Pretty cool news today. First, reminder that there is a power hour tomorrow as this is the first Saturday of the month. Hope to see many of you there. I have changed my assets this time so that you won't be looking at Christmas backdrops. It's almost spring here in North America, so there will be plenty of flowers!
Second, I want to make everyone aware of a Kickstarter that I am backing that I think is pretty neat. When I was in Colorado Springs last month, I met a fellow author named Frank Morin. Frank is writing a series called Bacon Master of the Apocalypse. If you liked my series Moderation Online (a series about a group of terrorist vegetables attempting to take down a civilization of processed foods), you're going to love this series. It's got cheese wizards, for crying out loud!
Frank's series is best described as “a feast of humor and epic adventure,” and while I haven't read it, I've got to agree.
Anyway, it's writer malpractice to write a series about vegetables and not help a fellow writer out when he writes a series about food. I am proudly backing this one and hope that those of you who like zany stories will check this one out: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/frankmorin/bacon-master-of-the-apocalypse.
Third, I have two magazine articles out. The first is in the print version of Writer's Digest where I talk about the beginner's guide to writing urban fantasy. This issue of Writer's Digest is about writing genre fiction, which is great. It's always a pleasure to be published in a magazine that's on newsstands, so if you're out shopping and you see a copy of the magazine, my article is the first one in the issue.
My other magazine article is in Indie Author Magazine, which, if you haven't heard of it, you should check it out. It is a magazine geared toward self-published writers with a focus on journalistic articles. Many blogs and magazines focus on personal opinions, but the editor at this magazine, Nicole Schroeder, is a journalist at heart. They go to great lengths to make sure that all of their articles have factual sources and that the articles lead with facts. There's no magazine like it on the market, and I will be writing articles with them from time to time as I just joined their writing staff. My article in last month's issue was about managing your writing career with a chronic illness. For this article, I interviewed my friend Roland Denzel, who is a health expert and an all-around great guy. I got to hang out with Roland last month at the Superstars Writing Seminar and we had a great time. He gives a lot of fantastic advice in the article.
Finally, for those of you who have stuck around to read the very end of this blog post, stay tuned for tomorrow's power hour because I will be doing a live demo of my new grammar assistant app that uses GPT-3 and ChatGPT to edit my work.
I have an update. First, the problems that we were dealing with at the beginning of the week are now solved and the app is at what I call critical mass. I have no more features to add, and there are no major bugs. We're just working on one final problem that affects Windows users. In short, I love Microsoft, but they are making our lives difficult in the installation of this app. It's easy to install, but there are a couple of steps that are a pain, and we're trying to figure out a way to automate them if we can. It's no big deal if we can't, but Windows users will have to follow a few extra steps.
Also, many of you probably heard about the release of the ChatGPT API this week. My developer and I were all over this like white on rice. The moment the email landed in my inbox, I forwarded it to him and we were like little kids in a playground. Two days later, we were able to integrate the ChatGPT API into the app.
What does that mean?
For those who aren't tech savvy, let me explain a few things. An API stands for application programming interface, which is a fancy way of saying that it is how you download another company's data. If you want to build an application that uses ChatGPT, you can connect to the API so that you can have your application do whatever you want instead of having to go to the ChatGPT website. APIs provide convenience and allow developers to innovate.
Anyway, many of you probably know that you can go to ChatGPT right now and use the free version to edit your work. You can simply use the prompt “Edit this text for typos only” and ChatGPT will check for typos and do an amazing job in catching errors that you and/or your editor might not have seen.
The problem with going to the ChatGPT website is that it doesn't tell you what it changed. You only get the revised text. For the savvy, there is a Chrome extension called EditGPT that will toggle tracked changes on and off so you can see what changed, which is really helpful. EditGPT is free. However, it doesn't let you pick and choose which changes you accept and reject.
The app we're building will allow you to upload a Microsoft Word document to the GPT-3 and/or the ChatGPT API so that the AI will find the typos and insert them into your Word document as tracked changes. All you have to do is use Microsoft Word's Compare feature to enable the Track Changes. It's really easy.
Anyway, we tested the ChatGPT API and discovered a few things. First, there is virtually no difference in quality between the GPT-3 and ChatGPT models. The most powerful GPT-3 model right now is Davinci and it's really, really good. ChatGPT is pretty much the same and offers similar results. Most of the time, if you send a document to both models, you will get similar, if not identical, results. This is important because the ChatGPT API is 10 times cheaper than the Davinci model.
There is one big drawback, though. The ChatGPT API thinks that you want to chat, so it inserts strange text here and there. We haven't figured out a way to stop this, and we don't think we can because we are trying to make this model do something it wasn't intended for. However, some people may be willing to put up with its quirks given the price. For this, both models will be available. This will also mean that when OpenAI releases new models in the future, the app will hopefully work with them because all you'll have to do is simply add new models to the configuration file (a very easy process).
Anyway, we're still far away from a launch at this point. The developer wants an additional week to work on some of the Windows problems, and after that, we're going to put our heads together and start brainstorming a launch. First, I will invite some beta testers to help us find major bugs. Then, I will open it up to a small pool of writers who I know can test-drive the app. Finally, I will record a couple of quick YouTube videos teaching people how to install the application and get set up with an open AI API. I'll warn people up front that the installation is quite an adventure, but as long as you can follow a YouTube video and some written instructions, you should be fine.
If you're interested in seeing the app, come to the power hour tomorrow and I will demonstrate it at the end. If you can't make the power hour or if my live streams aren't your thing, simply watch the replay and skip to the end. It'll be brief, but I hope it will be a taste of what you can accomplish in this new world of AI. Have a good night!
