I’m delighted by AI – but I’m terrified of AI.
On the one hand, I’m in favor of tools that speed up my editing, increase accuracy and efficiency, and let me focus on the more subtle (and frankly, rewarding) aspects of copyediting and proofreading.
On the other hand, if AI can handle the mechanics of editing, what does the author need me for?
Of course, many editors already use tools to accelerate and improve their editing, such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini. PerfectIt is another favorite among editors; it explicitly does not use AI, though the company that created PerfectIt, Daniel Heuman’s Intelligent Editing, has launched AI editing software. Many of us rely on features such as Find and Replace in Word, or even macros, to handle some of our grunt work. Erin Servais has entire courses dedicated to teaching editors how to incorporate AI into their workflow.
But as AI improves, I wonder if we’re frogs in the proverbial pot. In a few years, will we look back on 2025 and shake our heads, wondering – while we go to work at a job that does NOT involve editing – how we could have been so foolish?
Created with Google Gemini
Will AI Replace Editors? I Asked NotebookLM
I decided to use AI, specifically NotebookLM, to help me research the question of whether editors will lose their jobs to AI. I’ve begun using this Google Gemini program at my production editor job at Macmillan Publishers, and it has saved me hours of research and digging time.
NotebookLM is perfect for topics like Macmillan’s house style. Here’s how it works: We have documentation about our style preferences spread across numerous digital locations – Google docs, meeting notes, our personal notes, emails to colleagues and freelancers, chat conversations, and so forth. I put all of these, as well as our style guide, into a notebook in NotebookLM labeled House Style. If I want to know what our department thinks about, say, whether we use periods plus ellipses on our jackets, I can just query my House Style notebook. NotebookLM quickly digests all the materials I’ve uploaded and spits out an answer, with citations. You can engage with the material in a variety of ways, such as direct questions, audio and video, FAQs, a study guide, and so on.
So I made a notebook for the question of whether AI will replace editors, and I populated it with twenty-eight sources I found online. According to them, the answer is no, AI will not replace editors. AI has trouble with context, making matters such as nuance, conscious language, emotion, and tone out of reach for its processing powers. Of course, a good copyeditor is one part rule applier and one part translator and analyst of context, so if AI has a hard time understanding context, then presumably copyeditors, and even proofreaders, will continue to be needed. This doesn’t mean we can ignore AI, though. These sources also say that editors who embrace AI are more likely to be successful in the future than editors who don’t.
Notebook LM created of video overview of the topic, and here’s the notebook.
I feel moderately reassured by these results. I’m also a fan of using NotebookLM and other AI tools to assist your job as a freelance editor, not necessarily only for editing, but also for things like writing blog posts, keeping track of style issues, and writing editorial letters.
But I seem to recall something about a pot, and boiling water, and adorable amphibians…
Editing Is Safe from AI … Probably
Despite the above, I’m not entirely convinced that editors are safe from losing our jobs to AI. It seems to me that AI will only get better. Maybe now it can’t handle editing for emotion and context and idioms, but what about in five years? (For what it’s worth, a friend who’s a program lead for AI initiatives in a healthcare data company assures me that he doesn’t see a future in which AI can understand context.)
Perhaps more catastrophically, I don’t buy the argument that the human touch will always be needed. It seems to me the human touch will only be needed as long as it’s valued. But if enough authors use AI exclusively for their editing, and those books do just fine, and audiences get used to more generic language and, essentially, worse editing . . . why wouldn’t the market sink to that level?
All of this calls the question of what we’re doing at Editorial Arts Academy as teachers of editing. If a prospective student were to ask me if now is a good time to become a freelance editor, I would be honest and say I don’t know. I don’t know if the world will need as many book editors in the future as it does now. I don’t know if our jobs will pay what they do now. I don’t know how much of the editing process will be safe from AI intervention. I don’t know what types of editing will be protected, or what sectors of the editing field will fare better than others.
I launched EAA so I could share my passion for editing with other people who love language and love to read. I still want to do that, and right now, there’s still work out there. But I do hear rumblings about work with indie authors decreasing, and I know publishers are looking at ways to speed up the editing process and make it more efficient by folding AI into the work.
It’s About AI, Not Our Editing Jobs
Before we abandon our red pencils (virtual, these days) and beloved CMOSs, let’s zoom out. How many professions won’t be transformed by AI? If we’re not training editors, will the people that we don’t train go out and get AI-proof jobs?
Probably not. AI is clearly here to stay. We’re all on this train with an uncertain destination, no matter what profession we’re in.
For the time being, new editors are taking classes and editing mentorships, editors are being hired, and people are still reading good books. And we can offer authors and publishers several layers of attention that AI can’t. (Maybe it’s a matter of marketing. As my clever friend put it, we can broadcast our “artisanal editing services,” for which you get more than just fixing typos, misspellings, and grammar, like any old bot can do.) I know these are scary times for editors, but we’re not alone.
I propose we continue to learn and benefit from new AI tools, be the best editors and marketers we can be, and prepare to meet these challenges with as much strength and resourcefulness as we can muster.
