It would be great, long-term, to have some AI tools at hand right in Scrivener. Especially options to summarize documents in the synopsis would be great. Most tools (online and Office apps) will get those soon, probably more in form of quite simple commands (funnier, more sophisticated) or whatever.
That would not what I would like to see., it’s too obvious. But to have the ability to mark any text and than perform any arbitrary prompt on it, get back the AI output (via API access in the background) and then decide if it’s helpful, that would be my favourite. Could be presented on a popup window.
Just some rough and early thoughts. ChatGPT has already changed my writing process quite much…
Typically, the ChatGPT team would be responsible for issuing (and, if desired, charging for) API keys. I don’t speak for Keith, but I would say that the chances of our incorporating a tool that requires per-user API keys is low.
I’d like a ChatGPT window in Scrivener that would make it easy to incorporate ChatGPT into the scrivener document, and make it part of the workflow.
I’d also like some shortcuts to save Prompts to a designated Prompts folder in the Binder.
FWIW, I think AI chatbots are the future of writing tools. I think they will inherit the job of spellcheckers and apps like Grammerly. Since the best ChatGPT work comes from vigorously iterating with the chatbot, an app like Scrivener could be a very useful tool for managing the iterations.
I understand that KB only adds what he wants to add, but it would be a real shame is Scrivener slept on this one. It’s going to change everything.
Absolutely, it will change everything. It already did in my mind. I use ChatGPT day in day out, not only for writing but for coding and reasoning and brainstorming, you name it. I might miss it more than my phone.
And that’s just the beginning of AI.
Let’s hope mankind and society won’t break under the heavy weight of that change. It will be for the better and the worse, and let’s pray for the just outcome …
ChatGPT Plus. (Being not the the Bing or Edge type …)
And of course, just for the records in this thread: I am very well aware as a programmer and writer of all the possible threats which AI might bring, and I am also aware of what these things can do and can do not.
And they are - in my opinion - no threat (at least yet) to the genuine creative might of human beings. Most so-called “poems” and “stories” which they generate are soulless crap. But nevertheless there is a bunch of practical tasks they can help a lot. They are tools and we as society have to discuss how to deal with it and prevent abuse.
But some of us don’t trust existing tools that claim to use AI specifically to improve writing because they impose out-moded and out-dated views of grammar and lexis. ChatGPT is much the same and has been shown to produce false answers; to such an extent that one Australian politician in suing OpenAI for defamation because of the content of some of its output!
I’m not sure how introducing a process that requires connection to a remote server makes anything faster.
I would also argue – wearing my writing hat, rather than my support hat – that adding some friction into your interaction with any tool that purports to “improve” your writing is good. Even such “routine” tools as grammar checkers and spellcheckers can wreak havoc if left to their own devices.
Really? For example, backing up your project to Dropbox or iCloud is faster than getting out a thumbdrive and copying it by hand. There are a lot of processes that are facilitated by connecting to the internet, provided that you have a first-world internet connection.
Respectfully, this is the argument of someone who writes for pleasure rather than for their daily bread. Having rapid, frictionless access to any writing tool that helps your process is valuable to a professional writer. That’s one of the reasons I own Scrivener – it allows me to do things faster than other apps, and it has features that help my process.
ChatGPT has all kinds of oblique and inobvious uses that do not include drafting pages. For example, if you learn how to prompt the AI correctly, it will role-play with you as a character, and then later explain why it behaved in certain ways. So if I want to write a character with a background and perspective that I do not share, ChatGPT can give me ideas about the attitudes and concerns of such a person, and its underlying bases. The scenes I write for that character won’t be written by AI, but they will be informed by a custom-made reference work.
This process is no different from me searching the internet for clues and accounts about such a person. It’s just faster, and I can tailor the approach to my exact needs.
I’d like that kind of power built into Scrivener in a generalized, flexible way, the way KB builds most of the features. Otherwise, Scrivener is going to become one of those apps for “Old People Who Don’t Use AI.”
You don’t have to use Scrivener’s character-naming feature, either.
FWIW, I primarily use GPT for pre-writing. I find writing pages to be the fun part, so I don’t want an AI to do that. But research, brainstorming, and organizing? Sure, bring on the machine learning.
I’m not suggesting that Scrivener become an AI-only app. Just give us a way to interact with ChatGPT in the app, and streamline the iteration process, as well as prompting and prompt engineering.
As for the problems with GPT-4, it’s early days. Things will continue to improve.
Heh. It always cracks me up when you write “Just curious.”
It’s like when a Southerner says “Bless your heart.”
To answer you question, no, I never asked for a web browser to be integrated into Scrivener, because there would be little utility in it. There is utility in integrating some ChatGPT features into Scrivener. There are enormous shortcomings in the ChatGPT web experience that could be overcome by integrating some ChatGPT tools into Scrivener. That’s the difference,
I don’t know how much experience you have with using AI like ChatGPT, but getting good results from it requires learning how to drive the AI, and a lot of iterations to fine tune your commands. The process of engineering prompts that are effective is fairly difficult, and I already use Scrivener to help in that process.
I don’t doubt that this integration could be useful, but likely won’t happen for multiple reasons (that don’t have anything to do with AI). E.g. many writers would love an integrated bibliography manager, or at least a very tight integration of a third-party tool. Or organizational features like Aeon Timeline. Or third-party grammar che… okay, strike that one, those are going to die first. Maybe image manipulation? But really all kinds of things.
But the whole point of a multitasking OS with a window manager is: you don’t have to cram every imaginable functionality into one program for easy access.
But slower than an automatic backup to a pre-connected external drive.
Respectfully, you are making inaccurate assumptions about both my writing and professional writers generally.
Even in this era of word processors and voice recognition, some writers, including extremely accomplished professionals, prefer to create their drafts the old fashioned way, with pencil and paper. They find that the enforced “slowness” facilitates creativity in ways that “faster” tools do not. Sometimes a bit of friction is useful.
Given the ChatGPT output that I have seen, I would be too terrified to even consider such a project. I’d expect the output to be either a crude stereotype or inoffensive pablum.
The most likely outcome is probably something similar to the citation manager integration, where Scrivener provides a way to launch the tool of your choice. Close integration with a specific AI strikes me as unwise, given the rapid evolution of the field and the likelihood that different tools will offer different capabilities.
I completely agree, and that’s why I’m not going to put any more time and energy into this. I made my request, explained it, defended it a bit, but it’s up to KB.
He knows it’s out there, and he’ll decide whether it comes into Scrivener.
