How To Use AI To Become a Better Writer

Everywhere you turn, artificial intelligence (AI) is a hot topic—on social media, the news, at work, even right here in Upwork’s resource center.

A lot of these discussions include talking about AI for writers—both how writers use AI, and whether or not the technology will reduce the need for human-crafted content over time. If you’re a content writer or a creative writer, you might be wondering what the rise of AI means for your livelihood.

Will AI eventually replace human writers? Do we need to fear it? Or is AI a tool that can help anyone become a better writer ... even folks who already write for a living?

The answer is nuanced, but ultimately, it all comes down to one thing: recognizing that AI writing software is just a tool—and that you’re in control of how you use it.

What is an AI writing assistant?

AI writing assistants are tools that use generative AI to output content. This means that the tools draw upon programs called large language models (LLMs). An LLM is trained to:

• Interpret how humans write language
• Organize information into patterns
• Replicate those patterns to create readable outputs using natural language processing (NLP)

When you prompt an AI writer or chatbot to produce content, its output isn’t intended to be insightful, witty, or even correct. It’s simply the most probabilistic grouping of words as determined by a computer.

You can then use the generated outputs to develop characters for your short story, start building an outline for your book, write a landing page, or rephrase a single e-commerce description to cover an entire line of products.

Types of AI writing tools

The number of AI writing tools on the market right now is rapidly increasing; picking the best one can feel overwhelming. Understanding the difference between a chat tool and one that's meant for high-quality content writing can help you choose the best AI writing tool for your projects.

AI chatbots

AI chatbots are multipurpose apps and they can be helpful for brainstorming and generating content. Because these platforms aren't purpose-built for writers, you may find you have to fine-tune your prompts to get just what you need (or be prepared to handle formatting and style changes on your own afterward). Popular options include:

• ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a user-friendly AI tool that works right in your browser. It can generate text-based responses to your prompts on a wide range of topics. If you have a ChatGPT Plus subscription, you can ask the AI to run Google searches, scan webpages, analyze documents, and even generate images. ChatGPT works through text, image, video, and voice prompting. If you have the desktop app installed, you can even share your screen with it so the AI works with you in real time.
• Claude. Claude works similarly to ChatGPT—you can ask it questions, upload documents for context, and have the AI generate or edit content. Unlike ChatGPT, though, Claude doesn't connect to the internet. This means that some of its responses may include references that are slightly out of date, unless you're uploading your own documents for the AI to process and work off of.
• Gemini. Gemini is another browser-based AI chat tool that can generate text or images. Gemini's two big benefits are its ability to run Google searches and its integration with Google Docs. If you keep your writing in the Google ecosystem, then Gemini's a good option for you to explore.
• Poe. Poe is a multi-chatbot interface from Quora. You can use it to access Quora's own Poe AI as well as ChatGPT, Claude, and other generative AI tools. If you aren't sure which AI interface you'll like the best, Poe can be a good way to try them out side by side.
• Microsoft Copilot. Microsoft Copilot is similar to Gemini, except that rather than integrating with Google products, it works right in your Microsoft Office suite or Edge browser. You can use it directly in other web browsers, too, though, and create text or images.
• DuckDuckGo AI Chat. DuckDuckGo AI Chat is a free, privacy-focused tool that gives you access to basic versions of ChatGPT and Claude. While you don't get access to the most recent version of either, you get a little added privacy this way—with DuckDuckGo as an intermediary, your chats aren't used to train the AI models.

AI writing software

There are also dedicated AI content writing apps, too. These typically include a document editor (similar to Google Docs) and prompt templates or organizational features for writers. Many writers enjoy using AI software platforms like these as part of their workflow:

• Jasper. Jasper is an AI content generator that's purpose-built for marketing. You can train the tool on your brand voice, use Jasper templates to jumpstart quality content generation, repurpose blog posts, or chat with the Jasper AI.
• Strut. Strut is an app that lets writers take notes, draft documents, and chat with an AI assistant. Unlike Jasper, Strut doesn't include templates or a prompt library, so you'll need to develop your own prompts for the AI chat.
• Writesonic. The Writesonic app includes several AI tools for writers, including an SEO assistant, AI chat, and content generator.
• Sudowrite. Unlike Jasper and Writesonic, which are more geared toward marketing writing, Sudowrite is a platform for creative writers. It's a story generator, outline builder, and AI writing tool all in one.
• Copy.ai. The Copy.ai platform is a marketing and sales writing tool that can generate ad copy, summarize leads' LinkedIn profiles, produce press releases, and help you conduct research before targeting a competitor's audience.

