Is AI killing or boosting our originality?

Remember the movie WALL-E, where everyone travels around on hoverchairs because they’ve forgotten how to use their legs?

That’s basically the nightmare/horror version of AI and originality that gets talked about a lot right now, machines doing everything until nobody can think for themselves anymore. 

We don’t think that fear is completely made up, but we also don’t think it’s the whole story.

In this post:

• Why everyone’s worried about it
• The shortcut is just bigger now
• Human thinking, AI assisted
• What actually makes content unoriginal
• Some questions about AI and originality
• What we reckon

Why everyone’s worried about it

The worry usually sounds something like this… once everyone’s using the same tools, everyone starts sounding the same, and original thinking slowly drowns.

We know there’s genuinely some truth in that. A lot of people really are just typing one line into a chatbot, publishing whatever comes back, and calling it a day.

Now that is laziness at its finest.

The shortcut is just bigger now

There used to be a shortcut because when you skipped the thinking, it showed.

Now the shortcut looks finished. All you have to do is type in a rough idea, and AI hands back something “good” enough to publish without much thinking happening in between.

People have been presented with a real temptation which has never looked so convincing, or been this easy to get away with.

Human thinking, AI assisted

We’ve got a simple internal rule, everything has to be human thinking. It can be AI assisted if it needs it, and zero-nada-zilch goes out the door as AI thinking with a human tick of approval shoved on top.

We teach it our own thinking and style, then refine it over four, five, sometimes ten, rounds until it actually holds merit. Type “write a marketing strategy for a business that does X” on its own and you get generic waffle that makes us want to dry retch, but feed it some meaty info with some real reasoning about an actual client, and you get something worth reading.

What actually makes content unoriginal

Content goes flat the moment the thinking gets skipped and the first draft goes out untouched. AI just makes that skip so much easier to take.

The writers who still do the thinking, and let it show, are about to become the crème de la crème. When everyone can produce something that sounds like AI, sounding like an actual person becomes the whole advantage.

Some questions about AI and originality

1. Does using AI automatically make content less original?

   No. Content gets less original when the thinking gets skipped, and AI just makes that easier to do without noticing. Using it as a starting point and then adding your own reasoning and voice is a completely different thing from publishing its first draft untouched.

2. What’s the difference between “AI assisted” and “AI written”?

   AI assisted means the ideas, reasoning, and voice are still yours, and AI is helping you get there faster. AI written means handing over a one-line prompt and publishing whatever comes back.

3. Will human writing become more valuable as more content gets written by AI?

   We think so. The more content sounds the same, the more a genuine, specific, human voice stands out from the crowd.

What we reckon

We’re not anti-AI, far from it actually. Our whole team uses it every day, and we think avoiding it entirely puts you at a disadvantage.

What we’re against is laziness dressed up as efficiency. The businesses that skip the thinking are the ones that end up sounding like everyone else.

If you want content that still sounds like your people wrote it, that’s kind of our whole thing, and we should chat.