Whenever someone talks about how they let AI improve their writing, I realize we are still taking the wrong things away from what good writing supposedly is.
Not that I am the arbiter of good writing, but we can agree that at its core, good writing is a pleasure to read, connects to the reader, respects the context and chooses the correct tone for the audience. It’s also about correctly identifying when “good” writing is needed at all.
I think the literacy crisis we are going through extends in this way, where people aren’t just lacking in media literacy, but lacking in the skills above. It’s easy to think that good language is always full of jargon, that being an expert on something means long, drawn out explanations, and that you should use a supposedly intelligent, professorial tone all the time. It’s only with education and reading a lot that you learn that good writing is a spectrum, and all these things depend on the author’s style, occasion and intent, and are used in the right moments.
That’s why people who generate responses to casual chat messages aren’t being met with excitement; cases like when you get an AI-generated Happy Birthday text, or when your friend replies to your vent with an AI-generated professional therapist response. These people want to do it right, but don’t respect context-switching and why some interactions need to decidedly be personal and “imperfect” to others. They have only taken away that good writing is big words, many words, and they are willing to shoehorn it into everything.
I cannot blame anyone for reading over an AI-generated improvement of their text and thinking “Wow, that’s so much better!”. On the first read, it does seem impressive. And I don’t wanna sit here and pretend humans don’t manage to choose a completely wrong tone for the occasion or audience without AI as well, but it seems like many don’t actually tell AI the context or audience, and AI guesses incorrectly.
People know what you sound like and how you usually write. Of course you are allowed to improve and change your writing style, but people will know when it is very sudden, completely out of character, and not something you’d manage on your own. And if you overdo it, AI will turn a concise, engaging and personal read with your own endearing quirks into either SEO marketing language, or an extremely dry scientific journal style read.
You should be able to detect when that happens and take a step back. Otherwise you will sit there, proud of yourself that you wrote that, when it is so markedly different to your usual style and draft that you essentially employed a ghostwriter and pat yourself on the back for its output.
And weirdly enough, I get the feeling many of you were never interested in “improving” your writing when it didn’t mean just copying a machine’s work. That’s having an editor, not you improving on your skills.
You can liken it to skills in the kitchen: People who are just learning how to cook are learning about spices and think: The more spice, the better, so throw all of it in! Until a dish doesn’t taste good at all; too salty, too intense, everything is clashing. There is a point when it doesn’t elevate the dish, but ruins it. Some occasions don’t call for a curry, but instead a salad. A good cook will know the right dish and how to use ingredients and spices to make it pop. Don’t come with the fine dining if the people want your rustic potato bake.
Employing AI to improve your text into oblivion is a slippery slope to sounding uneducated and phony. Please get away from the notion that longer and more complicated is better just for the sake of it.
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