Missing the point

--> why you should ignore the backlash against ai writing

Just at a time when I’m using AI more and more to help my research and writing, I’m also hearing more complaints about it…mostly from professional writers.

“Its writing just isn’t authentic”

“It can’t do humour”

“I fed it one of my articles and it made it worse”

I’m sure all of these are true. But they’re missing the point.

The best use of AI right now certainly isn’t to take an article from a professional writer and improve it. Nor to be able to write funnier than an experienced comedic writer.

Most of us aren’t professional writers or talented humourists.

Most of us just need to get some decent writing done to get our ideas across.

And the right comparison to make isn’t a slightly clunky AI article as a finished product vs a tightly written piece by a talented pro.

It’s a decent starting point from AI to get us going vs staring at a blank sheet of paper and never writing anything.

Let me give you a real world example…

My wife Kathy does weekly interviews with Early Years experts and releases them as free videos each week on her site.

Previously she used to spend hours rewatching the videos to summarise them to tell her audience what was in each video on the site and in the announcement email.

Frankly, some of those summaries were a bit weak when she just didn’t have the time or energy to make them.

These days we just take an AI-generated transcript and feed it into Claude to summarise. 2 minutes later we have what Kathy says is a much better summary than she could have done.

Do her audience care that it was created by AI? Do they worry that it’s not quite written in her “authentic voice”?

Of course not. They just want an accurate summary so they can judge whether to watch the video or not.

If you’re a fiction writer or a columnist where readers are tuning in because they like the way you write then using AI would indeed be jarring - at least for now.

But for the vast majority of us our audience is tuning in for our unique ideas and insights - and more importantly for the results they will help them achieve. And perhaps a little bit for the unique stories we tell to explain them.

But not really for the quality or style of our writing.

People like me bang on about using stories and making your email entertaining so that you keep your readers engaged as they learn from you.

But we mustn’t get carried away with that side and imagine that the stories and the style you write with are the be-all and end-all.

They’re not.

They’re often a big gap and an area that lets people down. If you bore your readers to death or confuse the heck out of them they’re not going to learn much or get any results.

But world-class storytelling with rubbish insights does not make you into a trusted expert. Brilliant insights with half-decent storytelling will.

And if using AI - along with your own unique ideas and stories - gets you going much faster, then have at it.

And don’t feel guilty about it.

- Ian