iA Writer 7, the most recent iteration of the minimalist cross-platform writing software, introduces a novel feature explicitly highlighting text generated by AI systems like ChatGPT. In this feature, while your own words are displayed in black, you have the option to render AI-generated text, pasted into your iA document, in a greyed-out format. This allows you to easily differentiate between your original content and text generated by artificial intelligence as you make adjustments and edits.
In its blog post detailing the new feature, the company articulates its philosophy regarding the use of AI-generated text in writing. Rather than permitting AI to act as a “ghostwriter” that takes control and diminishes your voice, iA Writer’s feature encourages users to view AI as a “dialogue partner” that stimulates thought and enhances writing.
Despite some automated aspects of the authorship feature, my brief testing revealed that it is predominantly a manual process. The blog post acknowledges, “It’s up to you to decide how honest you want to be with yourself.” During testing, the software identified AI-generated text when copied from ChatGPT’s website on the desktop, but only when the original prompt was included alongside ChatGPT’s response. If I copied over the generative AI’s response without the prompt, iA Writer did not recognize it as AI text. To manually designate it as AI text, users can right-click, select “Paste As,” and then choose “ChatGPT.”
This feature is more about providing creatives with a tool to discern the sometimes ambiguous boundary between their own words and those contributed by generative AI, rather than detecting plagiarism or watermarking AI-generated content.
Currently, the authorship feature is exclusive to iA Writer’s Mac, iOS, and iPadOS apps, with plans to extend it to other platforms such as Windows and Android in the future. Notably, iA has published the spec on Github and expresses openness to collaborating with other apps to potentially establish this feature as a new standard.
