anyone who has used Chat GPT, for work or otherwise, knows that it won't be replacing jobs or artists anytime soon. they insist on us using it at work and it honestly just slows me down by the time I add more prompts and direction
on top of that, AI tools have been involved in writing for longer than most people think. spellcheck and Grammarly come to mind. could anyone say your work is not 100% your own if you used spellcheck to help along the way? I think not!
Interesting!! Slightly different take there, cause I wouldn’t say it slows me down. I suppose it also depends what people are using it for. Easier to prompt it to give me 5 stats about XXX than it is to write a piece in a specific tone of voice etc. Loving the discussion around this all though, thanks for reading!!
Very very interesting topic here. I've been so hesitant to even delve into the ChatGPT space to keep my integrity as a writer, but recently, I was struggling to come up with a compelling headline and I was amazed by how quickly it spit out ten options for me, in two seconds flat, that I can then mess around with. It's going to be very interesting how this impacts our industry in the future!
Honestly, headlines are my biggest enemy as a writer, I don’t know what it is about them, I just can’t come up with good ones!! I love having the option to put a work blog in and say “give me 10 headlines” to mess around with, as you say. Also, thank you for reading!
"at what point would it stop being my work?" - this is a really good question and just like you - I have no idea!
I feel like the intention is also an important element, especially if we're talking about creative writing. Did you come to AI with an impulse from within to seek help to "flesh it out" or did you come to AI for a "done-for you creative service?
Thank you for writing this! I have been wondering this sooo much recently. I also use Chat GPT for work (in comms and marketing) but write outside of that and haven’t used it because I’m worried it makes me less of a writer and I don’t want it to make me lazy or limit the creative process my brain needs to go through. But I like the nuances you’ve presented here and there are definitely ways to incorporate AI without it totally taking over.
Thanks for writing this, Ellen! Lots of great points. :)
I've only used AI (Gemini, Grammarly) to improve on my own ideas, outlines, and drafts. But I can't and don't want to push pieces out that are written "AI-first". It seems unauthentic to me? I get that it can help us though, and as someone working in digital advertising, far be it from me to shoot do a blanket NO to new technology. I don't use it much either, since I read about the environmental impact of an AI prompt vs. a Google search.
Yess! I think authenticity is the thing, right? Like, I feel if you're using AI it should be transparent. For me it'd be fine for someone to say "here's this piece of creative work I've done by generating these things on AI and working on the prompts/flow/etc myself" but if they said "here's a piece of my writing" and it turns out it was 50%+ AI it'd be like... hmmm, no.
And yes! The environmental impact is such a huge thing. Didn't want to go toooo into it here because I was going to end up with a dissertation, haha. Thank you for reading though!! I love this kind of discussion soo much, I'm so happy I've found people in the same boat haha
I loved this Ellen, thank you. It really is such an interesting topic.. I too, am a content writer for a marketing company and use AI for work purposes, simply to get inspiration or starting points for blogs and social content when I’m stuck or don’t have a lot of background knowledge on. I only started the job last year after taking a huge career change, so I am still very new to a lot of things and still have so much to learn.
I’ve often wrestled with the feelings of not being a ‘proper writer’ when I use AI, or feeling as though I’m being ‘lazy’. However, in our company we view it as a tool and nothing more. Something to get us started, or to assist with editing like you said.
I do not use AI for my own creative writing and poetry because I want that to come from my own heart and life experiences. Even on days when writer’s block is deep, I feel I must push through and not use AI. I have a half finished first draft of a romance novella that I’ve had a plot hole for for the past year and part of me has considered putting it into Chat to see if it can spark an idea to fix the plot hole, but again, part of me feels like I’d be cheating somehow.
Yes!! I think as a marketer it’s so so helpful specifically cause we’re usually having to learn about new topics very quickly, and it’s good for asking the questions that aren’t really google-able… like “explain this regulation to me like I’m a 10 year old”. Congratulations on your career change!! And thanks for sharing your thoughts 🫶🏻🫶🏻 good luck with the novel!
Hi, Ellen. I really enjoyed your piece. Thanks for sharing.
I use AI tools as well in some of my writing. I personally prefer writing myself and just asking ChatGPT or Claude to rephrase some sentences for clarity.
