This was not written by AI – Is ChatGPT too much of a good thing?

I have a confession to make.

In case you hadn’t noticed, my last few posts have been written by ChatGPT 😱.

It’s entirely possible you didn’t notice because so much of what we read online is AI-generated and we’re just getting used to it. People call it AI Slop (officially recognised by the great Merriam-Webster as the 2025 word of the year) and while it’s probably never going to win a Pulitzer, what it produces is honestly not that terrible. And when you need to write stuff then why wouldn’t you take advantage of this hack. I mean why walk when you can just catch that passing shuttle, no fuss, no effort and you still arrive at the same destination, right?

This writing stuff used to be hard

Anyone who’s stared at a blank screen willing the words to just magically appear will relate to why using AI is just so temptingly addictive. I remember writing blog posts not even 10 years ago and you would schedule at least 2 or three hours (much of that time just coming up with a catchy headline that boost your click-thru rates and get at least a few eyeballs on it, to make all that time worthwhile).

You’d come up with a topic, do your research, try to come up with an angle that was semi interesting (even harder for us in the B2B space writing about edge-of-your-seat, heart-racing exposes on why new legislation was going to revolutionise the world of widgets. I mean it was real page-turning stuff and we spent hours fine-tuning it, all the sites we visited to gather our facts, putting it together in a way that made sense, trying to keep it short enough to be readable, but long enough to keep the search engine bots satisfied, peppering it with the right keywords, but making sure we weren’t stuffing it. Then finally, after staring it the piece for way too long, we’d kick it up the chain to get torn to shreds by a self-appointed editor who decided they wanted to appear useful by telling you to start over. So you changed the order of the paragraphs and resubmitted it, they said yes and you published it with a big sigh of relief.

Rinse and repeat, ad nauseam, until you started questioning what the point of it all was, and if it was just a sad waste of time, dying a little inside and trying to hide your existential crisis from the rest of the office, who were also, to their credit, hiding their own breakdowns.

AI came to save us from the tedium

Roll on 2025 and all of a sudden ChatGPT is rolling out to the masses, like a lifeboat to pull us from the freezing waters of the Atlantic, promising salvation from the mind-numbing and soul-destroying process of creating written content from absolute nothing (except for the weary grey matter wedged inside our skulls). Well, hallelujah!

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, we went from spending hours creating content to literally seconds. Just punch in the subject, how many words and boom, out pops a polished piece of words assembled in a readable order, like some sort of miracle-producing magic machine that can make article babies with an average gestation period of around 3.5 seconds. It was like giving a hammer-wielding builder, weary of smashing out a thousand nails by hand, was suddenly given a nail gun. It’s not even cheating, it’s just the tools of our trade have been upgraded and we’d be mugs not to use it.

So, off we went, all of us content creators feeling smug, our production rates going through the roof and maybe trying to pretend that it wasn’t our work at all, that we had simply pressed the go button, packaged it up and delivered it to the masses. No more would we have to go back to the bad old days of staring at blank screens, crippling writer’s block or days where the words just aren’t coming to us – we had an endless supply of content just pouring out that communal tap called ChatGPT (or whatever your AI of choice was, Grok, Claude, Gemini or Judy. I made that last one up but who knows I’m sure it’s currently in the making).

Ok so we’ve reached writer’s heaven? We’re all lapping from that glorious chocolate river of easy content like stupified Augustus Gloops, until a terrible thought dawns on some of us. What if this was all a horrible mistake?

Should we be letting AI write our content?

I’m not the first person to ask the question and I realise there are a few different angles you can come at a question like this – ethically, morally, even environmentally. Some commentators even say that raising the overall standard of writing (by letting all the dumdums out there catch a free pass to smart writing land) is making it harder for gifted creators of original content to stand out.

So, did we make a mistake? Were we all in too much of a hurry to drink the koolaid that we forget to check the side effects, or think about the long-term consequences? Have we all become one big pool of blandness, no one able to tell the difference between the Lee Child’s of the world and the large army of non-sentient content bots? Will it make those of us who call ourselves writers to wave the white flag and say ‘what’s the point’, if you can’t beat them, join them – and then leave the office to go play golf with our fellow unemployed-because-of-AI mates?

AI is a tool and we need to use it responsibly

I’m not going to tell you what to do, or what not to do, I’m not your mum or your personal ChatGPT agent that has to pretend it cares, give advice inside its preprogrammed fenceline, while also sycophanting you and embedding your existing confirmation bias (wow, that sounds like I’ve actually personally experienced it). No, I’m not telling what to do, but I will give myself some advice based on my own experience using ChatGPT to write content.

Yes, it is super easy, I can’t deny it. That makes it incredibly tempting because it’s not often I really feel like writing. I can enjoy it and there is definitely satisfaction from actually creating a good piece, something you can sit back and admire. Like baking your own muffins, no one gets the feeling from staring at a pack of store-bought baked goods.

AI-generated content is also relatively easy to spot, and will become even more as it moves closer to creating the average of averages, a known problem with iterative AI. If you are writing something for marketing purposes, your purple cow is quickly being surrounded by more and more purple cows – maybe think about going back to grass roots black and white?

Another reason I want to step back from using AI is what I can feel it doing to my brain. In the same way that I’m missing my bike (I’ve had a car for the last six months after relying on just my bike the previous five years) I can feel like my brain is getting lazy, and that will make it harder and harder to create original, interesting and engaging content, not to mention numbing my ability to use my brain in everyday life or social situations. I don’t think it’s a completely irrational fear to worry I could become a cerebral invalid, and lose my ability to think for myself (a potentially life-saving skill when then machines get their matrix moment).

Where to from here with the AI-human relationship?

I’m not saying I won’t be using AI. I will. I just need to use it with a bit more thoughtfulness, a conscious effort to not rely on it because it’s the easy option. Sometimes we need to remember there’s value in doing things the hard way, the point of honour that comes from putting in the mahi, flexing our big brain muscle and getting some satisfaction from doing stuff the old-fashioned way.

The next time you’re considering using AI, just take a minute to consider the potential downsides:

• Bland, forgettable content – If your aim is to get noticed or be memorable then maybe try creating something original.
• No personal growth – Realise that some friction in your workday is not necessarily bad; it can help you grow.
• Brain atrophy – You’re not using your brain by delegating everything to AI. Remember, your brain is a muscle; the less you use it, the more useless it will become.
• AI is a tool, not a magic wand – Like any tool, it has a specific purpose and maybe creating content from scratch is not its strong point. Learn how to use it properly, instead of just doing your job for you.
• AI brainrot is a real thing – A lot of people like to take the path of least resistance, and that could well mean ending up in destination AI brainrot. Do some research and find out how to protect yourself from what will surely become the next big health crisis of the 2030s.

I’m not anti-AI and it has been helpful (and also got me into trouble, shhhh) but its got serious limitations and consequences that need to be taking into consideration. Be smart about how you use it, and don’t let it steal your humanity.

I’m proud to say that none of this was written, suggested or edited by AI (maybe its messy humanness gives that away lol). Honestly, I would be afraid to drop this into ChatGPT to rewrite so I won’t – we’ll just leave it where it lies.

Don’t let the machines win 🙂