Early in my career, I was given “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White as a gift.
One of its greatest lessons in this book is that tools can shape the message: a note quickly typed on a smartphone will be different from one slowly written with a typewriter.
The writing tools of yesterday are being replaced by Generative Artificial Intelligence.
Our diverse and individual ideas are now filtered through many of these same AI tools. Scientific American reports that words preferred by ChatGPT, such as delve, realm, and meticulous, are becoming more common in everyday conversations. A danger posed by these repeated phrases is their replacement of otherwise natural and personally nuanced descriptions.
Growing Repetition & Diminished Quality.
Millions of people are now using the same kinds of models to convey their thoughts. When everyone asks AI to “make this better,” the tool will aim for grammar accuracy driven by its input as opposed to inspired creativity from personal experience.
Generative AI can only attempt to imitate emotional nuance.
This week, the literary magazine Granta published Jamir Nazir’s “The Serpent in the Grove” as a Commonwealth Foundation Short Story Prize finalist. Despite being praised by Granta’s judges for its “precise yet richly evocative” language, readers noticed odd metaphors carrying the hallmarks of AI:
“The girl smiled like sunrise over a sink.”
“She had the kind of walking that made benches become men.”
Shortly before this short story controversy, author Mia Ballard’s novel Shy Girl was removed from Hachette’s US publishing plans. After hearing online rumors, Max Spero, the CEO of AI detection software ran the novel through its program. He concluded with high confidence that the book was “largely A.I. generated, or very heavily A.I. assisted.”
The flood of AI-enabled work is already here. As the volume of generative AI writing grows it may become harder for new human voices to be discovered.
This is our new challenge as strategists: embracing AI as an assistant to connect with audiences while keeping our voice as authors.