A couple of years ago, in the second half of 2024, I had interviewed my niece Srishti, who was a ghost-writer. At that time, I was very curious about the ghost-writing work. I spoke to her recently and found out that Artificial Intelligence (AI) had a big impact on her ghost-writing work.
Let me start with my recent experience with AI.
My Recent Experience with AI on Reddit
Earlier this year, I had written a fantasy-fiction novella in Hindi, which is now being serialised on my Hindi blog. I was looking for a cover for my book. I spoke about it to my son and explained to him about the main characters of the book. With the help of AI, my son prepared a couple of book covers.
However, I felt that those covers looked very clearly "AI-made", so I tried to modify them by using some image programmes and tried painting over them. One of these modified cover was finally used for my book.
Fantasy-fiction is not a common genre in Hindi and I wanted to connect with people who was interested in it. So I joined a fantasy-fiction group on Reddit and wrote a post about my book. The moment the persons in the group found out that my cover was originally AI generated, there was a huge backlash and my post was removed from the group.
This experience gave me an idea about the strong impact AI is having on the work and livelihoods of artists and book-cover designers.
Excerpts from Srishti's 2024 Interview About Ghost-Writing
Being a ghostwriter is an unusual profession. Most of my relatives had not even heard of it. I, myself, had no clue about anything called ghostwriting. Interestingly, I recently found out that one of my uncles (he is no more) used to ghostwrite a weekly newspaper column about a policeman’s encounters and investigations in 1960s' Allahabad. He did it for fun and never got credited or paid for it. The series was later compiled into a book.
I am, too, not credited for my time, worth, talent, energy, research, or honesty. I never Google the books I write because it’s like being in a toxic relationship with your ex. But I do love it when I have repeat clients. The fact that people want to work with me again makes me happy.
I don’t really see my work as unconventional because ghostwriting is more common than most people know. Most autobiographies are ghostwritten.
I keep getting orders so I am actively ghostwriting as of now. However, I have started working on my two fiction books and I intend to publish them in the next ten years (the thought gives me jitters).
In 2022, I came across an advertisement by the platform that I currently work with. It’s a Canadian company and they work with and for people from everywhere. They were hiring ghostwriters through a series of tests. I took the tests for fun and got selected.
The pay was better than what writers are paid in India. I have ghostwritten 24 books. Initially, I was a little sceptical about writing books on real estate, finance, religion, and technology because those were not my areas of expertise, and I adhered to subjects on women, interrelationships, parenting, health, diet, lifestyle, humour, self-help, politics, economy, and diseases and disorders. Now, I take up all the orders that come my way. I am proud of the fact that I can dissociate personal preferences and beliefs from my profession.
I do interact with my clients before I sign the contract. I have the liberty to work at my pace and schedule my orders. When I began in 2022, I used to take up an insane amount of work every month (beginner’s enthusiasm) and the burnout was real in 2023. I have taken things more slowly in 2024.
I love that I get to work with people from different parts of the world. I have worked with competent editors who taught me about book writing and formatting. I have had my share of tough clients as well, very demanding and rude, but the overall experience has been good and I get to read a lot. For example, I had to refer to the Torah for a few segments of a book I wrote this year and that was a great learning experience.
You can read her full interview on Kalpana.
Impact of AI on Ghost-Writing
Srishti said: In 2024, while I was ghostwriting at Dibbly, we had an opportunity to train their AI tool called KIP.
It was a great learning experience, although back then, we had absolutely no idea that we were axing our own source of income. Kind of makes me laugh right now. Because AI orders got so cheap gradually, the writing packages declined in number.
We had a true dry spell at the company after that because other AI companies were already giving nascent manuscripts/stories a full outline/writing/publishing structure for free and people didn't need ghostwriters or even paid AI writing packages any more.
But I did get some opportunities to work on AI orders too. That was a good learning experience.
I am now working for a company where I will be editing/reviewing academic papers and research articles in the humanities stream. This company helps research papers get published. Most of our clients are from Japan. China, and South Korea. They are very professional and their papers are very good.
I am only learning right now but I think I will also be working on AI manuscripts since people are using it in research too.
I was inherently very anti-AI. This April, I went to Bangalore for a short trip and met a few German civil engineering students there and with one of them kept in touch later. He really changed my perception on AI. I realized millennials like me are more apprehensive about it, of course we think about the larger picture and its effects on the environment and everything else.
But Gen-Zs just don't care. They are unafraid of the change. While we are scared of being dependent on AI or even addicted to it, he told me how Claude is his work assistant and buddy. That really fascinated me. How we use AI is really going to be a game-changer.
I think AI invasion into our lives is inevitable, the world leaders are pushing it with data centres and the biggest tech-tycoons are adamant on making this world AI-driven. But people like me need to make our way through life by using AI, and also correcting AI because it will need constant direction, command, and correction. Until it becomes smarter than me, I got to keep upskilling to not get replaced, I guess.
Conclusions
Srishti's views about AI can make us understand some of the challenges people are expected to face in their personal and professional lives over the coming years and decades. Some of those changes will enhance our quality of life, while the others would make it more difficult, and then, hopefully a new equilibrium would emerge out of chaos.
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