What is AI’s Role in Researching and Writing Nonfiction?
by Amy L. Bernstein
The question is reverberating across university campuses, research centers, think tanks, and not least, in the minds of authors.
I have some thoughts as a nonfiction book coach (the topic is swirling in our community too), which I’ll get to in a moment. But first, I conducted a little experiment.
I posed the question (the title of this piece) to Microsoft’s Bing search bar. The first response that popped up told me this:
“While AI in fiction writing might evoke images of robots crafting fantastical tales, its role in non-fiction is more grounded, focused on enhancing research, improving accuracy, and streamlining the writing process. Non-fiction writers, from journalists to historians and bloggers, are increasingly turning to AI tools to assist in their work.”
That assertion was pulled from a LinkedIn post written by Thomas Testi, Director of AI Technical Education at the Global Alliance on Sustainability & AI, Inc. (GASAI). GASAI is funded by, among others, NVIDIA, the self-proclaimed world leader in AI computing.
Do you see an ouroboros—a dragon eating its own tail? I do.
I next posed the same question to Microsoft’s AI companion app, Copilot, which cheerfully informed me that “AI is a powerful tool that complements human creativity and expertise, making the nonfiction writing process more efficient and effective.”
Copilot listed six ways that AI can help produce nonfiction, ranging from drafting text to tailoring content to specific audiences and that old standby, proofreading.
The subtext from Copilot: Sit back, relax, let AI do most of the work for you.
Indeed, if we take responses like these at face value—and with a straight face—then we may as well put down our pens and relax. The jig is up. The age of struggling to write is over.
That’s not gonna happen—not any time soon.
Nonfiction writers are not, for lack of a better word, stupid. I trust that writers with integrity and professional experience are able to discern sources offering confirmatory bias, for starters. I trust, also, that with trial and error, they can figure out the extent to which AI can be relied upon to assist with specific tasks.
Query: How does AI assist in researching a nonfiction book?
Copilot readily cites eight ways AI can help, which are suspiciously similar to the six ways that AI can help produce nonfiction in general, based on my earlier query:
· Data collection
· Fact-checking
· Content summarization
· Language translation
· Trend analysis
· Organizing information
· Generating ideas
· Visual aids
I don’t doubt that AI can perform these tasks. But I’m deeply skeptical as to how well the tool performs—and more importantly, whether the results end up making more work for authors who end up diligently fact-checking, revising, and augmenting the work AI has allegedly done for them. A translation lacking accurate nuance is almost worse than no translation at all.
I suspect that AI’s promise to increase efficiency (it says so!) is very much in question, where nonfiction is concerned. That may change over time, of course.
What’s my advice to nonfiction authors who turn to AI for assistance with any portion of their manuscript or research?
Be careful. Very careful. Focus on simple tasks and only move on to more complex ones when the tool has proven itself. And don't believe the hype.
I’ll conclude with a thought so obvious, I wish it did not bear mentioning:
Working with a human book coach will invariably help an author develop a manuscript, or a research plan, or a book proposal with more rigor, humor, and, I dare say, élan, than any software on the market now or for years to come.
