Recently, I’ve noticed that more blog writers are using AI to write their posts.
It’s faster and easier to use AI than writing your own material. But there are also some significant downsides to using AI to do your writing.
I Want to Read Creative People, Not Machine-Generated Predictive Text
My biggest problem with AI-generated text is that it’s not your creative writing, not your voice. I want to know your thoughts and the way you express them. I don’t want to read a lightly (or heavily) edited AI-generated narrative.
I follow people on blogs, not LLMs. I’m not interested in reading what an advanced predictive text generator says about a topic. If I determine an article is written by AI, I stop reading. Why waste my time reading machine-generated predictive regurgitation?
Recently, I saw a blog post I subscribe to in Reader with the name of a writer I enjoy following. His writing is often innovative, creative, and thoughtful. It caught my interest, and I anticipated reading his thoughts. After reading a couple of sentences, I realized it was AI-generated text. Skipping to the disclaimer at the end of the post confirmed that.
I was deeply disappointed. I was looking forward to reading that person’s creation and thoughts, but instead, I received a machine’s advanced predictive text.
When I subscribe to a blog, I want to read what the writer has created and communicated. I want to read their unique perspectives and creations. I’m deeply disappointed when I realize what I’m reading is AI-generated. I feel cheated.
Using AI Means Writers Aren’t Improving Their Creative Writing Skills
Another problem with AI-generated text is that if you want to be a writer, you’re not writing. You can’t improve your creative writing skills or find your voice as a writer if you’re using AI to do your writing. You’re not writing; you’re editing the AI’s writing.
When I write, my purpose isn’t just to churn out a quantity of text to publish and stick my name on. It’s also to develop and improve my writing skills. That only happens when I do the writing. Editing AI-generated text isn’t the same as creating your own writing. To me, editing AI-generated text is a substitute for creative writing.
If the editing is so substantial that it is truly creative and in your voice, then what’s the point of having AI do the writing in the first place? But when AI does virtually all your writing, you are no longer a writer but an editor.
You’re not improving your writing skills or developing your writing voice. You’re not being creative or writing from your unique perspective.
AI Can’t Be Creative or Original
Another major problem with using AI is that it cannot do creative or original thinking as a human can. It generates text based on patterns it has learned based on millions of examples. It’s advanced predictive text.
AI has dramatically improved, but it’s not a human brain. It can’t come up with unique perspectives or think outside the box. Monkey hears and monkey tries to imitate.
As Agu Sergius Alex, MD, says in his article Stop Sounding Like AI and Find Your Voice, “While AI can make things easier and faster, it cannot replace the creativity and unique perspective only humans can bring to writing. By relying heavily on AI, we risk losing our talents and skills.”
AI Writing Sounds Artificial, Corporate, Stilted, and Bland
AI-generated text sounds artificial and like generic corporate writing.
When I was in the Air Force, there was an evaluation report matrix that was unofficially circulated, really as a joke. You could choose a random set of numbers and letters and then index these with the matrix of words, and you could generate some very impressive-sounding phrases you could string together.
It generated phrases like “consistent operational excellence” or “innovative evaluation systems.” Although it superficially sounded impressive, it said nothing. It was a joke.
That’s how AI sounds to me—artificial. I can usually spot AI-written material in the first few sentences. It doesn’t sound like a real person writing it. I can spot it before I see the disclaimer that sometimes follows. It’s not authentic.
As Ivy B. Grey and Danielle Cosimo say in their article, Why AI-Generated Text Sounds Wordy and Choppy, “The content from generative AI tools is often a wordy and generic approximation of corporate writing. The result is that the writing sounds like any unconvincing corporate writer: oddly formal, overly repetitive, stilted, and bland. ….longer output can sound redundant, repetitive, and unnecessarily complicated.”
AI is not a good model for creative writing. Instead, it’s a poor example of bland, wordy, corporate writing.
Positive Ways for Writers to Use AI
That doesn’t mean there aren’t positive ways a writer can use AI. For instance:
• AI can be helpful if you want to write about a topic but want to see if there are other ideas or aspects you should consider that you haven’t considered. You can ask AI to generate an outline on the topic, and then see if there are points worth writing about. It’s a form of research and preparation for writing. If you discover points worth discussing, you can write about them yourself.
• You can ask AI for headline suggestions for your blog post or article after you’ve written your creative material. You write your own material, then ask AI to suggest some headlines based on your writing.
• You can ask AI to draft a summary statement for your conclusion. Again, you write your own article, then ask AI to suggest a summary of your written material.
There’s a vast difference between using AI to help prepare you to write or put the finishing touches on your creative writing and using AI to do the writing.
Please Don’t Use AI As a Substitute for Your Creative Writing
Please don’t let AI write your blog post or article. I want to hear your authentic creative voice, and you want to develop your writing skills.
Using AI to write your text means I don’t get to read you, and you don’t get to grow as a writer.
There may come a point where AI-generated text sounds more natural and like what a human would write. But that doesn’t fix the problems with using AI for writing. It’s still not you writing and growing as a writer; it’s still not creative and original, and it’s still not your voice.