Editors and AI, Part I: What Is AI? A Primer for Editorial Professionals

artificial intelligence

When ChatGPT started making waves in November 2022, I was curious about how generative AI could simplify running a business. I created an online account and dove in, and although I couldn’t have predicted it at the time, I’ve now spent thousands of hours—and more every day—exploring and testing AI tools, taking classes, developing custom tools, consulting for companies, and having conversations with fellow editors about what AI means for us and the future of our industry.

Now, I’m sharing what I’ve learned.

Whether you’ve embraced AI tools or promised yourself (and your clients) that you’ll never use them, one thing has become abundantly clear: As editors, we need to understand this technology to make informed decisions about its role in our work.

That’s why I’m writing this series. My goal is to help you have productive discussions about AI and its role in editing, decide whether to incorporate AI tools into your practice, and answer your clients’ most pressing questions about this topic.

It’s Not Just You: AI Is Everywhere

First off, I want to acknowledge that AI overwhelm is real. Between the AI features that keep popping up in familiar software programs and the constant stream of AI news and developments, it’s hard to keep up.

You might be privately wondering what ChatGPT actually is, how it differs from other AI tools, or whether you need to pay for access. Maybe you’ve heard colleagues mention Claude or Perplexity but aren’t sure how these tools compare. Perhaps you’ve watched as Microsoft has begun adding AI-powered tools to Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, but you’re not sure how they work (or how to avoid using them). Maybe you’ve told clients that you don’t use AI, but now you’re wondering if Grammarly counts.

Here’s the reality: AI is everywhere in our industry now, whether we like it or not. And even if you think you’ve never used it, it’s very likely that you have. But before we can have meaningful conversations about AI’s impact on editing—and before we can decide whether these tools belong in our workflows—we need to clarify what, exactly, we’re talking about.

When We Say “AI,” What Do We Mean?

A problem that often crops up when editors talk about “AI” is that there is no universally accepted definition of artificial intelligence. Instead, it’s an umbrella term that encompasses many different technologies.

In their book AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference, Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor use an analogy I love. They say that trying to discuss “AI” is like living in a world where we only have one word, “vehicle,” to describe anything that moves people or things. No specific terms like car, bicycle, rocket, truck, cargo ship, fighter jet, or skateboard—just “vehicle.”

This means that when someone says, “Vehicles are destroying the environment,” they may be talking about high-emission trucks, while the other side is talking about skateboards. But neither realizes this, so the debate goes nowhere.

Similarly, when we see posts or articles talking about “AI versus human editors” or “AI replacing editors,” we need to ask: Which type of AI are they talking about? The technology behind Grammarly’s suggestions? The AI that Microsoft Word uses in its “Editor” tool? Or the capabilities of tools like ChatGPT and Claude?

The Moving Target of AI, or the “AI Effect”

Another challenge in discussing AI is that what we consider “artificial intelligence” constantly evolves. A classic example is Nikola Tesla’s demonstration of a radio-controlled boat in 1898, where many people marveled at seeing a “borrowed mind” in action. Today, we view remote controls as simple electronics, far removed from our concept of AI.

Similarly, in 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer defeated chess champion Garry Kasparov and was celebrated as a triumph of artificial intelligence. Today, computers routinely beat grandmasters at chess, and we don’t consider it AI.

This pattern, where yesterday’s mind-blowing “AI” becomes today’s mundane software feature (yawn), is known as the “AI effect.” Think about it: When’s the last time you marveled at a calculator doing complex math? Every time AI makes a leap in what it can do, it shifts how we view and talk about it.

The Two Types of AI That Editors Will Encounter

There are multiple types of AI, but two directly affect our work as editors. To help visualize these categories, I like to think of AI as a set of nesting dolls (I used DALL-E to create this image):

Artificial intelligence (as a whole) is the largest doll, encompassing all technologies that mimic human-like capabilities.
- Machine learning is the next-largest. It’s a type of AI that learns from patterns in data.
  - Generative AI, the smallest nesting doll in this analogy, is a type of machine learning that can create new content.

Generative AI fits inside the category of machine learning, and both machine learning and generative AI fit inside the broader category of artificial intelligence. There are multiple other types of AI that I won’t discuss here, such as predictive AI (systems that forecast things like credit scores, recidivism, and health outcomes), but this analogy highlights the two main types of AI that editors will encounter: machine learning and generative AI.

Understanding the difference between machine learning and generative AI is crucial for editors. When a publisher client tells you, “We don’t use AI,” do they mean they don’t want you using ChatGPT, or are they also concerned about machine learning tools like Grammarly? When a colleague mentions experimenting with AI, are they talking about Microsoft Editor’s suggestions or about using ChatGPT to generate content from scratch?

Without precise language, we risk talking past each other—just like in the “vehicle” analogy, where one person is talking about trucks and the other about skateboards without knowing.

I’ll explore this in my next post, where we’ll take a detailed look at common editorial software tools and explore which ones use AI and which don’t. (The answers may surprise you!)

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