Can AI Edit My Book? AI vs Humans: Who Offers the Best Book Editing Services

"What's your opinion on authors using AI to edit their manuscripts?" It's a question us editors get asked very frequently and one that will surely become more prominent in the coming years. As more varied and complex artificial intelligence programmes become available, increasingly more writers are looking to AI software like ChatGPT and book-editing services like Grammarly, ProWritingAid and Sudowrite both to assist with editing and to generate actual content. According to a 2025 Bookbub survey of over 1200 authors, 'about 45% are currently using generative AI to assist with their work' and '7% of respondents are not currently using AI but might use it in the future.' 

If you're an author planning, writing or editing your work, it's likely that you will have used AI at some point in the process. It can be tricky to avoid it nowadays, as most computer writing programmes have spelling and grammar check automatically built into their software and an AI assistant on offer, such as Microsoft's Copilot. But can this really substitute for using a human editor? 

The short answer is no, but that does not mean that AI and human editors cannot work in harmony. In this article, we will compare the pros and cons of using AI compared to a human when writing your book. 

AI Editing

AI editing programmes like Grammarly and ProWritingAid undoubtedly have many pros. These online editors, as well as AI programmes like ChatGPT, are handy tools to have and can be good starting blocks for editing your manuscript. 

Let's look at some of the advantages: 

• A Good Foundation: these programmes can be immensely supportive for authors at the drafting stage who are less confident in their own spelling and grammar ability. They can pick up a lot of basic errors, meaning that you can get your manuscript into a relatively clean state before submitting it to an editor or publisher. This can make authors feel more confident in the accuracy of their manuscript. 
• Ease of use: AI programmes are generally pretty easy to use, and they can do a lot of the heavy lifting and amending for you, so you can just copy and paste the new content over - of course, the ethical implications of doing this are a whole other conversation. A human editor, on the other hand, will point out things you need to go and rework yourself, which can be trickier. 
• Efficiency: many AI editing programmes can run simultaneously alongside your writing, making them a very time-efficient way of editing your work. Other AI can analyse sections of text at a much higher speed than a human editor, meaning that your editing is carried out a lot faster. This can be very helpful for authors on a tight deadline. 
• Cost: on this vein, it might be cheaper to use an AI software to edit your work. This, of course, depends on the software you use and how trustworthy it is. Paying for a human editor can be costly, especially if you are opting for multiple services, but it's worth remembering that you are paying for quality and a professional service. 
• Plagiarism detection: some AI programmes have the ability to check your work for plagiarism, so you can see if your work is safe to publish. A human editor cannot scan your text in one go for word-to-word plagiarised phrases in the same way. 

So, AI editing programmes can be excellent beginner tools for writers in the process of putting pen to paper. They are able to catch a number of basic errors and can be very time and cost-efficient. These positives do largely depend on the extent to which you are relying on AI and which software you use, though, as some are less trustworthy than others. 

As publishing expert Jane Friedman states on her website, 'not all of these AI tools are created equal, however, and writers should approach any addition to their process with a shrewd eye.' 

Human Editing 

Though it's clear that using AI to edit your work does have its advantages, the pros of AI are largely outweighed by the benefits of using a human editor in terms of reliability, comprehension, consistency, quality and professionalism. So let's take a look at these. 

