“I’ll just put it into ChatGPT,” you say. And in seconds, there it is. A fully formed article for almost no effort. It’s so easy it’s seductive.
But every communications professional will tell you they can spot an AI-generated piece of writing a mile off. And it’s not just because most of them start with “In this fast-changing environment …”
We all know the risks of AI generated writing. The potential factual errors, the overly formal nature of the tone, and the probability of someone else asking the same question getting the identical result. The first makes you look bad, the second makes your work ineffective, and the third is downright embarrassing. And that’s before we get to its most dangerous trait: hallucinations. AI can produce content that might appear confident, but it can be wildly off the mark. That’s not just a credibility issue. It’s a fast way to lose credibility and trust.
AI is working with what has already been published. It’s not built to come up with original thought – your thought.
Perhaps the biggest problem with using AI as your writer is the loss of you. Yes, you can train it to mimic your style and it can learn your tone of voice, but it can’t access your knowledge, experience, wisdom, judgement, and personality. These are the elements you want to inject into your writing to bring authenticity and authority, and AI can’t do it for you.
Which is not to say AI can’t be useful. It can kickstart your thinking, give you ideas, even facts and angles you may not have been aware of.
It can be hugely valuable in polishing your work. You can ask it to check your grammar, change your tone, adjust for a different audience, and cut the number of words. It can even rework a piece you’ve written in the past to inject a new angle or material. But it doesn’t know you, your business, or your clients. It hasn’t made the decisions you’ve had to make, solved the problems you have solved, or developed the judgement that comes from experience. So what it produces may not reflect any of these. It doesn’t have your personal experience or the expertise your career has helped you develop. It simply isn’t you.
AI is alluring because it feels fast, and in some ways, it is. But if you don’t know when and how to use it, or when to step in with human judgement, you won’t be saving time. You’ll end up losing hours refining prompts, rewriting awkward phrases, and trying to make generic content sound like you. Sometimes, the real shortcut is just starting with your own thinking.
If you’re unsure how to get your thoughts on paper, AI can help, so can a communications professional who knows you and your business and can help you express your ideas with impact.
But only you can turn information into wisdom, because that trait is human.
