By Malaika Cheney-Coker
If you are one of the increasingly few that have kept their writing unspoiled by the taint of AI, then, respect! Read no further, this piece has nothing to offer you. But if you, like the rest of us, are already at least waist deep in AI muck, you may have already experienced a bit of AI writing anxiety. AI writing anxiety tends to creep in for these reasons: 1. You worry that without AI, your writing won’t be good enough; 2. you worry that using AI may make you a worse writer, or; 3. that others will think worse of your writing – and that it can’t even credibly be called your writing if you use AI.
I am well versed on the different types of AI writing anxiety because I’ve experienced them all myself! Which is why I can say, if writing well – whether in blogs, emails, fanmail to your hairdresser – or poetry, is important to you, then my advice is to rely on AI for no more than 30% of authorship of your work. And you carve out your 70% – in the face of increasingly ubiquitous and pushy apps clamoring to write for you – by tuning in to your own voice.
Think about the last time you acquired something handmade. Whether it was a piece of woven fabric with a slightly asymmetrical pattern or a cutting board with jagged whorls and edges whispering of the tree it once was, the tag may have advertised that the irregularities were part of the craftsmanship. The human voice in writing provides a similar irregularity that authenticates it with a valuable uniqueness. Like a flickering flame which holds an overall shape but is never the same from one moment to the next, your writing voice will exhibit both constancy and flux. While being recognizably yours, it may change according to mood, stage of life, circumstances, what content you’ve been consuming, etc. Compare this natural variation in human writing to the monotonous phrasing and tinny sophistication of AI-generated writing.
Then, there is another drawback in AI writing – the amount of slop it so vacuously and prodigiously creates. Because AI cannot inhabit your mind, it will substitute originality of thought with some gobbledygook that’s usually some combination of cliche and jargon. This is why, to maintain true authorship (say in the aforementioned 70% area), while you may ultimately choose to outsource some of the mechanical writing of your thoughts to AI, the commentary, the inspiration, the critical thinking must be yours.
Whether and how much of your original thinking to write up in words yourself versus having the AI elaborate it for you, will be a matter of preference. What’s clear is that grammatically correct, well phrased, and technically proficient writing is still expected by society. However, these days I’m more than happy to accept my less-than-perfect word choice or phrasing – versus the industrialized eloquence of AI – as a marker of my authentic voice.
I’ve adopted different stances for my use of AI in writing ranging from no use in my personal creative writing, to some collaborative or editing use for both creative and business writing when under the authorship of my consulting firm. In the latter case, when AI is used as a true writing collaborator, we make this disclosure upon publication.
Ultimately, whether and how much to use AI in your writing will depend on your personal goals and stances. It may also change over time as you experiment with using AI in your writing. So, use the era of AI as an opportunity to strengthen your writing by learning how to listen to your voice, to marvel at its unique timber the way you might at the tuneful sighing of a woodwind instrument. Here’s hoping AI will usher in a new era of appreciation for the human voice!
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