As much as I know these AI tools are here to stay, I get a kick out of saying I wrote something myself, even if it's going to be buried in search results decades from now.
But even when I prompt AI, I still have to thoroughly edit the fluff, cliches, factcheck, and eliminate all instances of plagiarism.
So, in my head, I'm still the writer but AI is just an assistant. The line I won't cross though is neglecting my own creativity and relying entirely on it for ideation, creation, and editing. I didn't attend four years of English classes for that. 😅
Heyy!! Thanks so much for your lovely comment. I agree with soooo much of this. I love the thought of it as an assistant. I’m glad we can have it assist us and still romanticise our own “I did this” pieces🫶🏻
Exactly! It's all about having a piece I call my own. Something I can be proud of. I don't mind a little help here or there as long as I don't neglect my creativity and expertise in the process.
What a though-provoking piece! I have to admit that I initially found myself taking the "AI is the death of human creativity" approach as AI became more rampant in creative spaces, but with time found myself posed with the same questions you have explored here. I have professional blogging experience both with and without the use of AI, and as another user in the comments stated, using it in that space is very much akin to "supervising" a less-seasoned writer from a professional standpoint.
I often think back to something one of my writing professors mentioned when discussing the topic of plagiarism, "In order to be good at it, to go undetected, one has to understand the very fundamentals of good writing that they are trying to emulate, essentially making the plagiarism in itself a moot point." I believe the same applies to AI, where in order for its use to go undetected one would have to have a fundamental understanding of what humanized writing looks like during the screening process, which is in and of itself, human authenticity.
That’s so interesting!! I agree that it takes a lot of human skill and authenticity to understand writing and edit work done by AI in a way that’s “good”. The problem comes when it’s not good, I think. Thanks so much for reading!!
Your thoughts are really interesting! I don’t necessarily agree with everything but it’s always a pleasure to discover new points of view. Especially when the topic is so nuanced! The main problem I have with AI (and thus its use in creative spaces) is how the algorithms are trained. They are several cases of writers/artists suing OpenAi and other companies for "stealing" their copyrighted works. This aspect doesn’t sit right with me and I decided to not use AI generative software until the legislation evolve for a better protection of artists and writers :(
As a non-native English speaker aiming to publish content in professional-level English, I find ChatGPT and similar AI tools incredibly useful. My creative process typically involves writing my content in both my native language (Hungarian) and English. I then ask AI assistants like Claude and Gemini (as I find GPT less effective for creative writing) to correct my grammar, improve readability and formatting, make the text sound more natural, suggest appropriate idioms and nuances, and explain how to use these linguistic elements effectively.
I'm not asking AI to create entire posts from scratch; rather, I provide my original material and collaborate with the AI to refine it. This process doesn't diminish my creativity. Instead, it enables me to reach a much wider audience by publishing in polished English. I think the primary purpose of these AI tools is to enhance creativity, not replace it.
Yess! Love this! And I do think it’s a huuuge positive that these tools can make writing so much more accessible for non-native speakers of any language. Definitely goes in the plus column. Thanks so much for reading!! And for sharing your perspective!
I loved this so so much, as someone who often uses AI for help with my writing, entertainment, or simply just as a search engine when google is giving me vague and generic results, when I need something oddly specific.
See, whenever I think of writing something, a billion words come into brain, I construct a billion sentences in my head, but when I decide to convert those thoughts into sentences, whether it'd be writing it down or saying it, my brain would immediately go blank and basically forget everything I thought of, so I would give chatgpt a prompt, like let's say I typed in "chatgpt, write me a script for a video on tiktok about manifestation" and then the script chatgpt generates suddenly reminds me of what I want and don't want my script to be like (usually, it's what I don't want it to be because chatgpt would add a certain element that I never asked for) it also gives me new words and phrases that I never knew would be good for the script, I would then write my script which would usually be comprised of original material that I actually thought of and some elements from chatgpt that I liked, but with my own twist to it.
As for when something written with the assistance of AI becomes "yours", I feel like, it's when you put your own heart into it, like you can take inspiration from chatgpt but just add your own flavor into it, like make the readers see you in your writing.
Imagine two people who read an article for some inspiration with their writing, let's call them Antoinette and Babette.
