QUILL AI

What it does

Select a passage in your document and ask for one of five things. The answer comes back in its own window, and nothing goes into your document until you put it there.

• Summarize — a few plain sentences saying what the passage says.
• Rewrite — the same meaning, clearer and shorter.
• Proofread — spelling, grammar and punctuation, wording left alone.
• Explain — what the passage means, in plain language.
• Ask a question about your document — your editor finds the parts that answer it, on your own computer, and sends only those.

How to get it

The AI is part of the editors rather than something separate, so there is nothing to install here. Get QUILL Lite or QUILL from QUILL for All.

In QUILL Lite

1. Open Tools, then AI, and choose Privacy Agreement — or press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K from anywhere in the editor.
2. Read the agreement, and choose I Agree if you are happy. That switches AI help on; there is no second switch to find.
3. The Connect window opens by itself, already showing your eight-character code. Press Open the Connect Page: your browser opens with the code filled in, so all that is left is Confirm. The window says when you are connected.

In QUILL

1. Open the AI menu. QUILL's free AI is at the top.
2. Choose any of it — the Free AI Assistant is a good first one. QUILL shows you the agreement the first time.
3. Accept, and the Connect window opens with your code, exactly as in QUILL Lite.

Not at the computer you are connecting? Type the code into the connect page on any device — a phone is fine.

What happens to your writing

The passage you ask about is sent here, and on to OpenAI, which writes the answer.

What is kept: how many requests you made, how big they were, which feature you used, and what it cost.

What is not kept: what you wrote. What came back. Your name, your email address, or anything else that identifies you — connecting a computer creates an account with no name on it at all.

Your editor shows you the whole agreement before anything is sent, and nothing is sent until you accept it. You can withdraw at any time.

What it costs you

Nothing. There is no account, no password, no card and no trial. You connect a computer once, with an eight-character code, and after that it works.

Because it is free and shared, there is an allowance, so that one person cannot use up what everybody else needs:

• A monthly allowance — the main one.
• A daily and an hourly allowance — there to stop a runaway loop spending a month in an afternoon, not to ration ordinary work.
• A share for each kind of request, so that one of them, Summarize say, cannot use up the whole month on its own.

Your editor's Usage window shows your exact numbers: what you have used, what is left, and when each count starts again. So does Help, About. The numbers come from this service every time you look, so if an allowance changes, you see it straight away.

A new computer starts with a smaller allowance

For its first 48 hours, a computer that has just connected gets a smaller allowance, and then the full one applies by itself — there is nothing to do. It is how a free service with no accounts stops somebody scripting connection after connection for a fresh allowance each time. Somebody trying it out rarely notices; if you do, Usage says so and names the exact time it ends. Signing out and connecting again starts a new connection, so it is never a way round it.

When your allowance starts again

This service keeps time in UTC, not in your time zone:

• The hourly count starts again on the hour.
• The daily count starts again at midnight UTC. That is 8 PM Eastern or 5 PM Pacific in summer, and an hour earlier in winter — so in North America, the next day's requests arrive in the evening.
• The monthly count starts again at midnight UTC on the 1st.

What counts as a request

One answer is one request, and Try Again is another. A request that does not produce an answer is not counted: if it was too long, if the connection dropped, if something went wrong here, or if you had already reached a limit, nothing is used. Looking at Usage never uses anything.

If you do reach a limit, your editor says which one and when it starts again, and puts the message where your screen reader is, so you can read it as often as you like. Nothing in your document changes, and the rest of the editor carries on as normal.

Need more?

Ask. Choose Get Help from Support in your editor's Help menu and say what it is for — a course, a deadline, a book. When your computer is connected, its support ID goes into the message by itself, and that is all support needs to find your account. Support can raise your allowance, including ending a new computer's smaller allowance early. It applies from your next request, with nothing to reinstall and nothing to reconnect.

What it has cost us

This service is paid for by Community Access. It seems fair to say what that amounts to.

That last number is the whole reason this can be free. An answer costs a fraction of a penny, so a few hundred people writing every day cost less to help than a single monthly subscription would.

If something goes wrong

Write to support@community-access.org. A person reads it.

Or choose Get Help from Support in your editor's Help menu, which writes the message for you and includes your support ID — a short code like A1B2-C3D4. It is also in Usage and in Help, About. Quoting it lets support find your account, which is otherwise impossible: there is no name on it to search for.