FAQs

What is this website?

GhostTheWriter is a way to write fun stories from scratch, in a variety of literary styles. It’s meant to be used for entertainment purposes, as a homage and tribute to our favorite authors who are no longer with us. It’s educational for all ages: fun and interesting for a class project to learn about famous writers, but powerful enough to help real writers develop a quick rough draft or improve their manuscript in a more refined style.

How does it work?

Just type in what you want to see and “ghost” will do the writing for you. If you wish, you can “summon a spirit” to channel the literary presence of one of history’s greatest writers. The paraphrase tool also has some advanced functions to help you develop and improve your own writing – so you can craft better stories and polish them without an editor.

Is this occult?

No! I’ll tell you a secret, we don’t actually use real ghosts. We use technology: GPT3 is a cutting-edge AI writing tool. You could argue that new technologies are always a little unsettling, in that what we don’t understand feels like magical and mysterious. But it’s all ones and zeroes, tech and hardware, not souls and spirits.

Is this plagiarism?

This tool will never produce plagiarized content. When you summon a spirit, it’s an imaginative writing experiment that will generate something 100% new. We mimic their style, but don’t copy their words. The classical authors are fun but not very practical actual writing, so we added some popular modern authors as well. You can use them to indicate a preferred genre or tone, but the results won’t really capture their unique voice. It’s just a guideline to steer the results in the right direction.
Also, this tool has been built to help students of literature learn to appreciate and recognize various styles of writing, but is not intended for authors to “copy” a writer’s style for their own writing. That said, you can use any author’s name in gpt3 and it will affect the output results, we’ve just organized it for novelty entertainment purposes. The important thing will always be your original story; these tools may just help you polish and tighten your writing into something a little more palatable for general readers.

Who owns the copyright?

AI writing tools are new enough that copyright laws are a little unclear. Here’s what we can tell you: Open AI will never claim copyright of any content you generate with GPT3… and neither will we. This new content belongs to you, and unless you choose to share it, nobody else will be able to see it, either. You, the creator, own the commercial rights – though if you do plan to publish or sell something you’ve created on this site, we recommend some heavy editing and a human touch to make sure you’re producing high quality content.
*Also note: commercial rights is not the same as copyright. You can use your content however you wish, but it may be difficult to claim ownership, in the sense that you could prosecute others who copy from your work. This isn’t as big an issue as you might think, but it’s something be be aware of.

Can I use this to write a book?

Absolutely! It’s actually one of the few AI writing tools specifically meant to help authors with common writing challenges. It should speed up several aspects of book writing, from idea generation, to creating a story outline, to sketching out quick scene ideas, and even developing or polishing your rough draft. It’s like having a second brain, or hiring a famous author to cowrite books with you, so you can have fun with your story with less dread and frustration. It’s almost like having a personal muse that actually shows up when you need it.
Writing has always been a bit mysterious, the epiphanies and randomness, the flashes of insight, the desperate drive to reach out to a higher power for inspiration, the uncanny creation of meaning from 32 symbolic characters. We’ve chosen an esoteric style for our brand, but this is just a tool that lets you do more creative things without exhausting yourself.

Who created this site?

I go by many names, have a PhD in Literature, and have published over a dozen novels. I’m fascinated by emerging AI technology and what it means for writers, artists and the fate of humanity… but I also like to amuse myself with pleasant distractions and chase intriguing projects, like this one, because it helps pass the time and it’s fun to share novelties.

Can I try it out and cancel later?

Sure, you can cancel at any time, or just stop monthly payments until you’re feeling more inspired. Just go to your account page and end the subscription. You won’t lose access to all the content you’ve written previously; but your account will be limited until you decide to upgrade again.