I don’t see today’s writers and human content editors as competitors to artificial intelligence (AI) — I see AI as a tool, like the encyclopedia, Roget’s Thesaurus, the Chicago Manual of Style, or the internet. But here’s what those tools all have in common: It’s the human editor who makes the content worth reading.
Where AI Shines (and Falls Short)
AI shines when the task calls for speed, consistency, and volume. When used properly, AI can be like an assistant that never complains, never loses focus, and always meets a deadline. It can generate the text of full articles and compose emails instantly. It can also take on such perceived mundane editorial tasks as cleaning up grammar, flagging awkward tone shifts, and offering editorial advice.
However, without expert human content editors guiding the process, AI can be risky, generating content that can be tone-deaf, bland, and fatally wrong — and a cause of major problems for those who use it blindly. But even those more mundane editorial tasks now given to AI (and which good human editors have always done), still need a human to review them to see if the suggested changes make sense. The time saved using AI can be more theoretical than actual. So, too, is the actual time gained to focus on more creative and strategic thinking.
According to an Upwork Study, 77% of employees report that AI tools have added to their workload. This includes spending more time reviewing or moderating AI-generated content (39%); investing more time learning how to use these tools (23%); and being asked to do more work as a direct result of AI (21%).
AI-Generated Content ≠ AI Content Quality
AI-generated text can be competent by design, but structurally predictable and therefore uncreative. In other words, this is writing that regresses to the mean. It’s writing that’s fine, maybe even competent, but completely forgettable. If left alone, without human intervention, AI content falls very easily into this trap. To put it simply: AI-Generated Content ≠ AI Content Quality.
AI content generation is not the same as writing. It doesn’t understand the content it is generating. AI doesn’t know your audience, your brand, or your intent — unless an experienced AI content editor or human writer shapes the prompt and edits the output with those things top of mind.
I’ve seen AI generate entire paragraphs that sound good, but contain hallucinations and errors that would easily undermine a client’s credibility if they weren’t corrected and saw the light of day. I’ve seen it flatten a strong brand voice into something that sounds like it was written by committee.
Here’s an example of flattened, committee-written AI-generated text that recalls my earlier days as a PR executive and writer trying to decipher engineer-speak about a new product: “Our innovative, cutting-edge solution empowers organizations to seamlessly leverage synergistic best practices while driving sustainable, scalable outcomes across all stakeholder touchpoints.”
This example should come as no surprise because AI-generated text is built on statistical probability from all of the vast amounts of information that has been fed into the Large Language Model (LLMs), which they use to construct content. This data includes web pages (the primary data source), books and academic data, Wikipedia, and code, according to the research paper “A Survey of Large Language Models.”
In his 2024 essay in The New Yorker entitled Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art, award-winning science fiction writer Ted Chiang looked at how AI works to create text and why this leads to blandness and derivative stories:
“If an A.I. generates a ten-thousand-word story based on your prompt, it has to fill in for all of the choices that you are not making. There are various ways it can do this. One is to take an average of the choices that other writers have made, as represented by text found on the internet; that average is equivalent to the least interesting choices possible, which is why AI-generated text is often really bland. Another is to instruct the program to engage in style mimicry, emulating the choices made by a specific writer, which produces a highly derivative story.”
‘The Great Automatic Grammatizator’
As far back as 1954, Roald Dahl, best known for his 1964 children’s classic, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, wrote a short story called “The Great Automatic Grammatizator” that foreshadowed the concerns of machine writing and to where this technology could lead. In it, a frustrated aspiring writer invents an advanced calculating machine that can generate short stories and novels in minutes.
Here’s an excerpt: “He found himself, almost immediately, up against the old truth that a machine, however ingenious, is incapable of original thought … There didn’t seem any way around it. A machine cannot have a brain.”
Here’s another even more telling one from that short story: “Nowadays, … the hand-made article hasn’t a hope. It can’t possibly compete with mass-production … Carpets … chairs … shoes … bricks … crockery … anything you like to mention – they’re all made by machinery now. The quality may be inferior, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the cost of production that counts. And stories — well – they’re just another product, like carpets or chairs, and no one cares how you produce them so long as you deliver the goods.”
And finally: “Who on earth is going to want custom-made stories when they can get the other kind at half the price?”
Human Content Editors Make AI Worth Reading
Unfortunately, today there are companies and executives who have fallen into the trap that writing is just another product and that quality doesn’t matter. That’s why they have embraced AI as not only a short-cut to producing content, but as a reason to cut costs and cut jobs.
The smart companies and executives still know the value of good writing, that it has always been and always will be a deeply human act. When I write and edit, I’m not just arranging words; I’m thinking, making decisions, and shaping my thoughts. That process can’t be outsourced to a robot.
That’s why I say: Yes, let’s use AI where it makes sense, but it can’t do my thinking for me. It can never replace the human perspective, creativity, and care that makes writing connect with its audience on a human level.
If you’re concerned that the content you produce – with or without AI — doesn’t connect with your audience on a human level, let’s talk. Schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation with Randy Savicky by contacting randy@writingforhumans.co or by calling (203) 571-8151.
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