How to pick the best AI writing tool

Conversational chat tools like ChatGPT are great if you want to use AI for a wide variety of uses. For example, a freelance content and copywriting professional might want an AI tool they can use to:

• Come up with new business offerings
• Develop marketing copy for their own business
• Research and outline client content
• Create LinkedIn posts
• Summarize and answer client emails

If that same writer were really only interested in using AI for client projects, though, then a dedicated AI writing tool might be a better option. In this case, they could use something like Jasper to:

• Create content briefs in line with a client's style
• Draft blog posts or product descriptions
• Repurpose long-form content into social media captions
• Create AI-generated draft content for entire marketing campaigns, from blog content to Facebook ads

The decision is a little easier if you have a talent account on Upwork. By signing up for Freelancer Plus, you'll get access to Upwork Chat Pro, powered by Uma, Upwork's mindful AI with GPT-4. You can use Upwork Chat Pro to help you:

• Help you write great proposals
• Streamline routine processes that are part of your writing projects
• Answer questions and act as a research partner

And, because Upwork Chat Pro also draws upon proprietary Upwork data, it's a great AI companion for anyone working as a freelance writer. (Note: Upwork Chat Pro doesn’t use any of your information to source content (unless you enter it yourself).

13 ways to become a better writer using AI

Ready to experiment with AI? Use this list of ideas to get you started—each entry includes examples of a specific way that AI can help you work. Try opening up your AI tool of choice in another window and customizing each prompt as you move through the list. See how your outputs compare to ours!

1. Brainstorm ideas
2. Conduct research
3. Conduct basic grammar editing and proofreading
4. Write headlines
5. Generate blog outlines
6. Explain complex topics in new ways
7. Repurpose existing content
8. Speed up repetitive tasks
9. Localize your content for different audiences
10. Create character profiles
11. Simulate dialogue between characters
12. Add unique images to your work
13. Get feedback on your writing skills
    ‍

1. Brainstorm ideas

Because developers trained ChatGPT and similar generative AI tools on large portions of the internet, they can be a great source of article ideas.

These aren’t new ideas—they’re probabilistic sentences that draw upon existing content—but they can get your own creative juices flowing.

Rather than saying “give me five ideas for an article about email marketing,” you can improve results by giving the AI additional context about who your audience is and how you plan to write the article.

The AI tool can then use these data points to improve its predictions and come up with ideas you can use as a jumping-off point during the text generation process.

2. Conduct research

While AI writing tools can hallucinate, or provide answers that aren't factually accurate, they're still a useful partner when it comes to sifting through your research. Once you locate text sources, such as webpages and PDF documents, upload them to your chat tool of choice and start asking the AI questions about the docs.

ChatGPT, Claude, and similar tools can:

• Summarize multi-page PDFs
• Extract data
• Answer your questions about uploaded files

OpenAI even has "data analyst" and "document assistant" GPTs available to help make this process even easier. You can find them by logging in to your ChatGPT account and clicking "Explore GPTs" in the left sidebar.

3. Conduct basic grammar editing and proofreading

AI copywriting tools can also help you self-edit your work, which can boost your grammar and writing skills.

You can get editing and review help from AI in three notable ways:

1. Engage in an ongoing conversation with a generative AI tool like ChatGPT or Claude. Because these tools keep your conversation history, you can use the same chat thread from initial ideation all the way through final review. This way, the AI has solid context around what you’re writing, its tone, and how it should sound.
2. Start a quick conversation with your generative AI tool of choice and ask it to parse a sentence, act as a grammar checker, or provide dictionary and thesaurus results.
3. Build a custom GPT (this requires a paid ChatGPT Plus account) and tell it to look for your most common mistakes, errors, or words you don't want to use.