Babette read the article and wrote down every single word on the article and claimed that it was hers, meanwhile, on the other hand, Antoinette wrote an essay with the same structure, similar writing style, and some vocabulary from the article she read, but she put her own insights, her own perspective, and her tweaked the wording a little bit to make it her own linguistic habits, making it her own.
It's basically the same with AI, but instead of an article, it's whatever text chatgpt generated.
HELPP this comment is basically an article of it's own lmfao 😭😭
Haha I LOVE when people write articles of their own in the comments! Thanks so much for sharing, this is a super interesting take, too. I totally agree that when you put your heart into something it’s yours (unless you’re literally putting your heart into plagiarism or something, haha). Thank you for reading!
AI is definitely disrupting the writing industry and possibly the publishing industry. Those who say otherwise should know that there is SO MUCH demand. I work as a ghostwriter, and we recently launched a package that is cheaper because it’s essentially an AI-written book supervised by professional writers, and the demand for both fiction and non-fiction is astronomical. So, it’s not far-fetched to think that bookshelves will soon be filled with these.
I use AI for work and find it helpful, but that's because my niche is non-fiction. It definitely feels like I’m cheating when I use it for creative writing, especially my own. I think you shouldn’t ask it to write scenes for you (e.g., the climax of your story) because it only produces what it has previously ingested, which means you might unintentionally be ripping off someone else. Still, it’s difficult to be original in art anyway, so that's not as black and white too.
On the flipside, AI does help get more stories heard. I don’t have a clear answer to this, but it’s definitely interesting to think about.
Yesss!! I always find it interesting when people say it isn’t actually taking off, because in my industry it has already taken off and more. The most marketing recent agency I worked for was looking at their AI offerings, too.
I believe technology is merely supposed to help us, it’s up to us to commit to the work and do it
Right!! It’s not as black as white as I’d like it to be, haha
Thanks so much for reading! As I pressed publish on something this long there was a moment of “nobody wants this” hahaha
anyone who has used Chat GPT, for work or otherwise, knows that it won't be replacing jobs or artists anytime soon. they insist on us using it at work and it honestly just slows me down by the time I add more prompts and direction
on top of that, AI tools have been involved in writing for longer than most people think. spellcheck and Grammarly come to mind. could anyone say your work is not 100% your own if you used spellcheck to help along the way? I think not!
Interesting!! Slightly different take there, cause I wouldn’t say it slows me down. I suppose it also depends what people are using it for. Easier to prompt it to give me 5 stats about XXX than it is to write a piece in a specific tone of voice etc. Loving the discussion around this all though, thanks for reading!!
Very very interesting topic here. I've been so hesitant to even delve into the ChatGPT space to keep my integrity as a writer, but recently, I was struggling to come up with a compelling headline and I was amazed by how quickly it spit out ten options for me, in two seconds flat, that I can then mess around with. It's going to be very interesting how this impacts our industry in the future!
Honestly, headlines are my biggest enemy as a writer, I don’t know what it is about them, I just can’t come up with good ones!! I love having the option to put a work blog in and say “give me 10 headlines” to mess around with, as you say. Also, thank you for reading!
100% agree! 💫 Tech + writing is the future of work whether we like it or not.
"at what point would it stop being my work?" - this is a really good question and just like you - I have no idea!
I feel like the intention is also an important element, especially if we're talking about creative writing. Did you come to AI with an impulse from within to seek help to "flesh it out" or did you come to AI for a "done-for you creative service?
Great questions in today's piece, Ellen!
Thank you so much!!
Thank you for writing this! I have been wondering this sooo much recently. I also use Chat GPT for work (in comms and marketing) but write outside of that and haven’t used it because I’m worried it makes me less of a writer and I don’t want it to make me lazy or limit the creative process my brain needs to go through. But I like the nuances you’ve presented here and there are definitely ways to incorporate AI without it totally taking over.
Thanks for writing this, Ellen! Lots of great points. :)
I've only used AI (Gemini, Grammarly) to improve on my own ideas, outlines, and drafts. But I can't and don't want to push pieces out that are written "AI-first". It seems unauthentic to me? I get that it can help us though, and as someone working in digital advertising, far be it from me to shoot do a blanket NO to new technology. I don't use it much either, since I read about the environmental impact of an AI prompt vs. a Google search.
