Why AI Cannot Replace Writers

…or any art form for that matter.

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

The ever-growing curiosity and fascination around Artificial Intelligence tools is understandable, and so are the divided opinions on the usage of these tools. After all, there’s a fine line between smart shortcuts and actual deception. Lately, I’ve had a bunch of people tell me how AI will replace writers in the times to come…and I have a bunch of reasons to put these speculations to rest.

AI for the Better

Here’s what AI tools are: shortcuts to help you with time-consuming tasks.

Here’s what AI tools are NOT: creators, thinkers and innovators.

ChatGPT and their friends could very well do in a few seconds what would potentially take hours or days for us humans — research, data compilation, copy and email writing from existing online templates, code writing and basically, assistance-led tasks. It’s safe to say, AI tools were created to assist humans and not to create a piece of work. These tools simply gather excerpts from existing information on the internet and do not have the capability to produce content (so far, at least). So if you are using AI to create something new, um, that could be borderline plagiarism.

Artificial…Artist?

Let’s say, hypothetically, you’ve prompted AI to write a murder mystery novel from scratch. Firstly, can it? The answer is yes, because it can do just about everything. But here’s what the output will be: excerpts from Agatha Christie fandom websites, parts of Arthur Conan Doyle e-books, bits of Stephen King plots and so on…in short, an assortment of already-existing online data, compiled onto a silver platter and presented as a book for you. It will seem like a new piece of work, since apparently there is no way to track the sources from which ChatGPT extracts its data. But we know these sources exist…which makes the output, well, plagiarised.

With all this hype around AI, one thing’s clear — AI is no Artist. In no way can it create something unique or demonstrate a distinctive writing style. Every writer has their own voice which makes them different and AI simply lacks the innate personality that makes certain stories, articles or books so compelling. It does the work, but ultimately…