Why We’re Not Adding AI to PerfectIt
Daniel Heuman, CEO, PerfectIt
From the outside it must look foolish. Is there really an editing software product that is not only avoiding AI, but actively marketing itself as not including AI? There is. And we’re proud to be that company.
Of course, it’s tempting to add AI to PerfectIt. Just saying that a product includes AI in 2023 catapults that product in front of major corporate buyers. But although we think AI is interesting for editors (and we have launched a new product that uses AI), we have no plans to incorporate any AI into PerfectIt at this stage. This article explains why.
AI Is Not Created Equal (But We Don’t Use Any of It)
Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, AI has been receiving a constant stream of press attention. But AI didn’t start in 2022. And there are more types of AI than recent press acknowledges. WordRake’s AI Engagement Framework distinguishes four types of AI:
Generative AI helps create new content. Examples include ChatGPT and Llama 2.
Extractive AI retrieves relevant information from a source in a way that lets you see where it came from.
Collaborative AI helps people work faster by pairing them with AI systems.
Corrective AI enforces rules (e.g. spelling and grammar checkers).
The lines between those four types of technology can be blurry. For example, Draftsmith makes use of generative AI (it’s powered by GPT 3.5). However, the interface is collaborative. And if you turn on the Typo Checker feature, it’s corrective.
Here’s the difference between all of those AI technologies and PerfectIt. PerfectIt doesn’t use any AI technologies at all.
In 2024, we struggle to even find the word to describe using no AI technologies. We usually use “automation” (but that’s not accurate since “automation” can include AI). We think that the best word for PerfectIt’s approach is intelligence augmentation. It uses technology to enhance what a person is capable of achieving. It’s not using AI.
The Needs of Our Customers
We believe people make the best editing decisions and they always will. Our mission is to build technology that helps people edit faster and better.
However, we don’t produce the type of software that appeals to everyone. PerfectIt is software designed for professionals.
The majority of PerfectIt’s users are professional editors, medical writers, or proposal writers. PerfectIt is also popular with publications departments, comms teams, lawyers, translators, science writers, and technical writers.
There are two things that unite that diverse field of users:
A need for precision.
A need to protect sensitive information.
Everything about PerfectIt is designed to help with precision. We are just as committed to ensuring that sensitive information is always protected.
Security, Security, Security
Since data security is at the heart of our user needs, we don’t take any risks. The Windows edition of PerfectIt does not connect to the internet or local network in any way. It does not transmit any data anywhere.
We take that further than any other software in the space. PerfectIt does not even connect to the internet to check for updates or to check license validity. It never transmits anything anywhere. No data ever leaves your machine. We don’t think users want that to change. So we’re not connecting PerfectIt to any AI services.
The Next Billion Dollar AI Company?
We don’t know who the next billion dollar AI company will be. However, we can confidently predict that it will not be us!
We’re a small, people-centric software company. We’re happy to stay that way. There are more than enough users with sensitive documents who have concerns about AI. Salesforce’s sixth State of the Connected Customer report (which surveys both consumer and business buyers) suggests, “as brands increasingly adopt AI to increase efficiency and meet increasing customer expectations, nearly three quarters of their customers are concerned about unethical use of the technology.”
Products like PerfectIt may be less glamorous. However, where data security is paramount, they will always be what some buyers want most.
Never Say Never
This may seem like a rant against AI. It isn’t. Whether it’s generative, extractive, collaborative or corrective, we’re not against AI.
We are absolutely against the unauthorized use of copyrighted text in a system that can reproduce that text. That’s simply wrong. However, as Benedict Evans describes, this is “a completely new problem that we’ve been arguing about for 500 years”. The misuse is so flagrant that we’re confident that the legal system will sort this out and ensure authors are rewarded.
But that doesn’t mean we’re against AI. We think AI is so incredible that we’ve developed a new product, Draftsmith, that uses AI technologies. Draftsmith is a writing refiner that works directly in Word to help you work with multilingual authors, trim word counts, simplify text for readability, and more. All of the details and a seven-day free trial are available here.
Moreover, it’s easy to imagine how PerfectIt could use AI in the future. The right technologies could help reduce the false positives that PerfectIt shows. It would make working with PerfectIt even faster. When good enough models are available for offline use, we’ll consider adding them.
However, the reality today is that AI is not the highest priority for PerfectIt. PerfectIt is good at enabling people to make difficult editorial decisions. AI is good for lots of other things. But it isn’t good at that!
We’re Not Even Close to Finishing Building PerfectIt
Although we’re not adding AI to PerfectIt yet, we are continuing to improve PerfectIt all the time. We’ve added PerfectIt to PowerPoint. Customers in our elite tier and higher can access that now. We’ll be announcing its formal release soon. PerfectIt 6 is coming this summer. Beyond that, we’re looking at new ways to enforce house styles. And although it’s harder to improve the Mac version, we’re committed to fixing the issues customers have there.
We’ll continue to invest and grow PerfectIt without AI. And if we do change that approach to AI in future, it will be in ways that keep security top of mind. Today is not that day.