A self-publishing author based in London is using revolutionary AI technology to write her next book.

Orna Ross, 60, is the founder and director of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), meaning she’s always on the search for new trends and processes within the profession.

“As the director of ALLi, it’s my job to be on top of the latest trends in writing and publishing tools and tech,” she says. “As a writer, I want to use any tool that can give my creativity and productivity a boost.”

Orna, who has published two poetry collections and several novels within the historical fiction genre including After the Rising and Blue Mercy, explains that Sudowrite, the AI tool she uses, throws up suggestions for plot twists, character types, and sensory descriptions—sights, sounds, smells—as well as poetic lines and images, as she writes.

“It doesn’t write the book for you,” she explained. “That wouldn’t interest me at all. It’s a tool that gives you ideas for progressing, allowing you to write faster and more freely and keeping writer’s block at bay. From ‘reading’ your work, the AI suggests new characters, story directions or phrases that can enhance what you’re portraying. It’s like having another writer in the room who you can bounce ideas off.”

While Orna is happy to use AI in her own work, she is well aware of the concerns authors have about the development of AI technology: “Some worry that the AI is going to see us all out of a job but right now the concerns are around copyright, most notably ownership and accountability.

“AI systems can autonomously generate creative works which would, were they created by humans, be eligible for copyright protection. But who “owns” and gets paid for AI-generated books? The owners of the Natural Language Generation systems whose AI is trained on a dataset created from writers’ works? Or those writers who provide the text?

“This is a complex issue with a lot of debate around it, as copyright is a human right — not a machine one. Is copyright legislation sufficient? Do we need to make changes and if so, what?”

ALLi has contributed to the UK government’s IPO (Intellectual Property Office) call for views on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intellectual Property (IP) and has issued its own call for comments on AI issues for indie authors and other interested parties.

Orna says: “ALLi wants to hear thoughts from authors, publishers and self-publishing services on the use of AI in writing, publishing and marketing books. This is not the future; this is happening now.”