There’s no need to worry about dealing with troublesome human-beings anymore, when it comes to having your precious manuscript edited. IBM has unveiled the Watson Tone Analyzer.

I don’t think that it actually says “I don’t like your tone” in a menacing way, as it’s far too geeky and polite for such malevolence. I cut and pasted a gruesome section of my novel into the demo tone analyzer, in which the corpse of a victim is found after laying outside for a week. The feedback that I was offered gave my 500 words an emotional tone of 3%, a social tone of 91% and a writing tone of 5% – well, there’s nothing more social than standing around a well-rotted body! 

http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/indie-authors-will-soon-be-using-robots-to-edit-their-ebooks

I can see this artificial intelligence method of analysing one’s writing as being useful to weed out repetition, though that can be done using the word search function of your writing software – and, believe me, it’s a frightening thing to do. How accurate such software can ever be in judging the feel of your writing, and offering alternative words that convey more of the mood you were striving to achieve, I really don’t know. 

The robots are taking over – don’t say that, say this!