An AI didn’t write this article, but a human did. Artificial intelligence is taking over the internet, and computers can create thousands of articles (in a single click). Let me reassure you: writers still have real jobs, and we’re all fine. Here’s why us human writers still maintain our grip on the industry.
“No, Thanks.”
I was surprised when a regular market hired artificial intelligence, and rejected an article of mine. A week later, another market reported that less jobs were coming in: artificial intelligence could write simple product descriptions faster.
So I began pitching things that I knew artificial intelligence couldn’t write. An interview with author Dalene Matthee’s daughter, and a post about bridge’s rewritten history.
These stories would need something AI wasn’t good at: human interaction.
AI writes with patterns, keywords, and clickbait. Human writers are still much better.
Why AI Seems Attractive
I understood why artificial intelligence was attractive to the client.
That markets’ budget, for personal reasons, changed overnight. The editor couldn’t devote their time or money, but wanted the site to keep running. Instead of paying writers less, they chose to pay artificial intelligence more.
Cheap content created in an instant is what makes computer-writing attractive.
Flaws [For Business]
Search engine crawlers are good at identifying robotic copywriting, and that’s good for us all. Great people writing shows up higher on search engines, while trobot copywriting gets lower rankings.
If a website replaces all their content with AI, it becomes harmful to the website. Use artificial intelligence too much, and search engines ignore you.
Computer content is also impersonal, and one cannot easily liaise with a client (or change something you don’t like).
There’s a dark side, too: Artificial Intelligence can also be used by scammers to set up websites that look real and operational but never came close to human writers or customers. An entire blog can exist with a click.
Beat the AI
Computers are good at understanding keywords and putting them together, creating articles we’d call ‘clickbait.’ They’d be incredibly easy for an experienced writer. More complicated tasks need a real person.
A human can: investigate stories, and personally follow leads. Computers dig through input at best, and source from (sometimes inaccurate) places. Computers cannot define accuracy in resources.
Google ran a demonstration of its AI called Bard: but the facts it gave students were wrong. Artificial intelligence doesn’t understand careful fact-checking. It cost Google $100 billion in shares.
Computers are also worse at passing plagiarism testers like Grammarly than people. AI creates sentences from what’s already on the internet or inside their neural maps and might duplicate content without knowing.
AI Flaws
Article ‘generators’ can also create nonsensical headlines from simple input: ‘[Famous person] does [action]’ can create chaos. Recipe generators using software like ChatGPT can create recipes, but not necessarily recipes that people would dare eat.
Artificial intelligence doesn’t know, unless programmed and taught, what its ‘mistakes’ are. Context is second, and artificial intelligence can get confused. Ask chat-bots something complex, and their responses become evasive or nonsensical.
Would humans make these mistakes? No, not quite.
How Writing Changes
Automatic shuffling didn’t erase dealers from casinos, and AI won’t kill writing careers. ChatGPT exists, and it’s not going away. Human writing adapts, and it’s not about keyword-content anymore (because computers can do that too easily). For instance, avoid loading posts with ranked keywords, as AI is more likely to do this.
Features, like ‘’Frank Sinatra Has A Cold’’ or ’The Kentucky Derby is Decadent & Depraved’, would be harder for artificial intelligence to write. Features have feeling and the writers own neural network, which a computer cannot impersonate, at least not yet.
Don’t Use AI Writing
Publishers and writers can take a stand and refuse artificial intelligence writing. AI passes as writing and is cheaper, but far from better. The best writing is still going to come from a human being, with the characteristics of a being.
BIO – Alex J. Coyne, https://alexjcoyne.com, is a writer, language practitioner, and bridge author. Occasionally, he also cowrites.
Nice write up AJC. I agree with you that for now, the human feel, when it comes to writing, still has an upper hand over AI.
An AI didn’t write this article, but a human did. Artificial intelligence is taking over the internet, and computers can create thousands of articles (in a single click). Let me reassure you: writers still have real jobs, and we’re all fine. Here’s why us human writers still maintain our grip on the industry.
Good article. Writer Elna Cain was accused thus fired due to an AI Checker. She then tested three Checkers against an article written solely by her and she used aids, like Grammarly for example, so nothing wrong or underhanded on her part. The first Checker said her article was high on it’s scale and it was AI-generated. The second Checker related an AI was involved. The third had a low number and swayed toward human-created. She literally proved that no one should rely on AI Checkers because they really aren’t accurate and she did a YouTube video to warn writers. Poor Elna, she did a lot of work to be messed over by a faulty program. Personally, I have been avoiding pitching to any company which professes they use any kind of AI Checker, fearing they may can me and re-write my work to post it for free.
Great article AJC. With AI everywhere, I think it can be a tool, but cannot replace how humans interact with other humans which trumps AI.