4. Write headlines

Even though I’ve been working as a writer for the better part of two decades, I still get stuck when it comes time to write a catchy heading. For whatever reason, I’ve always found this to be one of the hardest parts of my job.

AI writing tools can help with this. Here's an example of how it looks:

While I don't use the AI's outputs directly, seeing lots of options and versions can help me get closer to my own final copy.

5. Generate blog outlines

Once you've figured out what topic you plan to write about—or even have a headline ready to go—you can then ask an AI writing tool to generate an outline.

You can also ask the AI to expand on an existing outline and add more details—and even references, if your tool of choice connects to the internet.

6. Explain complex topics in new ways

Generative AI can even help you better understand the topics you’re writing about, especially if the tool you’re using is connected to the internet. In this way, it functions similarly to a search engine—but one that can create a summary of the results.

All you need to do is type your question into a new chat with the AI and begin “discussing” all of your related questions.

You can even ask it to do tasks you don’t know how to complete, such as creating an example code block for an article.

That said, remember that when an AI tool doesn't connect to the internet, its "knowledge" only goes up to the point at which its training data ends. In Claude 3, for example, this cutoff is August 2023:

If you aren't sure whether your AI writing assistant has up-to-date data or internet access, just ask it!

7. Repurpose existing content

If you're a writer who's responsible for creating lots of different kinds of copy—from long-form guides to email headlines—you know how time-consuming it can be to create every asset you need.

AI writing tools make this process easier. I find that it makes the most sense to start by creating the longest piece of content first (either by yourself or with the help of an AI writing software tool) and then ask AI to help you break it down into shorter things like:

• Instagram captions
• YouTube scripts
• LinkedIn posts
• Email newsletters

This is where a tool like Jasper comes in particularly handy, as it's already trained on common content structures and formats. You can still do this with a tool like ChatGPT, though—you just need to be very specific about what you want, and give the AI some examples.

8. Speed up repetitive tasks

If you repeat the same time-consuming tasks over and over as part of your work, you may be able to use AI to speed up the process.

As a writer, you may ask AI to do things like:

• Create a content brief template you can use for all of your projects
• Draft the template for a weekly client update email or Slack message
• Write the copy to explain various metrics you’ll include in a report

You can take the core functionality of a tool like ChatGPT further by building custom GPTs or using custom prompts developed by a machine learning pro or prompt engineer.

9. Localize your content for different audiences

Besides reformatting your content for different media or channels, you can also use AI to help you localize your writing.

If you or your clients have a global audience, localization can help you better connect with readers, customers, and users in a variety of countries.

Localization may look like asking a generative AI tool to:

• Update a document from British English spelling to American English
• Replace all dollar amounts listed in an article with the equivalent amount in euros
• Replacing an FAQ section with new questions specific to a new country
• Edit your document for the correct grammar, slang, and spelling used by speakers of a particular dialect

10. Create character profiles

AI tools aren’t just useful for content marketing—they can help in the creative writing process, too.

One great way to use generative AI in your creative work is to ask it for help with creating character profiles.

Whether you’ve got some loose notes on a character that you’d like to solidify into a profile, or you’re completely starting from a blank slate, a tool like ChatGPT can help you work through the ideation process.

For example, you could ask the AI to take your notes on a character idea and turn it into a full-fledged profile, complete with family tree and physical description.

11. Simulate dialogue between characters

You can also use generative Al to simulate dialogue. This can be helpful from a creative perspective and a marketing one.

For example, you could ask ChatGPT to create a conversation between two personas that represent your target audience—and then turn the output into a short commercial.

If you’re writing creatively, you could ask an AI text generator to develop an example of a conversation between two fictional characters. This can be helpful if you’re experiencing writer’s block when it comes time to write an important conversation in a story.

12. Add unique images to your work

You can use AI to boost your writing in ways that don’t even involve words, too. If you have a great blog post that you’re ready to publish, but aren’t finding the right stock image, you can explore using AI. A number of AI writing tools—including Jasper, Gemini, and ChatGPT—have the ability to generate images.

