PinTale: Feasibility study for a dynamic, AI-enabled writing support platform

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Whether it's fiction, academia, journalism, or any other type of longform content, writing is a complex and arduous task requiring significant planning, preparation and note-keeping. This is one of the key reasons why \>80% of people want to write a book, but only 3% who start ever finish (polished-pages.com).Writers have traditionally turned to tools to help them manage content, stay organised and increase productivity, such as notebooks and sticky notes. Despite technological advances in other creative industries, most writing software still acts simply as digitised versions of traditional 'pen and paper' tools, offering word-processing, record-keeping or basic timeline generation tools with no cross-communication.AI has the potential to radically transform this landscape. However, the majority of conversations about AI within writing circles currently centre around the threat to jobs created by text-generation AI. There is a clear and underexploited opportunity to utilise AI to support writers of all disciplines as they plan and write, demonstrating how AI can speed up and strengthen the writing process without generating text on writers' behalves.We are developing PinTale: an intelligent content structuring platform, with novel AI functionalities and dynamic visualisations to support the writing process. Initially, it will comprise digital tools for fiction writers to deliver smart visualisation of key data input by the author to support them in plotting, characterisation, pacing and more: significantly disrupting existing software tools and meeting identified writer needs. Future features will expand PinTale's functionality to serve wider writing groups including journalists and academics.This project will conduct a feasibility study for our AI-enabled technology, working with AI-expert partners Combine AI and active writers' groups including members of the Bath Spa University Creative Writing Department to define desired and necessary features for end-users and to establish the route to achieving them. By project end we will deliver the architecture and design for the PinTale platform, grounded in extensive user research and reporting.Crucially, PinTale will never generate any text on writers' behalves. It will learn from the inputs they choose to give and deliver useful, relevant smart data visualisation and guidance to help them write better longform content -- not to write it for them. This represents a unique opportunity to transform the narrative around AI in writing and wider creative circles, providing a use-case for how it can act as a tool to support creators rather than to supplant them.