Why AI writing rarely works

Struggling to write is a universal human experience. We all find it hard to some degree, as I’ve explained before.

But if the key word is ‘human’, what about AI?

After all, ChatGPT is more powerful than ever (even if it has disappeared from the headlines). And AI assistants seem to be popping up everywhere.

Why not just outsource our writing to a bot, so we can get back to the real work?
 

Bad idea

This is a bad idea.

And I don’t say that because I’m against using AI at all. In fact, there are some surprising ways AI can help us during the writing process.

But the one thing I don’t think we should do is let it write for us.

AI plug-ins like Microsoft Copilot will get you from ‘need to write’ to ‘written’ in less time than it takes to check your inbox (again). But they miss out the crucial thinking step in between.
 

Human value

By making writing easy, AI often removes the value that only a human brain can provide.

Watching ChatGPT transform a few notes into fluent prose is astonishing the first time you see it. I’ve been experimenting with the app for over 18 months and I’m still not quite used to it.

But I’ve yet to see AI write an email that I would actually want to send. Often, it misses a key point or gets things wrong. It never says things how I’d like to say them. It’s always missing something human.

By the time I’ve rewritten its first draft, I might as well have written it from scratch myself.
 

Misplaced trust

Even just letting it create that draft has its dangers.

The human brain uses fluency as a proxy for truth. We’re much more likely to trust text if it reads well.

So an AI-drafted email may look fine when you first see it. It’s only after you’ve pressed send that you realise it doesn’t say what you meant it to say, by which time it’s too late.

But AI is evolving quickly. What if it could replicate our own writing perfectly? Should we let it write for us then?
 

Humans matter

The brilliant author Oliver Burkeman posted a thought experiment recently that answers these questions.

Imagine you get a message on Instagram or Facebook from an old friend, whom you haven’t seen in years.

You reply and spend an hour catching up. And it feels so great that you both resolve to do the same thing next month.

Five minutes after you sign off, you get a message from Meta, telling you that you’ve not really been talking to an old friend at all.

Instead, you’ve been helping to test its latest chatbot, which uses your social media profile and history to perfectly imitate what your real, human friend would say.

So, does it matter? After all, you enjoyed the conversation and really did think you were talking to them.

As Burkeman says, of course it matters. You wanted to engage with the real person. The writing was just the means, not the end in itself.

Writing is a connection between two people: the author and the reader. Remove either one and what’s the point?

We read because we want to know what other humans think – whether they’re a customer service agent, an accountant or an old chum.

I don’t want AI to write for me so I can get on with the real work. These days – for countless millions of us – writing IS the real work.

It may be a struggle, but I’ll never outsource it to a bot.
 

Try these tricks to get started

As I said last week, the hardest part of writing any document is sitting down to start. The water doesn’t flow until you turn on the tap.

Here are five ways to tackle it:

1. Commit to a deadline

The brain is very good at avoiding things that don’t feel like a priority right now. So commit to someone else that you’ll have the document done by a certain date, even if they’ve not already given you a deadline.
 

2. Set a timer

Similarly, set a timer for five minutes and see how much you can get done before it goes off. Writing for such a short time is less daunting than the prospect of sweating over a keyboard for hours. You’ll also find that you speed up as the clock ticks down, energising you to keep going.
 

3. Make a plan

Planning a document is also easier than staring down a blank screen. Old school is best: grab a sheet of paper and a pencil and create a mind map. I do this myself with reports.
 

4. Copy first

This is an old writer’s trick. Take a piece of writing that you admire and simply start copying it, word for word. Then switch to starting your own document once you’ve warmed up. This works by helping you get into ‘writer mode’. Make sure you pick a good model, though. The Economist is my go-to.
 

5. Get trained

And remember, if you need detailed advice, get yourself onto one of our practical, expert-led courses for groups and for individuals.

Around 80,000 other people from the world’s top organisations have already done exactly that, so you’d be in good company.

Image credit: Aswin Thomas Bony / Unsplash

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Author: Rob Ashton

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Rob Ashton is the founder of Emphasis and posts mainly about writing and the brain – a topic he's been researching for seven years. You can read more of his work in Writing Matters – our weekly bulletin of career-building writing advice backed by science.