AI has no editorial judgement. None. Zero. Zilch.

(and it's got no creative chill, either)

As I stare down another collection of AI generated content marauding as editorial storytelling, I can be silent no longer. If a human writer turned in this pile of steaming poo… Just no. A human wouldn’t. I don't think? Maybe.

What we don’t talk about in this AI-festooned parade of posts, articles, and op eds says a lot about where we are as creators and humans. And it’s a good indicator of where we should be heading when it comes to content and creative.

Large language models are not original thinkers. They predict stuff. That’s what they are meant to do. They extend patterns and they are very good at it. They sound authoritative. But when you scale that authority across millions of people and millions of outputs a day, everything sounds the same. There is no unique voice. There is no vibe. There is no you. This is where editorial and creative rigor used to make magic.

Maybe keep a human between the machine and the "hit publish" function. Just a thought.

Not so long ago, the creative process (or any process, really) started with a blank sheet of paper (or a Word document or a papyrus sheet or a cave wall and some pigments). But now, we hop over to our AI platform and let it fill the page for us. I miss the empty page. It was orienting. Decisions were made because I made them or the story demanded a decision.

But the model spits out something polished. It may add a dash of phrasing like “Here’s the thing; Let that sink in; We’re at an inflection point.” It will generate a handy bulleted list to wrap things up. You adjust a line, maybe two. Delete the em dashes. Publish it. Voila! Box checked.

If you’re pushing language into the world at scale, you’re in the media business. Media without judgment is a creative buzzkill. The solution? More rigor. Fewer emojis. No bullet lists. And maybe keep a human between the machine and the hit publish function. Just a thought.

The End.