Dr. Margaret Reece, author of Physiology: Custom-Designed Chemistry, recently used AI tool ChatGPT to revise her book’s description on Amazon. The following illustrates how the process worked, including a before and after description and the prompt she used. “I did some minor editing of the AI response, but I think it is much better than the original,” she said.
Textbook and Academic Authors Share How They Use Generative AI
In a recent survey of Textbook & Academic Authors Association members about their use of Generative AI, several shared specific ways they use AI in authoring and promoting their textbooks, academic articles, and books.
Textbook Author Stephanie Lenox has used ChatGPT to write a first draft and an outline, to make the writing process more efficient, to improve the quality of her writing, and to create marketing pieces to promote her work. She has also used it for brainstorming, generating titles, summarizing, refining conference proposals, and editing.
“AI helps me take the emotion out of my writing process in order to overcome anxiety and just get started,” she says. “AI helps me move faster on functional writing, such as emails, so that I can concentrate my creative energy on writing that matters. I use AI like I use Wikipedia to get a sense of what is already out there. I’ve used it to generate learning objectives based on a chapter summary or to come up with 10 possible titles for a textbook based on a description I provided. I’ve also used it to identify grammatical issues or logical fallacies in texts and explain what’s wrong and how to fix it. I rarely use it for purely generative reasons because AI tends to be overly enthusiastic in its responses.”
Majority of Members Surveyed Report Using Generative AI To Make Writing Process More Efficient
TAA surveyed 1,900 members between September 24 and October 8, 2023 to determine how they’re utilizing Generative AI in authoring and promoting their textbooks, academic articles, and books, and to share that information with other members who have yet to begin using it. Just over 54% of respondents reported being primarily academic authors and almost 46% reported being primarily textbook authors.
Of the 82 members that responded to the survey, 40 percent said they have used generative AI. Of that 40 percent, almost half said they’re using it to make their writing process more efficient, including helping them brainstorm, generate titles, summarize articles, generate discussion and reading questions for teaching, and altogether reduce time spent on early tasks in the writing process. Multiple respondents stated that AI helps them write emails, with one member saying, “it helps me move faster on functional writing… so I can concentrate my creative energy on writing that matters.”