Writing with AI – Creative Challenges

Joseph M. Moxley - Founder, Writing Commons

This painting shows Sisyphus rolling a massive boulder up a hill

Much like Sisyphus' eternal struggle, the creative process often involves repetitive effort, persistence, and the continual revision of work. Creators repeatedly refine their ideas and face setbacks, mirroring the cyclical effort of pushing the boulder uphill. Source: "The Myth of Sisyphus" by aallingh is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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Throughout Writing with Artificial Intelligence, an undergraduate course, students will complete the following brief creative challenges:

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Key Benefits of Writing Without AI for Students

For teachers, scholars and researchers in writing studies, writing is not merely a means of communication, but a powerful tool for thinking and learning. By engaging in the writing process, writers enhance their understanding of concepts, clarify their thoughts, and develop new insights. Given AI systems generate whole essays in seconds, the writing studies community worries hybrid writing — writing composed by humans in partnership with machines — will undermine human agency. They worry these systems will perpetuate inequalities as the LLMs (large learning language models) are based on the writing style and values of writers in Western, English-speaking countries. This limited representation may lead to a narrow worldview embedded in LLMs, which marginalizes or misrepresents the languages, dialects, and cultural nuances of underrepresented groups. They may reinforce gender stereotypes, racial prejudices, or other forms of discrimination when generating text or making predictions. Given this context, this assignment constitutes the first of eight creative challenges that undergraduates complete for Writing with Artificial Intelligence. Inspired by a writing assignment created by Professor Whitney Gregg-Harrison at the University of Rochester, this assignment asks students to reflect on the benefits they gain by writing independently as opposed to engaging in “hybrid writing” — i.e., writing performed by humans in collaboration with generative AI tools, such as Chat GPT or Claude.

How to Write Successfully with AI: Kairos-Driven Prompts

This assignment constitutes the second of eight creative challenges that undergraduate students complete for Writing with Artificial Intelligence. The essay that follows the assignment calls for writing teachers to replace the term “engineering prompt” with “Kairos-Driven Prompt Design.” Why? The internet is littered with tutorials/infographics on “prompt engineering,” which refers to the processes involved in crafting strategic prompts — prompts that elicit the information and drafts you need from generative AI tools. Learning how to engage in strategic prompting is a critical literacy for professional and technical writers and academic writers, so it makes sense for this assignment to follow the first creative challenge, which asked students to reflect on what they gained by writing without AI. Yet what distinguishes this creative challenge from “engineering prompt tutorials” is that asks students to frame their tutorials based theory, research, and scholarship in rhetoric and composition. Rather than writing from the perspective of an engineer, this challenge calls for students to adopt the persona, ethos, and diction of a “technorhetorician.” Rather than using “engineering language,” students use the discourse, register and knowledge-base of rhetoricians and compositionists.

Build a Custom Chatbot

Chatbots are automated programs designed to engage users in conversation, serving a wide range of purposes from customer service and education to entertainment and personal assistance. With platforms like PoeAI, you can create bots for free without needing extensive technical expertise. Bots can be used for a multitude of purposes. Businesses can build customer service bots, personal trainers can build bots to help people schedule workouts, educators can build bots to help students. In this creative challenge, students research bots linked at or created at PoeAI. Working collaboratively, they use Poe to develop a bot. They reflect on this experiment, questioning whether the possibility to create bots, even commercialize them, suggests that AI tools can provide humans with greater agency over their lives and creative projects.

Practice Critical AI Literacies

The MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI (2023) defines critical AI literacy as knowledge of “not just how AI models work but also about the risk, rewards, capacities, and complications of AI tools” (see point #8). Thus, this creative challenge introduces “18 Pitfalls in AI Journalism,” to help students identify logical fallacies, methodological errors, and interpretive errors in media “hype” about AI.

The Future of Writing: Postplagiarism & Hybrid Writing?

GAI (generative artificial intelligence) tools are a true conundrum for academics: On the one hand, most GAI tools are fueled by the greatest theft of intellectual property of all time. They challenge academic integrity discourse conventions and empower plagiarism. On the other hand, they expedite research and writing processes. In response to this dilemma, this creative challenge historicizes copyright laws and plagiarism conventions, introduces students to recent copyright controversies, and challenges students to analyze whether society needs to redefine IP (Intellectual Property) standards in response to the ubiquitousness of GAI tools and the move toward hybrid writing — i.e., writing coauthored by machines and humans. Building on the past creative challenges, this writing assignment maintains the course’s focus on the critical AI literacies students need to develop to use AI critically. According to The MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI (2023), we need to foreground these literacies in our classrooms so students don’t offshore thinking, research, writing, and design to GAI tools. Students using powerful AI writing tools — and especially students who aspire to be content creatives/knowledge workers — need to understand the key intellectual property debates surrounding composing in the age of AI.

Research How AI Constrains & Enhances Your Agency as a Human Being

In response to AI, human agency is a major concern. According to a Pew Research Center study — “The Future of Human Agency” Anderson & Rainie (2022) — the major question confronting humanity with the rise of AI is, “What is the future of human agency?” Trillions of dollars are pouring intro AI research and development. Thus, this challenge introduces the question of agency — of whether users of GAI (generative artificial intelligence) tools can be “masters of their technology and not its unthinking servants” (NEH). For this creative challenge, students experiment with AI tools to develop something novel — something they couldn’t imagine doing without AI, such as writing songs with Suno AI, creating videos with Adobe Express, or manipulating images with Adobe Firefly. After engaging in a qualitative, empirical research experiment to explore the possibilities of a new GAI tool, students reflect how these AI tools enhanced or constrained their creative and cognitive processes.

Research Deepfakes & Misinformation

Deepfakes refer to AI-generated synthetic media that manipulate or create convincing visual and audio content of real people. These technologies use deep learning algorithms to produce face swaps, voice cloning, full body puppetry, and text-to-speech synthesis, mirroring ancient sophistry’s appeals to emotion and tribal loyalties. In today’s knowledge economy, being able to identify deepfakes and other forms of misinformation is a critical AI competency, a basic literacy. Not surprisingly, the MLA CCCC Taskforce on Writing and AI has argued teaching critical AI literacy is crucial for our students and democracy. Thus, this challenges introduces students to research and scholarship on deepfakes, their impact on society, and the importance of understanding and combating misinformation. Students conduct textual research on how AI-generated deepfakes exploit cognitive biases, social dynamics, and information ecosystems. Students critically analyze misinformation, write an annotated bibliography, and create a deepfake or information campaign.

Imagine the Digital Future (Optional Project)

The rapid progression of generative artificial intelligence raises profound questions about the future of human creativity, authorship, and the role of writing in learning and knowledge production. Rainie and Anderson (2024) from Elon University’s Imagining the Digital Future Center surveyed and canvassed hundreds of global technology experts to investigate their thoughts on AI and the future of humanity. Their study findings revealed a mix of public trepidation and optimism about AI’s consequences: two-thirds of the experts expect negative impacts on personal privacy, over half foresee risks to employment opportunities and the integrity of politics and elections, and 40% fear AI could worsen societal civility. In response to these questions, this challenge asks students to tackle one of the core questions (along with climate change, war, hunger, and social injustice) facing humanity: Will the rise of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) limit human agency? A capstone project, students write an essay that theorizes about the future of human agency and writing in the age of AI.