The ghost in the machine
Like most ghostwriters, when AI first burst on the scene, I took a sharp intake of breath. What would this mean for me and my fellow writers?
Two apocalyptic scenarios came to mind.
The first: authors might choose AI-generated books over ghostwritten ones to save money, even if the result was bland nonsense.
The second: even worse, that the machines would (whisper it) become better than us, making our craft as obsolete as a quill and inkpot.
In time, I settled on a third, more comforting vision – that the hype would fade when people realised computers can’t write great books, and ghostwriters would remain in demand.
All of these turned out to be wrong.
A confession to begin with: I’ve begun to use AI in a way that helps me ghostwrite my clients’ books. Like most working writers, I distrust silver bullets and I’m suspicious of hype, but I’m also curious. I’ve discovered that, when used well, AI can lift some of the strain of writing so there’s more time available for the human thinking, input, and sentence-crafting that make a book sing.
Even better than that, it can contribute towards creating a better book.
It’s not necessarily about speed. The classic stories we still read today didn’t endure because someone found a faster way to scribble them down. They lived on because readers care about how they’re told, and to whom. That’s still the job of a ghostwriter. AI doesn’t change it, it just gives us more tools to do the work.
So here’s a clear-eyed guide to where AI genuinely helps, and where a human ghostwriter is not only useful but essential.
Where AI earns its keep
Ordering the chaos
Ask any ghostwriter about their raw material and they’ll tell you about a glorious muddle. Interview transcripts, research documents their client has sent them, diary entries, links to material online – not to mention their own thoughts that have been swirling around their head since the first client conversation.
AI is superb at tidying the room. I can feed it a bunch of material and ask it to come up with some ideas for structures. I don’t let it decide – I’m the one who does that because only I know my client’s feelings and preferences – but it does suggest patterns I might otherwise not have thought of. Then I can discuss the structure with my client to see what works for us both.
Sending out the research scouts
AI takes the donkey work out of research. It can scour the web for relevant facts, posts, and articles in minutes – a job that would take me countless frustrating hours. I still go to the sources and verify (always), but the tool acts like a giant sieve for the relevant information and takes a load off my plate.
Beating the blank page
We ghostwriters aren’t averse to a blank page like some authors are. That’s partly because we don’t get paid if we don’t write (a great incentive to ignore the so-called ‘writer’s block’) and partly because our clients’ thoughts and ideas act as a starting place in any case.
But sometimes the ideas just won’t come, and that’s when it can be helpful to ask AI for analogies, angles, and scrappy placeholder paragraphs as a way of getting started. I then I rewrite line by line, making the text my own – or rather, my client’s. The key thing is that I’m keeping up momentum while putting my keyboard, not AI, in charge.
Acting as an editor
Have you ever wanted to ask for straightforward feedback on your writing, but only within strict parameters? You don’t want the other person to get sidetracked by their own experiences, feel the need to check with their mum/spouse/best friend, or give you their personal take on the Oxford comma – you just want them to help you make it better?
That’s what AI can do. Used carefully, it’s great for spotting repetitive phrasing, overlong sentences, and jarring perspective shifts. I often run a chapter through it and ask for feedback, not rewrites. It highlights issues that I can then fix in a way that I would never have been objective enough to see for myself.
Doing the donkey work
Summarising interview transcripts, checking references, generating a list of potential titles or chapter subheadings – these are places AI earns its keep. It’s the admin assistant that doesn’t mind the dull bits, leaving more of the ghostwriters’ brain for the work only they can do.
… and where AI falls short
Voice is more than an algorithm
AI can imitate verbal rhythms, borrow turns of phrase, even approximate a tone of voice. But the essence of a voice – its register, its sense of proportion, and its instinct for what matters? An instinct for those is born of lived experience and comes from listening, watching, and empathising. The things no dataset can reproduce.
A skilled ghostwriter knows that a book isn’t just ‘content’, its an expression of who their client is deep inside. Only the ghost’s judgement and taste can make the distinction between what’s just information and what’s an evocation of them as a person.
AI can’t form a relationship
A big part of ghostwriting is asking real questions at the right moment – and hearing what wasn’t said. AI can’t notice when a person’s tone hardens around a memory, or gently press, ‘And what happened after that?’ It can’t earn a person’s trust or decide when not to use a detail because the author’s future self will thank them for it.
Nor can it proactively cajole an author into sticking to a schedule and staying the course of the book to the end.
It doesn’t care about the future
Books have consequences – commercial, reputational, legal, and personal. Deciding where to draw the line between what to reveal, what to anonymise, and what to fight for requires experience and accountability. As does crediting the right sources in the right way. When an author is faced with a lawsuit, ‘Well, AI said it would be ok’ won’t cut it.
It gets easily lost
Give AI the wrong brief and it will confidently sprint in the wrong direction, all the while assuring you that your ideas are wonderful. For an author, this can be seductive, especially if the tool is taking away a lot of the hard work of writing.
It can take some mental strength to stay in creative control and apply boundaries, something that a ghostwriter – with their experience and objective reasoning – is better placed to do.
It can’t take your book personally
I don’t mean being precious, I mean being responsible. The ghostwriter is the person who lies awake on their client’s behalf, worrying about Chapter 3’s lack of logic or wondering why metaphor almost works but not quite. AI doesn’t care, but we do – deeply – because writing is our life blood.
So, is AI any good or not?
In my experience, AI-assisted ghostwriting is like having two minds for the price of one. It’s not necessarily quicker (although it can be) but it delivers a more fully rounded result.
A good example is how I wrote this post. I uploaded some research links and AI training documents into ChatGPT, and wrote a detailed prompt which included what points I wanted to include and the conclusion I’d like my readers to come to. I also included information about my writing voice and style.
The result was a post that was about 20% right. I ended up writing the introduction and conclusion from scratch as it misinterpreted what I wanted, and almost entirely re-writing the central sections. I added my own vocabulary and replaced some thoughts with others.
That might make it look like hard work, and it was. But I like to think the end result benefitted from machine and human working together.
‘But will AI replace ghostwriters?’
As the above example shows, AI can’t replace a ghostwriter’s taste.
It can save time and energy by suggesting structures and ideas, but not decide whether to use them. It can give objective feedback and rewrite tricky passages, but not integrate them holistically into the book. And it can take some of the donkey work out of the writing process, but not enthuse or reassure an author so they keep going to the end.
But what will change, and already is changing, is the process. Good ghostwriters are incorporating AI into how they work: to prepare better interviews, try out structures, produce cleaner transcripts, and keep projects moving.
That’s all of benefit for both ghostwriter and client.
Ginny Carter is a bestselling ghostwriter of over 25 books, a book coach, and an award-winning author in her own right.