How to safely use AI as an author, and should you?

How to safely use AI as an author, and should you? Here are some reasons for and against, to be an informed author.

Safe uses

Or safe-ish? A brainstorming tool for character prompts, setting ideas, plot twists, and scene starters if you are stuck. One example is plotting. When you have a novel idea you can draft a complete outline to save time, then write it out scene by scene adding your own ideas and style. Then, if anything like me, completely changing it as you go along! Keep your original AI output as proof that you have completely changed and made it into your own.

Use it for those difficult sentences that you think could be better phrased. For example to pull up 10 alternative sentences, even more! Then sit back and read through them and tweak as needed.

The same is true for structural analysis. This involves sorting out pacing problems, revealing weak or repetitive phrasing. Though ensure you tell it the exact genre and audience, or the output is generic. Plus, if you use dialects and local words it tends just to be annoying, unless you tell it to ignore them.

This tip might be in the unsafe category as AIs make mistakes. But you can use it to check historical facts as a shortcut to trawling through internet sites. Using AI as a search assistant you can summarize background material, compile quick facts, and produce concise timelines. Though I think historical bloggers and folks with passion, sharing their experience online would appreciate direct links, comments and reads!

Sort out those mechanical, time sucking edits. This includes grammar, punctuation, consistency checks, and basic line edits to save time before human revision. However, it does make mistakes and has a nasty habit of rewriting what you don’t want and introducing new errors. So, for a professional finish hire a proofreader.

Have you heard of prompt templates? These are instructions capture what you want the AI to do, the tone you want, constraints, and examples that instruct the AI to follow each time. It means any resulting text better matches your voice and constraints. For instance, do you want UK or US English? Are you writing horror or young adult fiction?

Type up your blurb/synopsis ideas for the back of the book and ask the AI to create it for you using your text. Use more detailed instructions for more specific results. I tested AI for this, but found it oversimplified the text and introduced phrasing I didn’t like. So it’s a shortcut, but not a perfect one.

Evaluate your sentences for reading-level, age, accessibility checks. If your writing YA there may be complex things you don’t want, or need explanation and definitions in the novel. So it is handy to evaluate sentence complexity.

Things to be careful of:

• Document AI usage where required — disclose AI assistance to collaborators, publishers, or platforms following industry or contractual rules.
• Verify factual details independently — cross-check dates, technical facts, cultural practices, and legal info with authoritative sources.

Unsafe practices

Using it to draft a complete novel, because even if it takes your ideas and creates something new, only paid AI versions can guarantee that the resulting text is plagiarism and copyright free. So do your own writing and enjoy the process. Some ChatGPS promise to ensure plagerist-free text if you upgrade to a paid version, but do the necessary background checks for this.

Replicating another author’s voice. Someone has worked hard to produce a book, regardless of how long it takes to read. That’s just outright stealing.

Be sure to check the facts. AI can get specialised details wrong (medical, legal, historical facts). Best use your brain to think about each reply and verify from a more trusted source.

Do double check possible violations of privacy checks on the AI you use, will it ever leak data? Those that can claim broad license over your text can unintentionally transfer author rights. Examples which aren’t that clear, from my experience (bearing in mind this constantly changes) are: Adobe free AI tools, Grammarly.

Grammarly’s public Terms of Service have included language that grants the company broad rights to use user content to provide and improve its services, which is the kind of clause writers should watch for.

Copilot? Microsoft 365 Copilot documentation states that prompts and data accessed through Microsoft Graph are not used to train foundation LLMs and makes specific enterprise privacy and data-residency commitments. For Copilot however you need to upgrade to a paid plan to have protection. Or delete saved drafts and prompts in your Copilot history. Opt out of having your conversations used to train Microsoft’s models and disable personalization in the consumer Copilot settings.

The take away

Always revise AI output yourself or with trusted editors. Ask yourself if you are writing the book, cause if the AI is, then check out my ethics and AI article, and also ask then why write?

Keep copies of the AI outputs you have edited as proof to protect yourself as an author that your work is genuine, as brains come up with the same ideas sometimes!

About Emma

My new book is out! The Secret Cult of the Miners’ Library. As an introvert haunting the corners of storytelling festivals, it’s incredibly difficult to track Emma down. She’s best known for writing Scottish fiction about working-class women and communities and their misrepresented lives. You can find her other book A Gypsy’s Curse here. Or get writing help here.