What AI Teaches Us About Good Writing

language is a lens, and our thoughts and perceptions are almost certainly shaped in some way by its conventions and metaphors. It shows us that writing influences our thoughts even as we use it to describe them.

“You silly humans,” the chatbot seems to be saying. “Using the greatest technology of our generation to create funny memes. But okay, I’ll play along.” These moments convey a sense of energy that makes it hard for me to believe I’m not chatting with a sentient being. Perhaps having a strong voice simply means writing in a way that makes you seem al

But what is general knowledge in a world where virtually any information is freely accessible online?

Their relevance is debatable, too — what’s the value we’re trying to preserve by differentiating human writing from AI? Is it really plagiarism not to cite an AI-generated phrase? Is plagiarism still the crime we think it is?

Writers who use AI as a drafting tool might be seen as intentionality remixers, drawing copy from ChatGPT as raw material and weaving purpose into the syntax and language. But so far, the chatbot on its own, or even with the support of savvy prompt engineering, does not excel at this particular task.

We appreciate literary prowess, but engaging the reader matters more — we seem to want more than just spectacle from good writing. As readers, we need to feel like the writer is paying attention to us, trying to connect. ChatGPT cannot build a real connection with its reader — it can only imitate one.

Good character impressions delight us because they illuminate something fundamental about the person they imitate

Indeed, the fact that AI, which is trained to detect and replicate underlying patterns in our writing, can produce such coherent prose is a testament to just how much we rely on convention, both at the sentence and structural level.

But the technology’s capacity for imitation will likely continue to improve: New Yorker staff writer Kyle Chayka observed that ChatGPT was not very effective at mimicking his own writing voice, but the AI startup, Writer, created a bot trained on his own writing to produce text in his voice that, while not perfect, was still “unnervingly effective.