🤝AI as Writing PartnerLesson 2 of 5
What AI Can (and Can't) Do
6 min
basicsUnderstanding AI's actual capabilities will save you hours of frustration. AI is brilliant at some things and terrible at others. Knowing the difference lets you leverage its strengths while avoiding its weaknesses.
Key Concepts
- 1AI excels at: brainstorming, variation, summarizing, restructuring
- 2AI struggles with: true originality, consistent voice, emotional depth
- 3AI cannot: know what YOU want to say or feel your story
- 4AI patterns: trained on existing text, so it trends toward the average
- 5The originality gap: AI combines existing patterns, doesn't create new ones
Examples
Prompt / Technique
AI strength: Give me 10 different ways this character could reveal their secret
Result / Insight
Excellent—AI generates variations quickly for you to choose from
Prompt / Technique
AI weakness: Write something completely original that's never been written
Result / Insight
Impossible—AI can only recombine patterns from training data
Pro Tips
Use AI for quantity, you provide quality judgment
AI-generated text often needs emotional deepening by you
The more specific your input, the better AI's output
Never publish AI output without significant human editing
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