Once you know how to prompt an AI image generator, you can create all kinds of graphics—including ones that are sized for social media posts, blog headers, and more.

13. Get feedback on your writing skills

AI writing assistants can also give you feedback on your writing quality, readability, search engine optimization (SEO), and more. Purpose-specific tools can be helpful here. If you write a lot of SEO content, you may find that a tool like Clearscope or Surfer (which integrates with Jasper) gives you the most detailed feedback.

Creative writers might like ProWritingAid, as its analysis compares their writing to a favorite author's— and provides feedback on things like plot structure and pacing.

If you're seeking more general edits and feedback related to your writing style, you could use an AI chat program. Some, like ChatGPT, can even read your work aloud to you so you can hear how it sounds.

To enhance your AI usage even more, check out Upwork’s complete guide to prompting—including ChatGPT prompts that you can use right now.

Good AI output means there’s a human in the mix

No matter how you decide to use AI in your writing process, be sure that you personally are always putting the finishing touches on everything, not unquestioningly using what the AI has suggested.

Fact-check AI output for hallucinations

One of the biggest reasons that AI needs a human touch is because its outputs are often riddled with inaccuracies. These are commonly called “hallucinations” and can include:

• Incorrect information about events
• Mixed-up details about people and companies
• The wrong answers to math problems
• Buggy code
• Completely fabricated statistics
• Old, outdated, or incorrect links
• Unrealistic images

Any AI tool can hallucinate—even those connected to the internet—so it's important to always double-check your outputs.

Add your voice and personality

AI is great at replicating different, famous voices—just try asking it to rewrite your latest blog post like Shakespeare—and can even adjust your tone of voice so the content sounds professional, conversational, or serious.

It's not, however, always great at sounding just like you or your client. Using AI writing tools like Jasper, which supports brand voice training, can help. And if you have a ChatGPT Plus account, you can build a custom GPT that's trained on your prior writing or your client's brand guidelines.

Use AI ethically

There are definite ethical questions around the use of AI, including whether AI-powered tools are plagiarizing the material on which they were trained.

As a writer, if you take what an AI produces and use it verbatim—only to find out that part of it was copied directly from another source—you could be on the hook for plagiarizing someone else’s work.

This is why tweaking output, including editing AI-generated images, is key. You could also run your AI generated text through a plagiarism checker like the one available to Grammarly users.

AI outputs can even show bias gleaned from training data. Keep a close eye on what the AI output says, and adjust it accordingly if you notice a bias showing.

Make sure your clients are OK with AI

The information you feed into tools like ChatGPT may be used to train more advanced AI models. This can create privacy issues if you’re using the tool to do work for a client.

Before you use AI as part of a client project, make sure you’ve cleared it with them. Your client may request that you limit the information you provide to the AI, change the outputs, or refrain from using such services altogether.

It’s also important to note that training policies can vary between paid plans and free plans. Make sure you read the terms and conditions for any AI tool that you use to write content for clients.

AI writing job opportunities

While some companies may indeed prefer that you not use AI in your work,  increasing numbers of businesses are excited to embrace this new technology.

Start by experimenting with tools like Jasper or Upwork Chat Pro in your work. If you find that you like the impact it has on your writing and workflow, you can then look for clients who are seeking the help of an AI writing professional. All it takes is an Upwork account—sign up or log in today to begin exploring new AI writing job opportunities.

Disclosure: Upwork is an OpenAI partner , giving OpenAI customers and other businesses direct access to trusted expert independent professionals experienced in working with OpenAI technologies. Upwork is a Jasper Affiliate and may receive referral payments from Jasper. When using Jasper, you will be subject to Jasper’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. As always, independent professionals remain responsible for evaluating the tools offered and determining the fit for their business needs, as well as their own compliance with all laws and legal requirements in operating their freelance business.

Upwork does not control, operate or sponsor the other tools or services discussed in this article, which are only provided as potential options. Each reader and company should take the time to adequately analyze and determine the tools or services that would best fit their specific needs and situation.