{"id":580277,"date":"2026-05-12T18:41:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T18:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/580277\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T18:41:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T18:41:16","slug":"ai-has-cut-my-pay-as-a-memoir-writer-in-half-autobiography-and-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/580277\/","title":{"rendered":"AI has cut my pay as a memoir writer in half | Autobiography and memoir"},"content":{"rendered":"

In response to your article (\u2018Being human helps\u2019: despite rise of AI is there still hope for Europe\u2019s translators?, 8 May<\/a>), I work freelance for a company that produces memoirs for its customers. I used to interview, then write. Now, I interview, a large language model writes, and I am paid half of my previous fee to edit the result.<\/p>\n

It takes as long to edit the AI-generated text as it used to take me to write the memoir. There are several reasons for this.<\/p>\n

First, the AI content is tedious and homogeneous. I could ignore that problem, but I have a relationship with the often vulnerable people I interview. Second (and yes, I know that AI is constantly improving in this regard), it produces rubbish if an interviewee is less than coherent. Third, I am required by my employer to \u201ccheck for accuracy\u201d, which the company presents as a quick additional task, but which is in fact impossible without a full cross-reference of interviews against the draft.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a cynical and nifty way to get work done at half the cost. The agency pretends that the AI is genius, and that my part in the writing process is cursory.<\/p>\n

I wonder how many others in roles impacted by AI are still working, but earning half.
Name and address supplied<\/p>\n

Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please email<\/a> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In response to your article (\u2018Being human helps\u2019: despite rise of AI is there still hope for Europe\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-580277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}