• Guaranteed comprehension: AI can pick up basic errors, but it does not have the ability to infer meaning or understand context. For this reason, it can flag 'errors' that aren't actually incorrect. or make rewording suggestions that do not work in the context. A human editor understands tone, context, narrative, humour, dialect, etc., which a computer simply cannot. Remember: computers and AI process data; they do not 'think' and 'understand'. 
• Plot and narrative: similarly to the above point, a human editor will understand your plot and narrative structure and tailor their editing suggestions around this. AI may be able to identify basic plot points, but it does not have the nuanced understanding of creative writing needed for editing books. 
• Control: a human editor is not looking to rewrite your work; they will make suggestions and communicate with the author before making any changes they are unsure about. Editors work collaboratively with authors in this sense and are professional in their treatment of your manuscript. If you blindly trust an AI software with your edit, you will have little to no control over the changes that are made. Your text may end up sounding more like a computer-generated voice than your own. There is less control in regards to AI, both in how it changes your work and in how it stores the information it collects from it. 
• Consistency: as well as spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors, a human editor will identify inconsistencies and plot holes in your manuscript - for example, a character's name changing, or an inconsistency over when an event occurs in the plot. An AI software may not do this, as it is looking out for overt errors that are grammatically incorrect. A human editor will ensure that your plot and narrative work are without inconsistencies. This also applies to editorial consistency. Using one experienced editor for all of your work means that your manuscripts will be edited in the same way and same style, whereas you will sometimes find that different AI editing programmes will disagree with each other in their suggestions and style.
• Legal safety: though AI can detect plagiarism and may be able to reproduce information about legal hurdles, it will miss other issues. These could include instances of copyright, slander and libel. Again, it all comes down to real understanding and context. Though your editor may not take personal responsibility for fixing or removing legally problematic content themselves, they will flag it to you for you to address. There are also growing ethical concerns with data bias, transparency and copyright with using AI software itself. This is not the case with using a good old human. 
• Fact-checking: human editors have the ability to fact-check manuscripts for content errors. This may be especially helpful, for example, in historical fiction, where an editor may find anachronisms. AI may be able to offer something similar, but it is not particularly rare for AI to be reported for proposing things that are incorrect. At the end of the day, you never really know where AI has got its 'facts' from. 
• Communication: human editors will communicate with an author about their edit and any queries they have. They are able to provide genuine, honest feedback, which will help you to further understand why certain changes have been made or suggested. Authors also have the chance to discuss specific concerns or questions with their editor. What happens if you have questions after AI has edited your book? Who do you discuss this with? 
• Audience: an editor edits your book from a human perspective. You've written your book to be read by humans, not computers, so only a human will be able to give you accurate feedback on the human reading experience. Editors are also creative and will respect each author's specific writing style, language choices and artistic license. AI, on the other hand, does not have this author-focused approach or creativity. It will often recommend rephrasing a sentence just to make it shorter and more efficient, ignoring the author's personal style. 
• Variety: human editors can offer different types of edits on your manuscript, depending on what you're looking for. From proofreads to copy edits looking at spelling and grammar errors and inconsistencies, to developmental edits diving in at a structural level, there are edits to suit the author at every stage. AI does not have this scope of differentiation. 

The downsides to having a human editor really only lie in cost and timescale. It can be expensive the hire an editor, though you are paying for quality, and it can take several weeks for your manuscript to be returned to you, depending on how much work the editor has on. However, the advantages outweigh these. Using a human editor is safer and more reliable than using AI editing software. You are guaranteed real comprehension, professionalism, communication and consistency. 

Summary 

There are pros and cons to AI and human editing, but the advantages of using a human editor far outweigh those of AI. The overall picture is that, though AI can sometimes be quicker and cheaper, the editorial quality and depth of understanding are lower. When it comes to editing, a human editor is safe, consistent and reliable. You are paying for quality, professionalism, communication and trust. 

That is not to say that you should never use AI at all. Programmes like Grammarly can be excellent for pointing out errors as you go, as can other built-in spelling and grammar checks. However, it is always best to take these suggestions with a pinch of salt and double-check them yourself before you accept them. I would advise that authors always then follow this up with an edit carried out by a professional editor, whether that be a development edit, copy edit, proofread, or (preferably) multiple of these. 

As 'scieditor' Adrienne Montgomerie states,

'A human brain is the ultimate supercomputer. Still today, no other computer has matched its computing power and we're still a long way from having input all the rules, exceptions, variations, subject, standards, regionalisms, and nuances that an editor considers.'

Despite how clever and popular AI is, it does not replace or surpass the skills, knowledge and understanding of a human editor.