The most recent update to iA Writer includes an iA Detector (my description). I like this approach. Here are the notes on the update:
iA Writer 7
How can you tell if a text was written by a person… or by a robot? Sometimes, you can’t. But at other times, something just seems… off. Using ChatGPT, we often don’t even remember ourselves what we borrowed and what we typed.
Artificial intelligence is a great assistant. But if we blindly allow it to replace our own thoughts and words, we become the mouthpiece of a machine. We need to make sure that we know what we say. And that we say what we mean.
The new iA Writer shows you which words you typed, and which you pasted from ChatGPT or from a friend. It highlights the text you craft yourself and it keeps track of contributors, artificial and natural, so that your voice is what comes through on the page.
For over a decade, iA Writer has helped millions of authors find their voice. With iA Writer 7, we’re making sure you keep it.
Authorship
Edits made by AI and other artificial tools are dimmed
Edits made by another human are underlined
Paste menu detects conversations copied from ChatGPT, and offers to automatically mark authorship for your questions and ChatGPT’s answers
Mark As menu makes it easy to mark authorship of selected text
Paste As menu pastes text and marks authorship at the same time
Paste Edits From menu automatically detects changes between the selected text and the pasted text, and attributes the changes to the author you choose
Authorship annotations are saved at the end of files. Hidden when editing in iA Writer, and visible in other apps
If you like the updates, please leave us a rating on the App Store. It helps a lot.
This feature seems undercooked, almost like they wanted to capitalize on the AI hype without giving in to the trend of adding AI to their app. Who is the intended market? Do the people using AI to help with writing care deeply about keeping GPT writing separate from their own? I don’t think they do. Seems a solution in search of a problem. (Of course, the authoring might be helpful if/when they add collaboration features, but launching this within the context of AI strikes me as odd.)
I agree. iA Writer keeps going in directions and adding features I don’t care about while never fixing (or giving me options to fix) the things that annoy me about it.
I’ll always be grateful to iA for the Quattro font (which I use in other apps) and for giving me important ideas about what I want in a writing app, but I find myself seldom using it anymore.
Sample size of one, but I find this feature helpful. The primary purpose of ChatGPT for me in the writing process is to unblock me. I will regularly generate a paragraph or a series of paragraphs from a set of bullet points, and then rewrite them below in my own tone. For a complex document, this is helpful to me.
This is interesting – I briefly thought that perhaps they’d written their own algorithm detection software. But no, it’s more like a self-reporting feature to keep one on the straight and narrow (with some detecting of where you copy from baked into the copy/paste feature).
I wonder if ‘iA writer’ is starting to regret its name branding since the release to the masses of ‘AI writing’ and its many ethical dilemmas.
I am in two minds about this: it’s really nice to see a software vendor for writers come out in defence of authenticity and voice, and so on. Then again, iA is such a niche product that the impact will be pretty small. Since it relies on self-reporting it’s a bit gimmicky. Most writers who value their own voice and acknowledge their sources will already have robust ways of keeping track of where they get their stuff from (I’d hope!).
As an academic in the humanities, I also have some reservations about the ‘solution’ here presented:
At least in my world, the second example that ‘brings back your own words’ could still easily constitute an act of plagiarism, or at least what my academic institution labels as ‘poor academic practice’, if the paragraph concerns some substantial thought, argument, or set of evidence developed by someone else that is not acknowledged (hello, footnotes!).
Anyway – thanks for sharing. I write mostly using Obsidian, Typora, and Scrivener – but will give iA another spin. I like the simplicity.
I like that as well, and the fact that it is a native app. However, I’m not fond of the visual clutter caused by hyperlink markdown syntax appearing amidst the text. Obsidian handles this more cleanly (so does Ulysses and Craft), offering a less distracting experience. It’s ironic that the developer’s of iA Writer, which touts distraction-free writing, hasn’t adopted a similar method. For example, like in Obsidian, markdown in iA Writer could remain hidden until one selects or hovers over text containing markdown syntax.
