AI writing tools are already changing the game, at least in the news. The number of articles on AI is insane. From halcyon analyses that point out that we can use AI writing tools to our own advantage to hysterical articles that claim that writers, songwriters, and poets are going to be replaced with AI. The latter will unlikely happen, as we are yet to see the robot Sophia as a shop assistant.

And to be fair, AI writing tools shook the academic world much more than the art world. Students no longer have to write essays on their own or order from custom writing services. They can simply use ai essay generator for such purposes. Of course, there’s an ethical question. Can you get grades for the task that you didn’t do? But the real question is: are the AI essay writing tools any good? Let’s check out what they offer:

• Cheaper than essay writing services;
• Ability to access any data online;
• Writing almost like humans;
• Fast execution of tasks;
• Not getting tired.

That’s what you can get from subscription-based AI essay writing tools. There are problems that you can encounter with some of them, though. Without a detailed description of the task, they won’t make a compelling essay. Also, they do make grammar and spelling errors. But by spending enough time with the tool, you can produce the texts that you need. And what about free AI writing tools?

Free AI Writing Tools Have Limitations

You won’t get much from a free AI tool. And the limitations can vary from the word count to additional tools that allow you to be more precise about what you expect from it. This already indicates that you may not get a compelling essay using AI in free mode. But let’s delve into details so that we won’t make unsubstantiated claims.

Let’s start with a word count. Most AI writing tools will provide you with an option to generate a 150-200 word paper. That may be okay for most school papers, but it won’t serve any purpose using it for college essays, which generally require a word count of at least 2000 words.

You may think that you can trick the AI and task it with writing pieces of your essay, but here you run into two problems. Firstly, no one says that you have an unlimited number of times that you can use it for free. Secondly, the free mode doesn’t allow you to explain to the AI that you want just a section of a bigger text. It will produce more 150-word essays.

So, you are left with an option to generate up to fifteen school essays on different topics and then rework them as parts of one big college essay. Yet, although it’s recommended to use AI’s output as a draft — just like with papers you get from an essay writing service — the work you have to do with a free AI writing tool doesn’t resemble reworking a draft at all.

The limitations go beyond that. If you want to use an AI writing tool for creating submittable material, you need to feed some pieces of your writing to it. It can learn and replicate your style, at least to the extent that your professor won’t find your recent papers fishy. But the free mode won’t allow you to do that. So, the only option here is to rewrite whatever the AI tool has produced for you.

Free AI Writing Tools Repeat Themselves

Some AI tools offer you to choose the type of essay you need. But as your options for using it are limited, the AI tool will repeat itself. You task the tool to produce an argumentative essay on a particular topic. Then, you can task it to produce a compare-and-contrast essay on the same topic. It will reproduce the previous essay with several modifications.

We tested one free AI writing tool for this article and tasked it to produce a classic, argumentative, persuasive, compare-and-contrast, and critical essay on the topic “How propaganda affects people?” And in all five cases, it gave us the same essay with a few alterations.

It gave a brief explanation of what propaganda is. Then it described how propaganda could be used in negative and positive ways. And concluded that we always need to analyze the information we receive. The fun point is that it frequently used the same sentences.

In four cases, the essay started with the sentence: “Propaganda is a powerful tool that has been used throughout history to influence people’s beliefs and actions.” And only once, the free AI tool decided to change it to “Propaganda has been used for centuries to influence people’s beliefs and actions.” There are minor differences, but it’s still the same sentence.

Each essay ended with the sentence: “It is important for individuals to critically evaluate information presented through various media sources in order to make informed decisions about their beliefs and actions.” In one case, the free AI tool decided to start the sentence with “Overall,” and in another case, it decided to ditch “important” in favor of “essential.”

Just for laughs, we decided to use the sixth option and task the free AI tool to craft a memoir on the same topic. The first sentence was the same, but then it was followed by something new: “Growing up in a country where propaganda was heavily used, I witnessed firsthand how it affected people’s perceptions and actions.”

Despite the second sentence, the free AI tool failed to provide some precise examples. In the free mode, you cannot task it with writing a memoir of a North Korean refugee. We can bet that “dissertation writers for hire” from essay writing services would’ve fared better than AI with this task. Still, for the first time, the last sentence experienced some drastic differences. The free AI suggested that “we must stay vigilant to recognize the negative effects of propaganda.”

Closing Thoughts

Source: https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1200/1*b79Z_EIkN_YC7mHJrpK1bg.png

So, are AI essay writers changing the game in academic writing? Not yet, and surely not in a free mode. The limitations that AI writing tools have in free mode make them completely useless. But if they become more advanced, they can change the game forever.