Yess! I think authenticity is the thing, right? Like, I feel if you're using AI it should be transparent. For me it'd be fine for someone to say "here's this piece of creative work I've done by generating these things on AI and working on the prompts/flow/etc myself" but if they said "here's a piece of my writing" and it turns out it was 50%+ AI it'd be like... hmmm, no.
And yes! The environmental impact is such a huge thing. Didn't want to go toooo into it here because I was going to end up with a dissertation, haha. Thank you for reading though!! I love this kind of discussion soo much, I'm so happy I've found people in the same boat haha
I loved this Ellen, thank you. It really is such an interesting topic.. I too, am a content writer for a marketing company and use AI for work purposes, simply to get inspiration or starting points for blogs and social content when I’m stuck or don’t have a lot of background knowledge on. I only started the job last year after taking a huge career change, so I am still very new to a lot of things and still have so much to learn.
I’ve often wrestled with the feelings of not being a ‘proper writer’ when I use AI, or feeling as though I’m being ‘lazy’. However, in our company we view it as a tool and nothing more. Something to get us started, or to assist with editing like you said.
I do not use AI for my own creative writing and poetry because I want that to come from my own heart and life experiences. Even on days when writer’s block is deep, I feel I must push through and not use AI. I have a half finished first draft of a romance novella that I’ve had a plot hole for for the past year and part of me has considered putting it into Chat to see if it can spark an idea to fix the plot hole, but again, part of me feels like I’d be cheating somehow.
Yes!! I think as a marketer it’s so so helpful specifically cause we’re usually having to learn about new topics very quickly, and it’s good for asking the questions that aren’t really google-able… like “explain this regulation to me like I’m a 10 year old”. Congratulations on your career change!! And thanks for sharing your thoughts 🫶🏻🫶🏻 good luck with the novel!
Ahh yes! That’s so true.
Thank you so much 🥰
Hi, Ellen. I really enjoyed your piece. Thanks for sharing.
I use AI tools as well in some of my writing. I personally prefer writing myself and just asking ChatGPT or Claude to rephrase some sentences for clarity.
As much as I know these AI tools are here to stay, I get a kick out of saying I wrote something myself, even if it's going to be buried in search results decades from now.
But even when I prompt AI, I still have to thoroughly edit the fluff, cliches, factcheck, and eliminate all instances of plagiarism.
So, in my head, I'm still the writer but AI is just an assistant. The line I won't cross though is neglecting my own creativity and relying entirely on it for ideation, creation, and editing. I didn't attend four years of English classes for that. 😅
Heyy!! Thanks so much for your lovely comment. I agree with soooo much of this. I love the thought of it as an assistant. I’m glad we can have it assist us and still romanticise our own “I did this” pieces🫶🏻
Exactly! It's all about having a piece I call my own. Something I can be proud of. I don't mind a little help here or there as long as I don't neglect my creativity and expertise in the process.
Love love love this. Well said
This is such an important piece of writing! Thank you.
Thank you for reading!! 💕
What a though-provoking piece! I have to admit that I initially found myself taking the "AI is the death of human creativity" approach as AI became more rampant in creative spaces, but with time found myself posed with the same questions you have explored here. I have professional blogging experience both with and without the use of AI, and as another user in the comments stated, using it in that space is very much akin to "supervising" a less-seasoned writer from a professional standpoint.
I often think back to something one of my writing professors mentioned when discussing the topic of plagiarism, "In order to be good at it, to go undetected, one has to understand the very fundamentals of good writing that they are trying to emulate, essentially making the plagiarism in itself a moot point." I believe the same applies to AI, where in order for its use to go undetected one would have to have a fundamental understanding of what humanized writing looks like during the screening process, which is in and of itself, human authenticity.
That’s so interesting!! I agree that it takes a lot of human skill and authenticity to understand writing and edit work done by AI in a way that’s “good”. The problem comes when it’s not good, I think. Thanks so much for reading!!
thanks for this - it really got me thinking about this subject!
