NovelAI Review: How good is the AI storyteller really?

Updated on:

NovelAI is the most well known AI storytelling tool; people use it for their short stories, novels, and fan-fictions.

Released in June 2021 by Anlatan, a Delaware based software company, the app quickly grew to 40k users in the 3 months that followed.

(By the way, this review is for the storytelling tool. If you’re more interested in the anime generator, read this instead: NovelAI Anime Image Generator Review.)

The Story of NovelAI

How good is the AI really?

If you’re reading this review, this is the most important question.

First Impressions

As soon as you enter the storyteller, there’s no handholding.

Novel AI’s Intensive Features

Novel AI has many models for writers to utilize into their pieces. So, you’ll never get bored when using the software. You can create AI generated books, comic-books, graphic novels, anime stories, along with many other things. In essence, the world is your oyster!

Benefits & Downfalls of Novel AI

If you’re looking for an AI that writes books, you’ve come to the right place. However, the thing is, Novel AI comes with both benefits and drawbacks. In other words, no matter how advanced its human-like algorithms are, no AI is perfect. To get a better idea of Novel AI, it’s an excellent idea to review the pros and cons without bias. 

Below are the benefits and drawbacks of using Novel AI to improve or expand upon your writing:

Benefits

  • Custom Text Editor: To cater for your eyesight, Novel AI offers a fully customizable text editor with tweakable colors, fonts, text-sizes, and themes. So, you’ll be able to work with their tool without straining your eyes.
  • Advanced Text Generation: Novel AI mimics your writing style, as you go along. But, it can also write in any writing style you wish, including George Orwell and Robert Olen Butler. So, you can train the AI to generate using any theme. It can be Dystopian or War. You could even match Butler’s shapeshifting writing style for extra effect in your work. So, the possibilities are literally endless. 
  • Absolute Security & Privacy: Novel AI features XSalsa20 Encryption within its text editor & servers. So, you don’t have to worry about other people reading or stealing your work. 
  • Image Generation: In addition to acting as a virtual co-writer, Novel AI acts as an illustrator. So, authors can create AI generated images to include within their pieces of writing. This comes in handy for graphic novels & comic-books. 

Drawbacks

  • Not 100% Human-Like: Upon input and output of text, you’ll come across errors from time-to-time. This means some sentences or wording may appear nonsensical, irrelevant or robotic. So, you might have to make some edits within the text editor. However, this trains the AI to how you want it to be. 
  • Authors May Become Dependent on Novel AI: It goes without saying that inexperienced authors might become dependent on the AI. So, they may end up only using the tool within their pieces of writing. 
  • Overtime, Novel AI Can Be Expensive: Novel AI offers a paid subscription service to access all of its features & models, along with unlimited text generations. Overtime, this can become costly to the average author. It offers a free trial, but other packages cost between $10.00 and $25.00 per month. In one year, that’s $120 – $300 in subscription expenses. 
  • You May Only Use Novel AI for Inspiration: Authors might end up merely taking inspiration from the tool, but end up writing something themselves without the need of a bot’s assistance. Getting together with a potential co-writer to brainstorm & create venn-diagrams can have the same results. 

Novel AI’s Packages

Novel AI offers 4 packages, one being a free trial. This includes ‘Paper’, ‘Tablet’, ‘Scroll’, & ‘Opus’. Each subscription costs more as they go up the ladder, but they also involve access to more features. In some cases, better features. The free trial, known as ‘Paper’, only lasts for a limited duration of time. Meaning, if you like the app, it’s worth thinking about the plan you wish to choose once your trial period expires. 

Below is what you get for your hard earned cash!

  • Paper: Entitled as ‘Paper’, Novel AI’s free trial allows you to generate 100 pieces of writing with Euterpe. This includes Calliope and Sigurd. In addition, you get 2048 tokens of memory, so 8,192 characters that the AI can store. As an added bonus, you get 100 soothing TTS generations. 
  • Tablet: For $10.00 per month, your text generations are limitless. You get 1,024 memory tokens. In comparison to Paper, that’s a mere 1,024 characters of AI memory. Extra goodies entail advanced AI TTS & AI generated images. Also, you get 1,000 Anlas (in-app tokens for custom AI modeling). 
  • Scroll: If you pay for the $15.00 monthly subscription, the perks are the same as above. However, you receive 2,048 memory tokens. So, an extra $5.00 brings back the memory you had in the free trial version. 
  • Opus: With Novel AI’s $25.00 monthly subscription, you get access to what they refer as ‘Krake’, which has their most up-to-date algorithms. Included within this package is 10,000 Anlas that are refilled every month. Also, your receive advanced AI TTS generations, unlimited AI image generation (normal & small sized images), and access to BETA features (before everyone else can access them). 

How to Use Novel AI to Generate AI Images

Ideal for writing blog & guest posts, Novel AI allows you to create mesmerizing imagery to make your content more engaging to readers. Known as GPT-powered sandbox, an algorithm turns your text into auto-generated AI pictures. So, you don’t have to hire an illustrator to annotate your work. This comes in useful especially for graphic novel and comic-book writers, but they’ll have to describe their characters in-depth for maximum results. The AI can help with this.

To give you an insight into AI image generation, below is a step-by-step instructions on how to generate images on Novel AI. 

Step 1: Select Image Generation

To create AI generated images, navigate to the Novel AI Dashboard that’s featured in the below screenshot. Then, click on ‘Image Generation’. If you haven’t got an account, you need to create one. Reason being, you need to accept their terms and conditions before you can use this feature. You can opt for a free trial, so you don’t make any payments during the signup process. 

