I have a half-finished novel, a Creative Writing degree and have therefore read a lot about writing. This is known as procrasti-learning.

So, borrowing from George Orwell's essay "Why I Write", I thought I'd chip in on the AI writing debate. Hence, my punny title.

This comes in the week where Anthropic announced that they are "watermarking" the text that Claude generates. This is their response to the transparency requirements in the EU AI Act. Essentially, the watermark is using a non-random method of generating the next word. And in line with Silicon Valley monetization playbook (deliberate spelling mistake) I'd bet they will then charge for API access to their watermark detection tool.

Here comes the science bit (h/t Jennifer Aniston)

Anthropic's analogy, which I like, is to imagine you're playing Monopoly and instead of rolling a dice, you take the next digits from pi (you know, 3.14159265359......). The variation still gives you a good game of Monopoly (unless you're playing with my brother) but isn't actually random.

The longer the text that Claude's generated, the higher the probability of it being detected as AI writing. This is a massive simplification but hopefully gives you the gist.

Bottom line, from now on, in principle, your AI generated word sequences may be detectable by someone with the key.

Does it even matter?

To me it's a bit like Botox, or GLP-1 usage. They're part of the zeitgeist. It's a personal choice. But if you're making claims that your changing body shape is from diet and exercise, some people may feel that's untrustworthy once they know the detail. So, it's about circumstance and context. Like most adulting.

So, in the judgement-free zone of this newsletter. Here's my current view on the advantages of being analogue. And then, the advantages of being bot-assisted. Meant as a conversation opener - and my point of view may continue to evolve.

Sit at a typewriter, open your veins and bleed

The origin of this quote is disputed (as I crawl out of a Google hole) but whether it was said by a sports columnist first or Hemingway, writers want their audiences to feel things. And more than that, if you've put your blood, sweat and tears into it, it's undeniably you. Think of it as your own watermark. Your brand. Through the metaphors, cultural references, the words you choose and the rhythm of those words.

Why am I writing this? (WhAI? - or is that too much?) Because this is the best way I know to develop a point of view. Through writing and editing, I figure out what's important, find gaps in my thinking, read and research more, and hone my argument.

I think people forget that good writing is edited. The words don't flow out of my finger tips onto the page in one straight stream of consciousness.

​Joan Didion says it best,

She talks of sentences being like camera angles, bringing to life a picture in your mind.

For me, the biggest argument for writing yourself is to understand what's important and distil it into a simple explanation of your unique perspective.

Or as George Orwell says,

Do what you do best and outsource the rest

Channelling Peter Drucker, why not outsource the production of written material to AI?

People will tell you that you can train an AI to write like you. To some extent, that's true as far as your writing style can be codified. After all, corporations have 'Tone of Voice' guidelines.

The caveat: it's not going to help you find out what you think. And it's only going to know a subset of your experiences.

So, for a perfunctory email, AI drafting might be fine. For thought leadership, why would you want it to sound like everyone else's AI generated text?

Practical things to try that give some of the benefits of AI without losing your voice and your opinion:

• Use an AI dictation tool like Wispr Flow. I'm dictating this sentence right now. How meta is that? Your thoughts in your own words, with some punctuation.
• Write the first draft yourself then give it to AI to evaluate against specific criteria. For example, I test proposals against my 7 Tips for Boss-Level Sales Proposals. Don't let your AI regenerate the text. Let it give you the one most impactful suggestion to improve the text.
• Document a canon of your point of view and your insights on different topics, so that your AI can use this context rather than getting the average viewpoint of strangers on the internet.
• Don't edit individual words in AI generated writing. Rewrite the entire sentence. It'll be better, trust me. Actually, don't trust me. Try it and let me know. I'm not suggesting this just to "beat the watermark," in my opinion it's a much better editing technique.
• Keep yourself sharp by having analogue days or analogue tasks that you do without AI assistance.
• Give it exemplars of your best writing to turn into a tone of voice context document, that it reads when it drafts.
• Make a skill that removes all the AI tropes before sharing a draft with you. Bye bye em-dashes.

What more would you add to this list? Reply and let me know, I would love to hear your top tips and I always reply to replies.

Call-back to last week

I asked what you wanted AI to fix for you:

• "My weekly menu plan, tell me what ingredients I already have, find a slot in my calendar and set up an Ocado order when it knows I'm at home and not on a call."
• "Triage my inbox and find emails I've forgotten to reply to."
• "Track all of my subscriptions so I remember to cancel them before they auto-renew."

I'm also reminded that not everything is about large language models. I'm lucky enough to meet with start-ups through my consulting work and there are some jaw-dropping innovations coming onto the market involving sensors, robotics and physical assets - seeing what's going on, underground, inside chemical processes and predicting the next action to take. A very cool time to be working with STEM organisations.

Until next time,

Helen

P.S.

My favourite procrasti-learning about writing

Ros Atkins - The Art of Explanation

Kim Arnold - Email Attraction

P.P.S. AI used for fact-checking against primary sources, SEO description generation, typo spotting and finding missing apostrophes. AI recommended a structural fix and removing one of my "jokes" which I ignored. Some sentences dictated via Wispr Flow.​