Aw I’m so glad!! Thanks for reading
Your thoughts are really interesting! I don’t necessarily agree with everything but it’s always a pleasure to discover new points of view. Especially when the topic is so nuanced! The main problem I have with AI (and thus its use in creative spaces) is how the algorithms are trained. They are several cases of writers/artists suing OpenAi and other companies for "stealing" their copyrighted works. This aspect doesn’t sit right with me and I decided to not use AI generative software until the legislation evolve for a better protection of artists and writers :(
Thank you for reading!! And completely respect that, the training and copyright infringement is a huuuge issue, worth its own piece!!
As a non-native English speaker aiming to publish content in professional-level English, I find ChatGPT and similar AI tools incredibly useful. My creative process typically involves writing my content in both my native language (Hungarian) and English. I then ask AI assistants like Claude and Gemini (as I find GPT less effective for creative writing) to correct my grammar, improve readability and formatting, make the text sound more natural, suggest appropriate idioms and nuances, and explain how to use these linguistic elements effectively.
I'm not asking AI to create entire posts from scratch; rather, I provide my original material and collaborate with the AI to refine it. This process doesn't diminish my creativity. Instead, it enables me to reach a much wider audience by publishing in polished English. I think the primary purpose of these AI tools is to enhance creativity, not replace it.
Yess! Love this! And I do think it’s a huuuge positive that these tools can make writing so much more accessible for non-native speakers of any language. Definitely goes in the plus column. Thanks so much for reading!! And for sharing your perspective!
I loved this so so much, as someone who often uses AI for help with my writing, entertainment, or simply just as a search engine when google is giving me vague and generic results, when I need something oddly specific.
See, whenever I think of writing something, a billion words come into brain, I construct a billion sentences in my head, but when I decide to convert those thoughts into sentences, whether it'd be writing it down or saying it, my brain would immediately go blank and basically forget everything I thought of, so I would give chatgpt a prompt, like let's say I typed in "chatgpt, write me a script for a video on tiktok about manifestation" and then the script chatgpt generates suddenly reminds me of what I want and don't want my script to be like (usually, it's what I don't want it to be because chatgpt would add a certain element that I never asked for) it also gives me new words and phrases that I never knew would be good for the script, I would then write my script which would usually be comprised of original material that I actually thought of and some elements from chatgpt that I liked, but with my own twist to it.
As for when something written with the assistance of AI becomes "yours", I feel like, it's when you put your own heart into it, like you can take inspiration from chatgpt but just add your own flavor into it, like make the readers see you in your writing.
Imagine two people who read an article for some inspiration with their writing, let's call them Antoinette and Babette.
Babette read the article and wrote down every single word on the article and claimed that it was hers, meanwhile, on the other hand, Antoinette wrote an essay with the same structure, similar writing style, and some vocabulary from the article she read, but she put her own insights, her own perspective, and her tweaked the wording a little bit to make it her own linguistic habits, making it her own.
It's basically the same with AI, but instead of an article, it's whatever text chatgpt generated.
HELPP this comment is basically an article of it's own lmfao 😭😭
Haha I LOVE when people write articles of their own in the comments! Thanks so much for sharing, this is a super interesting take, too. I totally agree that when you put your heart into something it’s yours (unless you’re literally putting your heart into plagiarism or something, haha). Thank you for reading!
AI is definitely disrupting the writing industry and possibly the publishing industry. Those who say otherwise should know that there is SO MUCH demand. I work as a ghostwriter, and we recently launched a package that is cheaper because it’s essentially an AI-written book supervised by professional writers, and the demand for both fiction and non-fiction is astronomical. So, it’s not far-fetched to think that bookshelves will soon be filled with these.
I use AI for work and find it helpful, but that's because my niche is non-fiction. It definitely feels like I’m cheating when I use it for creative writing, especially my own. I think you shouldn’t ask it to write scenes for you (e.g., the climax of your story) because it only produces what it has previously ingested, which means you might unintentionally be ripping off someone else. Still, it’s difficult to be original in art anyway, so that's not as black and white too.
On the flipside, AI does help get more stories heard. I don’t have a clear answer to this, but it’s definitely interesting to think about.
Yesss!! I always find it interesting when people say it isn’t actually taking off, because in my industry it has already taken off and more. The most marketing recent agency I worked for was looking at their AI offerings, too.