TL;DR: Editing exists for a reason and it always will.

AI editing is extraordinary. Even in April 2023, ChatGPT was already nailing it with a score of 15/17 on the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading’s test. Draftsmith's sentence-by-sentence edits may not be perfect every single time. But from the perspective of 18 months ago, they are mind-blowing. If you want a sentence to be punchier, better phrased, or more readable, AI means that you have instant options at your fingertips. And now GPT-4o means there is another step change in the quality of what AI can offer.

So why not let AI handle the entire document and be done with it? As incredible as AI editing is, there is so much more to the craft of editing than fixing text and re-writing sentences. Here’s a list of just some of the reasons that AI editors won’t be able to take on the entire job any time soon.

AI makes some terrible suggestions

AI makes helpful suggestions most of the time. However, occasionally, it spews out nonsensically awful suggestions. With that in mind, what’s the best strategy in the AI era for people whose work includes editing documents?

• Ignore AI completely and hope that human editors can stay competitive with AI models that are developing at an incredible rate?

• Use tools that automatically edit entire documents at once and hope that the AI’s mistakes will not be too awful?

• Use some combination of automation and human effort to get the most from the tools available?

We believe embracing AI where it helps create the best possible documents, especially in a professional environment where time is limited. It’s important not to be fooled by overblown AI hype or lulled into a false sense of security, because AI makes mistakes. Reality is nuanced. For a long time, the best strategy is likely to be a mixture of human and AI effort.

AI sometimes misses the point

When an AI makes suggestions for improving writing, it can subtly contradict the author's intended message. An AI can reliably make a sentence shorter or livelier. However, in suggesting ways to do that, it may miss important points of nuance in the language. The original words were chosen for a reason. It takes a person to decide when to respect the original and when something can be improved with a suggestion from AI.

One of the most interesting reasons why the AI misses the point is because it responds to its instructions without thinking. If you ask a person to make a five-word sentence shorter, the answer is usually “why would I do that”? If you ask an AI to do it, it will assume that it’s very important to reduce that sentence to three or four words, even if that loses some of the meaning.

Editing is about checking more than text

Editors spend an extraordinary amount of time looking things up. A human editor won’t make up facts or citations. AI text suggestions may do exactly that. As much as this has improved over the last eighteen months, the reality is that if the goal is to prepare a well-researched document that rings true with the intended audience, you can’t rely completely on AI.

Editing is about people

Whether giving feedback to an author or compiling text from a group of subject-matter experts, putting together high-quality text is about much more than running it through an AI. It’s sensitive, careful work that requires delicate handling. It can’t be sidestepped by hoping a machine will get it right.

Staying competitive

The reality is that AI editing is improving. So it makes sense to think about your writing and editing processes and whether they could be more efficient. At every stage of the document-creation process, it makes sense to think about what tools could help you. Ask yourself:

• Do you prefer to outline or draft with the help of an AI, or do you find it easier to think when you do the first draft yourself?

• Do you prefer to review and redraft manually, or do you find it easier to work with an AI writing refiner like Draftsmith?

• Do you prefer to polish documents with spelling and grammar checkers, consistency and house style checkers like PerfectIt, or just proofread manually?

There are no right answers. You should find the process that works best for you.

What is better than burying your head in the sand?

Given AI’s numerous flaws, it’s tempting to bury your head in the sand and assume that manual processes will always be best. That’s definitely not what we’re saying. So here are a few things you can do:

• Sign up for AI Sidequest. Mignon Fogarty has created a free newsletter that will help keep you up to date on AI developments and how they relate to language professionals.

• Subscribe to AI for Editors. Erin Servais runs courses and provides resources on AI editing.

• Join a professional association like ACES, CIEP, Editors Canada, IPEd and many others. They all run courses regularly and keep members in touch with the latest tools.

• Join the Draftsmith mailing list. Draftsmith is our AI product that’s designed to integrate AI technologies with Microsoft Word as seamlessly as possible for language professionals.

The tools are changing quickly. That means the best way to use them is changing just as fast. We don’t think that makes AI editing entire documents attractive. However, it does mean keeping up to date to stay competitive. Tools may be changing fast, but time dedicated to learning them is never wasted!