The 1 important reason AI writers will never actually be able to replace us
Artificial intelligence writing looms like a specter over our craft, but I’m not even a bit scared.
Despite running into what I believe to be AI writing more and more on this site and elsewhere, there’s a simple way to stay ahead of the artistic Skynet.
Write about yourself.
No, I don’t mean blog about what you ate this morning (unless it was particularly weird or interesting and can help someone else).
I mean integrate your personal experiences and the extremely unique and deeply human connections you’ve made between abstract thoughts into whatever topic you’ve chosen to tackle for the day.
Bot writing is super boring
Anyone, human or (now) computer, can spit out 5 ways alcohol is bad for you.
But no bot can draw on its own experience in quitting alcohol, its own despair and triumphs.
It can’t describe how it built a new life for itself out of messy lessons learned in the real world while interacting with real people.
It can’t describe its beautiful children and what they mean to it.
It can’t talk about how its life is so much better than it was a year ago today.
No bot has ever been walking down a nature path or taking a shower (dangerous for bots) and been struck with a flash of insight that changed the way it approached a problem in a totally unique way.
A bot could probably write you an article about how to start a YouTube channel or a writing career.
It could probably scrape the internet to find information about content and social media generation, posting frequency, platforms, and outlining.
But it can’t describe the process of learning all that on your own.
It can’t describe the nuances of figuring out little things here and there that suddenly resulted in big gains and the excitement that comes with those kinds of discoveries.
A human, theoretically, could make up how it feels to do things like quit alcohol or start a writing business. There are phony gurus everywhere.
But even with them, there are tells.
There’s still that stilted way of delivering information. It’s just a bit too sterile.
Also, they’re usually crappy writers because they don’t really care about their craft — they just want to make some easy money (a myth about writing in and of itself).
Beat those bots
How do you beat the bots? Bring stuff into your writing they can’t.
Work even harder to integrate your human thoughts and emotions into your work.
Don’t go off on a 2,000-word tangent about something only you would care about, but allow yourself to be vulnerable.
Allow yourself to be authentic.
Instead of writing about “5 ways to hit the gym in 2023”, talk about how you got yourself back to the gym and why.
What caused you to get out of shape in the first place?
What was the one event or experience in your life that finally pushed you over the edge and back into the gym?
What was it like going back? Was it hard? Was it easier than you thought? Why?
Who was with you while all this was going on? What did they think about it? Did they say anything funny or interesting?
Look, AI is going to be a big part of our lives moving forward — and that includes our lives as professional writers.
But that doesn’t mean we have to curl into the fetal position and cry that all is lost.
Did John and Sarah Connor quit when Skynet took over?
No way!
They fought back using the emotion and ingenuity that made them human.
AI writers, you don’t scare me one bit!
This article is republished from my Medium publication Create Every Day. Subscribe today using my link ($5 a month, cancel any time) — I’ll get a lil’ kickback, and you’ll get all the awesome content Medium has to offer, risk-free!
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