Write like yourself
Everyone else is taken. And taken with AI. That's why we need more writing from you.
I woke up to Google AI results taking up a third of a screen and browsed obviously ChatGPT produced posts on various social media platforms. I opened to a Word document to distract myself with writing only to find that here too, Copilot had been switched on, eager to help a reluctant me write.
It felt borderline insulting.
None of this AI noise can be switched off. Two out of the three are indeed mandatory. Insolent in the face of my AI butchers, a DuckDuckGo button is now pinned to my toolbar. Oh, and I’m four hours closer to my death with nothing to show for it as I tried desperately to shut it off in Word.
I’m not anti-AI. But I object to this forced participation, this helping me against my will.
And I resent the AIfication of the internet, like some normalisation and gentrification process. It’s beiging expression. Social media posts sprout like residential estates that are so indistinct, you’re one too many beers or the wrong left turn away from finding yourself awakening on the wrong digital neighbour’s couch. Everyone is cramming, cramming, cramming the writing in.
We’re saying long things and lots of things. Just not much of anything.
The internet is fast becoming an unnerving mix of hyperbole in ridiculous places, phrases that jar with their tucked-too-tight undertones, and overtones of perfunctory neediness.
Cliches, often the writer’s crutch, are now finding themselves in the tinny embrace of our future robot overlords. And I’ve always hated cliches.
But this is worse. Much worse. It’s the thinly coated plastic of AI writing.
We can spot it a mile off. You, me, everyone. This scripted detritus clangs with its serviceable yet amateurish tones.
“In conclusion, I will delve into what some people say about this particular topic…”
<insert emojis here>.
The disturbing part isn’t the tsunami of robot swill we have to navigate. Or how angry the still double-indenting, never-start-a-sentence-with-but-or-and, typo-shaming writers among us have become (although, that is unsettlingly delightful sometimes).
Not even how it grows over the internet and everywhere software like a noxious weed the techbros are intent on harvesting. Or how it feels to create the documents they will one day slaughter.
It’s that even AI knows the importance of being what you are and staying true to form.
Because despite humans eagerly turning their own over for the sake of convenience and speed, even AI valued our voices enough to train from it.
Even AI has a voice of its own.
Image: Everyone else is taken. And taken with AI. That's why we need more writing from you.