After signing up and clicking on ‘Image Generation’, scroll down to the bottom of the Conditions, and press ‘I agree with the above terms’. Then, click ‘Accept’. No one likes reading through terms and conditions, so you don’t need to read them. However, make sure you don’t use this tool for illegal activities or harassment. 

Step 2: Tell Novel AI What You Want with 1 Word

Before resuming with this step, it’s important to keep in mind that you need a paid subscription to generate images. You can either subscribe to a plan, or activate a Gift Key. 

After obtaining a paid account, you can resume this step. Simply, input a word or phrase in the text prompt. Then, click ‘Generate’. You’ll receive several AI generated images that are based around your key-term. 

It’s important to save any AI photos that you want to keep, as they’re not stored on Novel AI’s server after sessions. The company urges its users to generate images responsibility, and bear in mind that the relatively new technology may come up with unpredictable results. 

You can also adjust the image resolution, number of images, and undesired content level. In addition, you can set the scale, and steps. Besides this, the sampling setting & NAI Diffusion settings are adjustable. So, your AI created images can be exactly how you want them to be. 

Step 3: Receive Your AI Generated Image

Images will occur within 3 to 4 seconds of clicking ‘Generate’. Now, all you have to do is save the image – providing it takes your fancy. If you don’t like the AI generated image that you’ve created, simply re-do the process. Don’t be afraid to adjust any settings until your output is just right. 

How to Use Novel AI Story Generation

Novel Ai allows anyone to write a high-quality story, short-story, sonnet, graphic novel, comic-book, blog post or article with minimal writing skills. It matches your writing style, and mimics the styles & themes of famous authors (both historic & present). Also, you don’t have to think twice about text quality, as the software has been developed by liaising with professional writers. 

Having an AI that writes books was a dream for our forefathers. Nowadays, it’s almost a reality. Except, AI acts as a co-writer or assistant to help you along the way of writing a story, article, sonnet, comic-book, graphic novel, blog post, etc. With Novel AI, you can write a single paragraph or sentence, and the algorithms will automatically generate the next part of your piece.

We’re not yet in the age of perfect AI generated books & other pieces of writing, but we’re certainly on our way to perfection in the realm of AI content. With Novel AI, you don’t have to worry about writer’s block anymore – as the advanced algorithms fill out the blanks within your piece of writing. So, you can reduce your effort in any writing process. The tool is practically fool-proof, and highly user-friendly.

Below are step-by-step instructions that will help you learn how to use Novel AI to its maximum capacity.

Step 1: Click on ‘Story Teller’

To start Firstly, click on the Storyteller button. This is your first step towards writing a partially AI generated novel or piece of writing. 

Step 2: Enter Text Within the Prompt

This is where things start getting interesting. Simply, input a sentence or paragraph within hte text prompt, and click on send. Afterwards, your AI generated text will appear. So, the AI will fill out the blanks – matching your writing style.

In the below screenshot is something that I came up with. After writing a sentence or paragraph, click ‘Send’. 

In yellow is what I wrote, and the white text is AI generated. You can either add to the text manually, or click send for more bot-written paragraphs. 

Also, don’t forget to give your story a name.

Would I Recommend Novel AI?

Considering it’s not always easy to come up with a story, we recommend Novel AI as a suitable writing companion. This is because it can take many years to write an engaging and fascinating narrative. 

Generally, writers have to thoroughly plan out plots and characters, as well as individual chapters within their books. It matches your style, or mimics a theme of your choosing. In addition, it has the potential to speed up the process for article writing. 

Having an AI on-board accelerates the writing process, but it’s not fully dependable. Some paragraphs could be irrelevant or non-sensible. This results in users having to delete paragraphs, using up their permitted generations – unless they have an unlimited amount. For example, in the screenshot below, I would consider deleting the extension to the paragraph in the screenshot below. 

All in all, it’s worth taking both the benefits and drawbacks to Novel AI into account before making a decision as to whether to use it or not. 

How Does Novel AI Compare with Other AI Image Generators

Novel AI is one of the most advanced AI writing platforms on the market. However, there are more tools out there that do the same thing. Although, the fact you can illustrate pieces of writing in-app makes it stand out from the rest. Some generators have the ability to generate entire stories from single word input, but they’re not as good performance-wise. Prior to making a decision as to whether to use it or not, it’s worth thinking about the alternatives out there. 

Can Novel AI Generate High Quality Images?

It turns out, NovelAI cannot generate high-quality AI pictures. Their resolutions are too low for print publications. However, they’re original and copyright-free. For quality, consider using an ai image upscale app for image definition upscaling. So, if you’re an aspiring novelist using NovelIAI, take this into consideration. On the other hand, they’re appropriate for digital articles like blog & guest posts. 

Conclusion

Considering most new authors are eager to start their writing processes, NovelAI is ideal for beginners to get a feel for how content should be. No matter which form of written content they choose to write, its advanced algorithms may be useful for beginners. The app will always maintain popularity for this reason. With this in mind, AI tools have the potential to revolutionize the novel industry.

Ai generated novels could become a thing of the future. While, at present, advanced algorithms that produce human-like text upon manually written paragraphs. Also, AI generated images are created with the same process. So, you could potentially write the next best-seller using Novel AI. 

Yeah, AI moves way too fast

Get the email that makes keeping up with AI easy and fun. Stay informed and entertained, for free.

Leave a Comment