AI Is the Greatest Thing That Has Ever Happened to Writers

(But not for the reason most people think)

Some writers (most, actually) are completely losing their minds about AI, saying it will replace writers. I think the conclusion is clear by now.

AI is absolutely going to replace writers… bad ones.

While there is a barrage of annoying clickbait articles like “Here Are Five Ways To Detect AI Writing Instantly” (which are usually inaccurate crap), some people clearly ARE using AI to think for them, outline for them, write for them, and edit for them.

And this is great.

This gives real writers the best opportunity they’ve had in decades to stand out.

The “AI slop” criticism is real, and it’s fair: a lot of people are churning out low-quality, nonsensical content at a rapid pace.

Good for them.

The real problem with AI writing isn’t seeing perfectly-chunked paragraphs littered with em dashes or interspersed with telltale phrases like: “It’s not X, it’s Y” — it’s that this kind of content has no heart or soul… literally.

If you don’t believe me, have you logged into LinkedIn recently? It has been a total cringefest for at least the past decade, but AI has made it sink to a new low.

It’s almost all faux-inspiration, manufactured outrage, corporate gibberish, announcements like: “I was humbled to receive this award that I am now proudly bragging about here for the whole world to see,” and canned PR press releases that say nothing, which nobody reads or cares about because we know they’re full of lies.

It’s all just verbal masturbation in public.

The bar has never been lower than it is now.

Scrolling through social media feeds—especially LinkedIn—is like plumbing the depths of a city sewer: it’s filled with garbage floating in a stream of waste. It drifts past you, and you never once say “Wow, look: here’s something truly insightful and worth saving,” because none of it is.

It’s all junk.

Just last week, I read a lengthy post on LinkedIn about managing stress and handling big life changes. It had more than 1,000 words and ran on for many paragraphs, but it said essentially nothing.

It had zero inspiration.

It had zero actionable takeaways.

It had zero engagement.

In the end, it was ultimately meaningless.

And it made me sad to see it, not just because it was a waste of time, but because it was written by a friend of mine.

My friend doesn’t talk like that.

It was so obviously written by AI that it was painful to read. The whole thing was devoid of HER voice, HER passion, and HER personality—the things that make HER an interesting and valuable person.

It was just… so… clearly… not her.

Here’s the thing: I care what she thinks and feels about life stages, working in spite of pain and managing stress, while juggling a family and work.

I DO want to hear what she has to say about this.

I DON’T want to hear what an AI chatbot thinks she should say about this.

That’s what most people are missing.

People are smart.

AI is dumb.

Writers need to rely on their own intuition and write what they actually think and feel. The AI bots can’t do this. Asking AI how you should write about a topic that’s near and dear to your heart cheapens your voice and devalues your emotions.

I can almost guarantee that what happened with my friend was that she had a kernel of a great idea. Something like:

“My life is hard in this specific, particular way, but I’m getting through it. I wonder if there are other people struggling in the same way. If I vocalize my weakness and inner fears, maybe other people will see it and be encouraged.”

This is good. This is a great start.

But then she probably plopped this basic concept into ChatGPT and, with a few prompts, essentially asked it to take that idea and run with it.

That was a bad idea.

It clearly took the basic premise (which was good) and made it bland and boring.

It made it safe.

If I had to guess, it probably took multiple tries to “refine” this piece of writing into a finished product made for LinkedIn.

This is the worst part about AI: writers will throw an idea at it like a lump of clay, and say, “Here is something that is near and dear to my heart. Help me turn it into a story.”

At first, it gives you something great. It shows you a basic structure. It moulds your simple foundation into a simple story. You see your idea start to form, and say, “WOW, that’s great!”

But then you notice it’s not quite right… so you say, “Okay, but change this part,” and it gives you a new version. Then you add more, but the AI starts to overcorrect.

“That’s a good idea, but what about this or that? Have you thought about merging point C into point B to make it more concise? Also, are you sure you want to use profanity here? It might alienate your audience. Would you like me to write a version that is safe for work?”

