This is a copy of the email our COO, Nick Case, sent to all of our clients on June 07, 2023. 



Dear reader.

We assume that you are aware of the recent uproar around AI, and more specifically its impact on academic publishing. If this is news to you, feel free to email us for an update! I’m writing today to share a few thoughts on AI and how it’s affecting our corner of the world, academic editing.

Whilst politicians, thinktanks and the IT elite come up with rules for how AI should be used and controlled, academic journal publishers seem to have largely ruled against it being listed as an author, but are not prohibiting its use in editing.

It’s not all smooth sailing yet…

However, using AI as an editing tool creates a number of challenges, including potentially sharing, or at least making accessible, unpublished research; incorrectly interpreting content, and in the worst case, “hallucinating” content; losing an author’s “voice” – the style that makes your writing your own; and the fact that, in the end, the output still has to be compared with the input, which could be more time consuming than just human editing in the first place!

That said, it would be irresponsible of us as a company not to be intelligently testing its potential uses in our editing process, and so we are currently analysing AI’s performance in editing journal papers. We’re looking at how the results compare across the various academic fields, how well it performs on very good pieces of writing as opposed to input from an author whose grasp of English is not so strong, and how we can produce the best results using various different prompts. Perhaps most importantly, how much time could we save – and pass on to you in reduced costs – by using AI as part of our editing process? These, amongst other things, are what we’re currently working on.

AsiaEdit’s current stance on AI tools

Once we’ve thoroughly tested AI’s use in our editing process, we’ll be making a call as to whether to include its partial use (we don’t currently see an option for 100% AI editing) in our offerings, although we will always retain the option of a 100% human edit for those who prefer it.

In the meantime, please be assured that our service remains completely delivered by good old-fashioned editors, tapping away at their keyboards! Your papers and the data therein will only be seen by your project managers and your editors, and will never be fed into a third-party tool without your permission. Until you see an obvious service choice involving AI available, that will remain the case.

If you have any questions please do get in touch, as we’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences. We will be running a free-to-attend webinar soon, so please look out for the invitation in your inbox if you might be interested.

Best regards

Nick Case
Founder and Chief Operations Officer
AsiaEdit