We Need To Talk About The AI Elephant In The Writing Room
Love it or loathe it - AI writing is here to stay
AI has made me a split-personality writer.
I never use it for client work (I’m a 25+ year copywriting veteran), but since first using Jasper a few years ago, and now ChatGPT and Claude - I’ve used AI in my personal writing projects for some time.
I don’t actually write with AI - but I do use it for research, planning and outlining - with writing and editing done by yours truly.
I’ve tried editing with AI too but this is mostly unsatisfactory for me (so far). This means I can’t use a tired analogy about my writing process being like an AI sandwich with my human input in the middle.
So perhaps it’s an open sandwich?
Anyway…
I don’t think all writers will just become AI prompters, but I have come to the conclusion that we can’t stick our heads in the sand and hope it will all go away.
AI writing tools (plus the practice and culture) are here to stay.
Much like I keep up with social media, Tik Tok etc to monitor what my kids are doing online - I believe all writers should at least gain an understanding of what AI tools are capable of - or we simply won’t know how it works and will be left behind by those that do.
And no, I’m not saying we have to compromise the actual writing itself.
We still have to bring storytelling, experience-based ideas, and unique human angles to the table to create real originality. It’s just that an AI workflow as mentioned above could be a realistic compromise.
We’re still writing the words, or indeed taking the pictures…
When I was a member of the NUJ in my journalism days, one of the press photographers I got to know was at the end of his career, and refused to admit that digital photography was even ‘a thing’.
While younger upstarts were taking millions of amazing pictures with ever-improving digital cameras - and quickly filtering the best shots - I presume he was poring over negatives in his dark room praying to find that one golden image to help him stay relevant.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not be consigned to the ‘dark room’ of writing history simply because I couldn’t embrace change.
“Bloody Caxton and that new-fangled printing press! It’s so 1476. My beautiful hand-crafted calligraphy is totally the future! And it only takes two days a page!”
How To Embrace AI Writing If You Hate It
This is simple really, and you have to take baby steps so you don’t compromise your creative soul. Here’s what I do but you’ll find your own process:
Carry out your usual first hand interviews, information gathering, ideation and research yourself.
Set up a project in ChatGPT or Claude and add style guides, writing examples, output templates/frameworks and your research documents.
Supplement your research and ideation with fact-checked use of AI - working within the new project from now on in the process.
Outline your work with AI using detailed prompts with input from yourself in the form of your unique research, ideas and stories.
Write the article yourself, informing the content with the aforementioned unique research, ideas and stories.
Edit, fact check and proof the work yourself - with optional AI chats to discover if your content fits within the style guide and writing examples - and to see if you’ve missed anything important from your first hand research documents.
That’s it really. Give it a go, do some experiments and I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it work while still being happy to call yourself a writer.
On that note…
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