I was going to leave it another month, at least, before writing about AI again. What triggered the change of mind was the revision of guidelines to a publication I've sent stories to before. The guidelines for the publication now include this statement: planning, editing, modifying or generating text using AI will not be accepted. There's a follow up sentence that asks you to declare if you use AI in any way.
That last sentence implies there's some leeway, but it seems very subjective to me. One of my editing tasks during a read-throughs of a finished manuscript is to check each character has consistent feature descriptions - eye color, hair color, that sort of thing. Now I do accept that if I made a separate note with those details when I first describe the character, it wouldn't be an issue. Possibly,. I've read stories by well known and established authors, both independently and traditionally published where those details change. In one book there was a complete chapter where the heroine's name changed, and then changed back in the following chapter.
What does that have to do with AI?
Simply put, your AI of choice: Co-Pilot, Claude, ChatGPT, or whatever you use can check that for you in much less time than it takes to read, and pay attention to, all twenty plus chapters in the book. I suspect that highlighting inconsistencies like that would be acceptable. I also suspect that if I tell the AI to update the manuscript so that Mary's eyes are always blue and her hair is always chestnut brown, I'm crossing a line. Of course you still have to read through the manuscript again after that because changing - her blonde hair cascaded to her waist like a frozen waterfall in the Rockies to her chestnut brown hair cascaded to her waist like a frozen waterfall in the Rockies, is likely to kick your reader right out of the story.
Realistically, whatever you think about AI - from a hard never to cautious acceptance - I continue to believe that every finished manuscript still needs a pair of human eyes. Hopefully, I can persuade someone else to do that for me!