This is so interesting! And could serve as a model for future design patterns in more popular apps, indeed I hope it will.
I wish iA Writer were easier to use with collaborative writing software because that’s most of the writing I do. Still, I’ve updated the app and will be playing with this feature.
Though I prefer Obsidian’s live preview approach. I’d be okay with seeing the markdown characters if they were grayed out. But iA Writer not only doesn’t do that, it actually renders the markdown symbols along with the text, making it harder to read the words themselves.
Yes, which is ironic. I don’t understand their thinking around this. But, I have abandoned iA Writer because of this so it is no longer an issue for my workflow.
I like iA as a company, but they seem lost with iA Writer. The main feature of the latest major update was support for wiki-links. Who cares about wiki-links in a app not designed for note-taking and knowledge management? It appeared to me as a way to capitalize on the hype and cater to Obsidian users—a strategy that might make sense commercially but seems to be in tension with the product’s original vision.
This new version is much of the same story. They don’t want artificial intelligence, but commercially they also don’t want to ignore it, so they hastily pushed something.
It appears that the need to pay the bills is determining the direction of iA Writer.
iA Presenter is great tho, that’s their best software.
I really like the design so that I can focus on writing.
I also love their stance to speak out against issues like subscription, AI…
However these seem like a marketing approach more than practicality: they make something because others are bad. I am good because others are bad. iA is unique.
If you really want to make a good product, you can simply ignore what is happening outside or just pick something from outside you think which is good. You also don’t need to push minimalism so extreme. That’s why I like Apple Notes more than iA: Apple seems they know what they should do to Notes app.
A group of blind men meet an elephant. Each touches a different part: one the side, another the tusk, and so on. They each describe the elephant based on what they feel. Their descriptions differ. They argue, suspecting each other of being wrong or lying.
As the maker of iA Writer, I think that I know our goals and motivations. But maybe I am just another blind person that thinks he cares for an elephant while it could also be a teddy bear, a rubber boot or a pine apple.
Slightly off topic, but thanks to @Mag99, I just downloaded the iA Presenter trial. Looks great. Can’t wait to use it for work. Might even go and re-do some current presentations.
iA Presenter it’s a phenomenal piece of software, it’s truly a step forward in the presentation space. I have been using it since the beta. Being able to use my .md notes and turn them into slides almost only using the keyboard is mind-blowing.
I might be wrong, but I think in this analogy … aren’t you the elephant?
Not that it matters.
I like your app, but I don’t use it because (as far as I can tell) I need to press return twice to make a paragraph and that really annoys me! I’m an old elephant, and I spent a long time learning not to do that…
Thank you for the response. I’m curious…what about this feature is useful to you? What is the value add? Is it that GPT words are dimmed? If so, what about that dimming helps you to create?
If combining your words with GPT, how does the dimming help you to “make sure you’re keeping your voice” (to paraphrase iA’s copy)? Other than artificially by dimming GPT text, of course, or by telling you who added which word to the text. It’s my opinion that, if you are mixing texts, you’re not really keeping your voice—you’re diluting it (not a criticism) regardless of how the texts are displayed.
And if you aren’t mixing texts, e.g., if you paste a GPT paragraph and then rewrite below that paragraph, then I’m even more confused as to how this feature will help.
I had a greater respect for their vision when the minimalism was more extreme, actually. One font and no options because they don’t want you fiddling with preferences? Ok, that made sense. But now there are three different fonts and users are still not allowed to use their own fonts. It now feels less like a practical or philosophical limitation and more like arrogance or condescension. They’ve already compromised on their original vision, they should just let customers use a typeface that is more comfortable for them.
It’s a pity that they sometimes lose direction with philosophical positions that don’t lead to meaningful innovation or improvements (remember iA Writer Pro?) while refusing to address low-hanging fruit that would increase actual user satisfaction.
