I read the book. Although I mostly liked the contents, something was totally off. It was not “off” in a sense that writing was not good. It was weird because it was too well-written.
This book is a non-fiction book about certain ideas. The writing of a non-fiction book that explains an author’s ideas can become clanky as the author struggles to delineate their thoughts. One knows something is different from whether one can write about them. But, the book was very very well-written and well-explained with a lot of reference points.
Probably partly because the elegance of writing and examples, it has been sold and continue to be sold today all over the world.
Well, I know now the author only provided the ideas and someone else put them together.
The ghost writer was a fiction writer that could write very well. The book is so well put-together because of his skill. He was not credited as a contributor, I believe.
Whether it is written by a ghost writer, the book is still a good book. But, to know that the book is not written by the author whose name was on the cover page disappoints me. Who writes the book is important for readers.
Now it is 2024. Things are much more complex because AI can write or put together ideas for humans.
For instance, I read a very well-written short fiction yesterday. I was impressed.
This morning, it suddenly hit me, the author may have used AI to create the piece mostly because it was different from the author’s usually style.
ChatGPT can write nice short stories: we see such examples online. I have read a story for children ChatGPT created. It was a complex and intriguing story
If we don’t like parts of AI writing, we can edit it. It is quicker than writing from scratch,
There is no way to know the particular fiction that I read was written by AI but it is possible.
Whether it was created fully by a human or AI or both, the good writing is still a good writing. Maybe, I am thinking too much here?
Not really, in my view. Who writes still matters to me.