It now begins to flatten out the whole thing, sanding down the rough edges, and with its help, you tweak it a little bit… and you tweak it a little bit… and eventually, the AI is finally happy and says, “This is ready to post!”

But if you look at the final product, you realize that it’s exceptionally boring, entirely generic, and, most of all, it looks absolutely nothing like what you originally planned on writing when you first came up with the idea.

It could have been written by just about anyone. In fact, it was written by just about anyone.

AI has now taken your original thought, made a copy of a copy of a copy, added some trite “collective wisdom” from the millions of writers it was trained on, and crunched the whole thing through a homogenizer.

Congratulations: your earnest nugget of life wisdom you wanted to share with the world is now opaque, white, and flavorless.

Like a glass of milk, in a standard-size glass. It is entirely indiscernible from the rest of the billions and billions served daily. Nothing about it is special, or unique, or will entice anyone to read it, much less devour it.

But here’s the irony: in trying to make your thoughts harmless and palatable, you’ve also made them boring. Your AI friend made your life lesson as exciting as a tepid glass of milk that’s been sitting on the kitchen counter all day. …and as anyone who’s accidentally drunk spoiled milk can attest, consuming that is definitely not harmless.

The mistake writers are making—the mistake my friend made—is trusting that an AI chatbot can do a better job bringing your kernel of truth to life.

It can’t.

Machine-processed foods are cheap, mass-produced, and bad for you. That’s why giant global mega-corporations that make them have to stuff them full of artificial colors and sweeteners. It requires extra effort to make their terrible food, which is made in a giant steel box, become scented, colorful, and tasty.

What a strange thing people are doing, making the same mistake when writing.

They’re saying: I’d rather make cookies with bleached flour, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial coloring made with synthetic petroleum dye, and Butylated Hydroxyanisole. But nobody wants this.

Literally nobody wants this.

What people actually want is homemade cookies with butter, eggs, sugar, flour, salt, and chocolate.

Yes, it’s more expensive. Yes, it’s harder to scale. Yes, sometimes the eggs look funny, or you add too much salt, or forget to mix the dough all the way.

It’s imperfect. It’s made with animal products. It comes from the ground.

But it’s real. It’s visceral. It’s what people want.

That’s what we pay for. That’s what we have fond memories of from our childhoods.

The fact that writers think they can use AI to write better is ironic, and it’s what’s filling our lives with hours wasted scrolling endlessly through the swill.

All of this is good news for writers, though.

We don’t have to live this way.

Right now, everybody’s still playing around with AI like it’s a moon rock that fell to earth. We don’t know what to do with it, so we sort of poke at it with fear and excitement to see what it will do.

Will it kill me?

Will it give me special powers?

Is it radioactive?

Moving forward, though, as we learn to incorporate AI into our workflows and our daily lives (just like we’ve done with EVERY other technology), it will be the lazy ones, the untalented ones, the insecure ones who use AI like a crutch, generating content with no substance, no calories, and no flavor.

Ten years from now, nobody will remember anything the robots wrote.

AI doesn’t even “write” words anyway; it just repeats the words humans write back to them. And AI bots won’t even leave behind “words on a page” either: in the internet age, there is no “page” anymore.

The remnants of AI writing will be like an empty foil “Chips Ahoy!” bag on the floor of your car. You’ll throw out the wrapper by the vacuum at the car wash.

You won’t even remember eating those cookies. That moment was gone a long time ago, and only the trash remains.

What we will remember are the true stories from a lived experience by a flesh-and-blood person who has the profound advantage of being.

We will remember YOUR voice telling us YOUR hopes and dreams and fears.

We will remember eating those magical cookies Grandma made, which were more than the sum of their parts because they weren’t just cookies. They were HER cookies.

Therein lies the difference. THAT is the true legacy of AI slop.

Writers: embrace the bland, uninspired detritus that AI has strewn about.

Start now. Stop outsourcing your most important work to the machines.

Write real words about real people. Real feelings. Real problems. Real solutions.

Make it so real and so raw that it actually hurts.

Take us there. Make us feel it.

I want to smell your writing.

Overwhelm our senses.

This is your chance to shine.

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