AI Can Write. It Just Can’t Write You.

AI is not getting better at writing. People are getting better at spotting AI writing.



As someone whose living relies on a lot of writing, I've gotten the same question over the last few years that so many others in my field get;

How are you competing with AI? Can't AI just do what you do?

And the answer is, kinda.

Sorta.

Not really.

AI is tremendous at putting out content - some of it very valuable.

AI is horrible at putting out 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 content.

Whenever I tell people that AI is genuinely wretched at writing, their response is usually something to the effect of "yea maybe now, but it's only going to get better".

And that's simply not true. AI is merely an imitator and aggregator. It has no proactively unique angle.

That's why AI tells are getting so increasingly obvious.

At first it was the em dash.

Then it was the "it's not x, it's y". The attempts at short, punchy sentences.

The attempts at humanization ("that's real progress", "how people actually use this", "except here's what it actually means", and countless others).

All of it in the same flat, corporate-ish, memo-y slop tone, with no arc, no literary waves, no...anything.

But for now, it kinda works.

AI-generated email newsletters still get opened.

AI-generated blog posts can still perform pretty decently.

Eventually, however, consistently putting out AI-generated content will go the way of those awful clickbait articles or headlines in the early, glory days of the internet.

Yea people might click on it, people might read it, but at what cost to you?

Clickbait has kinda cooled down, because the net result - regardless of the value provided - was "you scammed me".

Same with the AI-generated content. I don't even want to call it all slop, because some of the articles are informative.

But AI isn't getting better at writing - and never will - and people are getting better at spotting the obvious tells.

So maybe you're putting out information, but at what cost to you? At what cost to your brand, both personal and company?

Kinda like when you think you're hiding your elevated BAC from everyone at the party, the AIC in your content is quite noticeable.

And people will catch on that you're too lazy to put in the effort to communicate an original thought.

When your tone is no different than everyone else, when you insights are not more unique than others, and when your framing - perhaps the most important element - is no different than everyone else,

What do you think the eventual result will be?