That type of copying is pretty normal, and they teach it in school. It's how you learn (and how you become depressed). But in the age of generative AI, there are many new kinds of copying. For instance, Wired reported last week on a tool offered by Grammarly, which briefly offered users the opportunity to put their writing through something called "Expert Review."
That was a year or so ago, and my first brush with what generative AI could do. Like many, I started using it for fun: planning trips, finding nineteenth century authors I could recommend to fantasy-loving students (a genre I don't read), and making a holiday card starring my dog, Harry. But as work piled up, I didn't have time for new toys, so now I use AI for work.
Vance, a Portland-based journalist who runs Stumptown Savings, a newsletter covering local grocery deals, had been accused of using ChatGPT to write his content. The evidence? His use of em dashes. "A Reddit user accused me of using AI, pointing to my use of, quote, extra long M dashes that are not possible to replicate on a normal keyboard," Vance recalls. The accusation stung, particularly because Vance spends 40 hours a week personally visiting grocery stores and crafting his newsletter by hand.
"Editing is as much about knowing and growing your team as it is about elevating their copy," said Kathleen McGrory, an editor with The New York Times Local Investigations Fellowship. "As an editor, a key part of your job is understanding what makes your reporters tick and helping them reach their goals beyond any one story. It requires open communication, deep trust and really listening."
I'm one of those authors whose books AI ate for lunch a few years back. At some point I might get a check to pay me for a dozen years' work on the three books it stole, but really, there's no way to compensate for the fallout. AI seems to think no, it can't think, only shuffle what real people thought that a machine can write as well as a person can.
Many lawyers have eagerly adopted the buzzword "BLUF"-bottom line up front-as if invoking the acronym were synonymous with careful thinking. The catch is that almost no one stops to ask the important question: What exactly is meant by "bottom line"? The answer isn't obvious, and it shifts with context. In military writing, the "bottom line" is a concrete decision or action a commander must take-stated at the very start because the commander already knows the mission, the terrain and the stakes.
Here's the good news: writing isn't a talent. It's a skill. And skills respond to the same cure as every other skill: reps. Not glamorous reps. Not the kind that gets applause. The kind you do in small rooms, when no one is watching, when you're a little uncomfortable, when you want to quit halfway through because the sentence you just wrote feels like wet cardboard. That's the work.