Since the introduction of ChatGPT, adding “AI” to everything has become a no brainer. Should we follow? Plugging AI into our apps was a perfect fit, our apps are all text to begin with. But it seemed more than just a feature. What would it do to our apps? We had to observe and think this through, first. Rather than following the crowd, we wanted to see if there is a way to anticipate and, maybe even, lead.

Writing is thinking. iA Writer is designed to make thinking enjoyable. A writing app that thinks for you is a robot that does your jogging. After a year of observation, experimentation, and testing, we may have found a careful response to the challenges we face with AI. In fact we ended up doing the opposite of adding ChatGPT.

Now, let’s take one step at a time. First, let’s take a look at where we are. This article is part one of a series about the history, reason, and the design of iA Writer 7, our cautious response to AI. In this post, we’ll review what has happened in the app industry since the introduction of AI last November.

1. Initial assumptions

Under the title (AI and the End of Writing) we did a summary of our assumptions at the end of January this year. Here’s a illustrated version.

Running mill: Microsoft’s Power Grab

Microsoft’s position here is similar to the position in Nine Men’s Morris, where you have a running mill: two isolated triplets and a checker that you can move back and forth between them. This allows you to win an opponent’s checker on every move no matter what.

  • Monopoly: Microsoft’s 49% stake in Open AI, a technology that requires billions of dollars to develop and maintain gives them an almost unbeatable advantage.
  • A hand in everybody’s pockets: Anyone who competes with Microsoft using GPT pays them.
  • GPT3 vs GPT4 pricing: Microsoft has unlimited access to GPT-4. For you, it’ll cost more than 10 times more than the less powerful GPT-3.
  • Cloning dependent competitors: Microsoft has a history of cloning successful companies like Zoom, Slack, Notion. On top of the usual strategic advantage, MS clones will have superior AI from the start.

We don’t do apps

One of our concerns was that AI had the structural potential to replace a lot of applications. A lot of AI apps looked and worked the same. And soon, ChatGPT would incorporate some of the features that AI startups were pushing as a selling point.

The recently launched Humane Ai pin took the final step: It proudly emphasized that it didn’t have apps, because it did everything through the operating system.

“You once said that you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind… That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough.” –Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

  1. A discussion partner to prepare writing
  2. A spellchecker, grammar checker to fix technical errors
  3. A fact checker, to get rid of overlooked factual errors
  4. A friend that helps out when you can’t find the right word that is on the tip of your tongue
  5. A partial ghostwriter
  6. A full-on ghostwriter, but then you check what was written
  7. A full-on ghostwriter without checking what was written
  8. A full-on ghost reader and ghostwriter without checks and balances
AssumptionsObservationsGuidelines
Human and robot text become technically indiscernibleOpenAI/Microsoft have to be seen as one primarily commercial entity.Avoid dependency on OpenAI/Microsoft
Apps will rush to implement AI to not miss outApps using GPT risk becoming a ChatGPT featureDon’t level down, address the problems caused by AI
AI problems will create new needsFew companies think ahead trying to address the resulting problemsThink of AI as a tool that replaces human thought