I’ve Lost Part of My Job to AI

But it was the part I didn’t like anyway

I’m a full-time freelance writer and people have been telling me for a while that AI will steal my job. I realised this month that they’re right. I have indeed lost one of my writing gigs to AI. Thankfully it was the one I liked least.

For four years I’ve been writing for a content marketing agency that produces mainly short, impersonal, search engine optimised content. The content I write for them is primarily short posts for company blogs in the finance, investing and online gaming niches.

As someone who truly believes that my writing can change the world, or at least change my readers’ lives, I didn’t always love these particular writing tasks, but they paid the bills, or helped to.

There were other perks as well. I had to research carefully because I was writing to a very specific brief. I always learned something. Usually something interesting or entertaining. Often something useful. Occasionally something that sparked an idea for another, deeper, piece of writing.

So far this month I’ve received exactly zero briefs from the content marketing agency. I’m still officially on their books as a writer, and could hear from them anytime. But currently my dashboard in the online task management system we use is empty, and I suspect I know why.

AI has been replacing me for a while

Work from the agency dropped off a few months ago. At the same time the work I was assigned got harder. It was taking me longer to do and my hourly rate was going down. The reason? AI, and the importance of not using it or sounding like it.

First, clients started making odd requests. Whereas we’d always submitted our work on Word documents before they now wanted us to use Google docs and their own personal online writing software. I kept seeing requests to “compose your work directly in the Google doc/online software”.

This didn’t suit me at all. I like to work in a big messy Word doc, even when writing for my own blog. Then I copy and paste when the piece is ready. Not anymore. The words “no copying and pasting” started cropping up in briefs too.

Then clients started running content through AI checking software. Which was fine, except that my 100% original, but somewhat soulless (because that’s what the brief asked for) writing kept being flagged as ‘possibly AI generated’. My higher-ups knew me well enough to know it wasn’t, but it sounded like it might be. They came back to me with suggestions.

• Make it more conversational
• Include some metaphors
• Make it more personal

Which was fine, except the brief often said:

• Write in a formal/authoritative tone
• Write clearly and concisely — no fluff
• Never write in the first person

I was spending longer and longer on briefs, and having to re-write to sound less like AI. What’s more, the “humanised” writing invariably sounded worse to me. It was full of clichés and colloquialisms that added nothing to the writing, though it definitely made it sound more ‘conversational’.

Ultimately, I suspect that many clients who wanted a piece of work that could easily be generated by AI decided to go with AI, rather than paying for human writers then paying for software that could detect (sometimes inaccurately) whether the work was produced by AI.

Maybe when it comes to short, simple, SEO content AI really is the future, especially as the software improves.

How to stop AI stealing your job as a writer

I’m not surprised that I seem to have lost part of my job to AI. I’m also not too worried about it. My feeling, right now at least, is that AI will only replace human writers when it comes to specific types of content.

There’s still a place for writers like me, who write (among other things) detailed, nuanced, well-researched articles, opinion pieces and personal essays. And I think there’s still a place for you too, if you’re willing to put the work in.

When I followed the specific instructions that clients were offering, trying to sound less robotic made my writing worse. I was (at their request) throwing in lots of conversational, fuzzy language, superlatives, humor, and other ‘human’ qualities, and the writing went downhill.

I’ve since discovered that being more human doesn’t have to make me a worse writer. It can actually make me a better one. And it can do the same for you, too. Here’s what I suggest you do to embrace your humanity as a writer.

Put more of yourself into your writing

Human experience is what resonates with human readers, and non-human writers will likely continue to struggle with this.

Sure, AI knows a lot about humans now, but still not enough. Humans going about their lives in the real world, having good and bad days, and processing all the emotions that go with that, will continue to bring a level of relatable absurdity and nuance to their writing, that I don’t think AI can. As Anne Lamott wrote in her book Bird by Bird:

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

I’m just not sure that AI can write convincing, accurate, relatable stories about the bad behaviour of real-world people. At least not yet.

Find more unusual ways of expressing yourself

AI such as ChatGPT, as it often likes to remind us, is an AI language model. It’s learning how to use language all the time. The reason I was told to use metaphors in my writing is that clients assumed that AI was struggling with how to use them. Maybe it was. But now it seems to have figured them out — especially the ones we use commonly in everyday language.

Use a startling, unusual, truly original metaphor however, and you’ll be writing something AI probably wouldn’t attempt, and would totally screw up if it did. Good writing tutors have always encouraged their students to find unique ways of phrasing things. It’s something that brings a story to life and sets you apart from other writers, human and AI.

Heavily and carefully research your content

I tend to write about society, politics and cultural issues. I make sure that what I say is backed by research and I link to that research, while also acknowledging that all research is flawed or at the very least biased.

AI has issues when it comes to research. The very first test I gave ChatGPT was to provide a book summary of a book I’d just read to see if it could pick out the same very interesting stats and studies that I had. It didn’t. It just summarised the book’s main points. The small things that had sparked curiosity in my human brain passed it by completely.

AI can research, but it can’t necessarily decide which research is relevant to a specific idea, or think through exactly what those findings might mean to the various groups impacted by an issue. Analysing research findings to form opinions, ‘join the dots’, and raise new, thought-provoking questions on the topic, is a very human skill.

Think you’re about to lose part of your job to AI? Don’t panic, yet. Think it through before you get too stressed about it. You might just find that the tasks you’re losing constitute the most boring and unfulfilling part of your work schedule anyway. And isn’t that what we really wanted? The ability to delegate the boring stuff to the bots, and keep the fun, creative, interesting parts for ourselves?

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