The most frequent answer you hear in IT: “It depends”. Using AI to write texts? “It depends”. End of story.
Just kidding.
The answer I sent to my colleague was longer — basically a mini-blog post that evolved into this one.1
First, the good news: Asking GenAI to write texts is useful. My native language is Swiss German; an AI that fixes my non-native English errors is a game changer. I will always miss some meanings, idioms, gerunds — things the AI can spot and explain.
Other use cases resemble the idea of “Gebrauchsmusik”, which in this case would be “Gebrauchstexte” in a wider sense: Boilerplate texts with specific purposes that I find tedious to write, as it is about formalities, less about creativity. Let AI handle the boring stuff.
That’s basically it.
If you look at a football field or a golf course, all you see is grass, neatly trimmed to the same height, conforming to some standard. It’s boring as hell. AI texts are a trimmed sports lawn. Sometimes, uniformly dull with lots of empty phrases.2 Sometimes, they are repetitive and lackluster, void of any rhetorical device or sense of rhythm.3 It’s like walking through a concrete industrial space instead of walking through a lively, colorful street. But writing should use all the colors to play and paint a picture that echoes your inner voice.
Text is also like clay: It can be easily reshaped into any form. Following this metaphor, I am rarely attached to my texts.4 If you ask me to scrap them, edit them, change them in any way and give me a good reason to do so, I am happy to oblige. Especially if you are an editor who does these things daily. Always trust the editor. The editor will improve your text, while keeping its origins. On the other hand, the AI lawn mower alters your texts ignoring both their essence and your voice.5
Which brings up the next point: Editing is not the same as writing. Me reviewing AI output requires a different skill set than writing. It requires fact-checking details, looking for cohesion and what’s missing. Writing, however, is something completely different. As a journalist I learned the phrase that you truly understood a topic if you’ve reported on it. Not by reading, but by creating a story and writing it, no matter if it’s for ears or eyes. Thinking is often a mess, jumbled, chaotic. Writing means putting elements in a sequential order, considering the how and why, what’s left in and out. What’s at the core of this problem? This is the major issue. Then the minor one. Finally, what’s not relevant and left out. AI will save you the trouble, but also shave down your skills.
Coincidentally, two recent blog posts even highlight this: Luciano Nooijen writes how he ditched most code editors as he lost his “Fingerspitzengefühl” when coding (another German word!). Nico Dekens writes how CTI analysts lose their critical thinking because they rely too much on AI output. Writing, coding, critical thinking all turned into passive skills when they are in fact a craft.6
I neither want to lose my voice nor my craft.
Addendum: While writing this, I realized that my criticism is actually bigger than the listed advantages. That is not my final verdict though. My final verdict is that we still learn to use AI for all sorts of tasks, while figuring out what helps and what harms us in the long run. We need to try and experiment — and have discussions about it.
Post addendum: Of course I asked GenAI to fix my English. It changed "It depends". to "It depends.". Thanks, AI, but this is a decision that usually precedes eons of newsroom editor fights, and differs across English variants. You just changed it.
The AI also rewrote Sometimes, uniformly dull with lots of empty phrases. Sometimes, repetitive and lackluster, devoid of any rhetorical device or sense of rhythm. to a Sometimes uniformly dull, filled with empty phrases. At other times, they’re repetitive and lifeless, lacking rhetorical devices or any sense of rhythm. It completely missed the intentional repetition for exactly the reason it was criticized.
Image source: Nightcafé/Dreamshaper XL Lightning
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Sorry, dear colleague, for the wall of text that may have surprised you, not sorry, because it led to an intellectual exchange that sparked my thinking and writing. Thank you :) ↩︎
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Many models have been trained on the sales pitches and ads that pollute the open web. ↩︎
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I won’t link that infosec blog post from a big vendor. It was a desert made of concrete. ↩︎
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Why else would I publish them here? But: Stealing my texts and “repurposing” them as yours is not clay, that’s plagiarism. ↩︎
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This is where “Gebrauchstexte” as a term is handy: They do not need to carry my voice. If I have to write Gebrauchstexte, let the AI do it – no problem. ↩︎
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Many, many years ago I read Richard Sennett’s “The Craftsman”. I dimly remember it’s basically about exactly this topic and I should give it another read. ↩︎
Last modified on 2025-04-13
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