we’re in a creative writing crisis
EVERYTHING SOUNDS THE SAME
Real talk: it feels like we’re in a writing crisis and it’s only getting worse.
Is anyone else noticing the insanely obvious way in which EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING on the internet right now is written with AI? This is not an anti-AI rant. I love using AI features for my work, it’s my favorite brainstorming and strategy tool, idea generation machine, and more. When you’ve been using AI for a while, especially as a writer that tends to be extra observant of wording choices, it becomes very easy to spot AI writing even when people think they’ve removed all the signs (no, it’s not just the em dashes. We love em dashes). I understand people using AI for writing because they want to save time and because not everyone cares about writing or enjoys it - fair, I get it. But woah, it feels so disheartening to realize that even in creative spaces where you expect to read something written by a human, it’s once again AI.
I’ll stumble upon a friend’s Substack only to realize they’ve used AI to write it. That feels disappointing - like you’re not actually getting to experience someone’s authentic or genuine thoughts, but rather just the way AI developed their thoughts to sound like their voice. Substack is a writing platform. It’s the one place where I hope to hear from writers that took the time to write and choose every word intentionally. It feels extra disheartening to open a blog post here expecting to experience someone’s unique voice for the first time just to realize it’s actually Claude or ChatGPT’s voice instead.
Imagine turning the page in a new book you’re excited to read and being faced with AI-written language. That’d be my last straw. Some might argue that it doesn’t matter as long as Substack blogs and books are communicating an interesting story or idea. But honestly, for someone who loves words, for people who grew up with a passion for reading and writing, it matters a lot. It matters a lot to be able to read words written by humans, because that’s half the joy of it - connecting with the writer behind the words and feeling seen by a real person, not by a tool that knew how to capture a specific voice to make you feel seen.
I also work in marketing, often doing copywriting for brands. There are very few new websites now that aren’t written by AI. Every new brand I stumble upon has the same voice. All website copy is the same. All social media captions are the same, all carousel posts on Instagram written by AI. Don’t even get me started on LinkedIn. It’s everywhere. Emails. People are emailing me back with ChatGPT-generated emails and it’s crazy because it feels like you’re walking around talking to people, except everyone is responding to you through a machine so you don’t know what they actually sound like.
As someone who uses AI for many different tasks, I get it - I get feeling like you’ve got an easy out, not having to write a boring email. But there are at least a few spaces where we’re expected to be creative. Marketing copy used to be CREATIVE - brands used to stand out by developing a voice that is actually unique, FUN, interesting, engaging, and ads used to make you stop and think “that’s genius writing”. We’re losing that really fast. Smart writing is becoming rarer and rarer as brands are now thinking they don’t need copywriters and can just use AI to do all of it. But it’s still going to be visibly AI even when you think it’s not, and it just feels tiring. Tiring for everything to sound and be the same.
We’re cutting corners. I get it, everyone wants to save time, move faster. But when we cut corners in creativity, the world becomes a little less fun and a little less interesting.
I think what prompted me to write this was reading a story-time post yesterday by a marketing team for a very beloved brand, where they were breaking down how they executed a really viral recent campaign. It got to the part where they were showing a fun letter they sent to a huge celebrity as part of the campaign, and the letter was clearly written by AI. Immediately the feeling you get by seeing this is kind of like “ahh come on…” because you expect better from brands praised for their creativity and smart marketing, with million-dollar budgets behind each campaign. You expect to see something fun or smart or interesting written by a human that brought a unique perspective to it. And it feels like surely we can do better than that.
Without AI literacy education and with most people uninterested in knowing what’s written by AI, I worry about what creative writing is going to look like in 5 years, in 10, or 20. Movie scripts written by AI? Novels? Nonfiction books, definitely. On one hand, this makes unique and human voices stand out a lot more. But on the other hand, everything sounds the same, and it feels incredibly tiring and boring to read dozens of posts every day that were just written to check a box. Guys. Have you seen what’s going on in LinkedIn comment sections? It’s a whole other world out there. Every time I post, I get AI-generated comments, COMMENTS, because people want to check their daily LinkedIn engagement box so bad but don’t want to take 8 seconds to form a thought and write it.
Being online right now feels like walking around in a world where everyone’s been possessed to speak a different language and you’re trying to find people who still speak your language out there. It feels like a Black Mirror episode. I feel like yelling into the void, DOES ANYONE CARE ABOUT GOOD WRITING RIGHT NOW???
Substack feels like the one place where most content is still original and interesting because most people are using it to express their unique voice, and most users share a love for words. I love AI for making a lot of boring things easier and faster, but dread how it’s sucking the creativity right out of creative fields and making originality feel like a needle in a haystack. It’s getting everyone used to cutting corners when it comes to creative thinking, and it just worries me because it’s going to take a whole lot of intentionality and conscious effort in the coming years for people to resist that and favor creative thinking for its own sake.
Somewhere out in the internet void I once read a quote that went something like "we want AI to do our chores so we can be creative, not for AI to be creative so we can do our chores" and that idea immediately popped into my mind with your article. Great read!
Resonate with this so much, especially "It's getting everyone used to cutting corners when it comes to creative thinking." I was reading an article the other day about how 90% of college students in a survey shared that they were using AI on their coursework. I'm not anti-AI either, but like you it makes me a little nervous for the future of critical and creative thinking. While searching for the right words and structure may be harder than having an AI just do it for you, I think it's an important step in developing our ability to understand and express ideas. As you said, people want to "check the box", to have the outcome or end product as efficiently as possible. It's like wanting to be an author, without wanting to or enjoying writing. But isn't that the point? Shouldn't you want to enjoy the journey instead of just taking pictures of the scenery at the end?