AI is The Extinction Event for Writers

Writing, as we knew it, is dead. Before you all jump down my throat in the comments, let me take a moment to try and present a few arguments. And if I haven’t convinced you, you can always have a go at me at the end.

I’ve been writing online for over a decade now. It was all pretty cool. It was a way to meet loads of people. Any kind of writing required real effort. And with enough enthusiasm, it wasn’t that hard to make a name for yourself online.

Then, quite unexpectedly, generative AI emerged. We’re still in the early stages of its initial impact. And many of us haven’t even realised yet that this innovation will be the extinction event for our art.

It’s true, writers have always survived. Through the printing press, radio, cinema, digitisation, and the collapse of available attention spans… Each time, the death of writing was predicted, and each time, it was still standing. Why would this AI threaten writers? Fair point.

But there is a slight difference between generative AI and the various previous innovations. AI isn’t just another way of distributing or consuming writing.

It is a machine that produces writing itself.

Let’s take the press as an example. Newspapers, regardless of how the medium has evolved, have always needed writers. And good ones at that, if they wanted to be read. But not all newspapers need a Shakespeare in their ranks. They need a writer who is organised, factual and, above all… productive. So that they can produce enough content within a set timeframe.

Many writing roles face this sort of constraint. Those who write blog posts. Those who write product descriptions, technical specifications… Here we encounter the first paradox. The more capable AI becomes, the more these entry-level writing roles will be under threat. They may even disappear altogether.

The few who can afford to hire a writer they like to write their blog will continue to do so. But for the vast majority, who are at the mercy of the market, they’ll have to use AI to keep costs under control. A levelling down (or up, for those who use it, once AI becomes significantly more advanced).

Hate the game, not the players.

The disaster could have been limited to those boring jobs, the sort you do just to make ends meet but which nobody really enjoyed doing. But it’s going to go much further than that.

How do you become a writer? Before AI, it was fairly simple. You wrote. A lot, in fact. You’d post on blogs. You’d send off manuscripts. You’d build up your social media following. And automatically, through sheer repetition, you’d build something. Because producing a few hundred words a day was a significant effort that few people manage to sustain.

The problem now is the endless competition.

• Send in a manuscript? The person who receives your manuscript is swamped.

• Post on a platform? Thousands of blog posts are published every day.

• Publish a book? Thousands of other books are published every day.

• Apply for a writing job? Thousands of others are applying too.

New writers are rendered invisible. A tsunami of content flooding every feed. There’s far too much noise surrounding whatever they hope to produce. Doomed to go unseen. And worse. All this abundance of content also wears the reader down. Not only does the writer have less chance of being noticed, but even if they are noticed, they’re faced with a mind exhausted by the sheer volume of rubbish all over the internet. Double whammy.

Unfair, violent and endless competition.

Because the disaster must be total. The few survivors will also have to face something new.

It wasn’t enough that AI destroyed your job, your industry, and rendered you invisible. Now everything you write is suspected of having been written by AI. When I tested one of my texts, it said: 9 per cent written by AI, 91 per cent by a human. My mum might have had an affair with the Terminator. What a strange way to find out.

In the past, I’ve had plenty of comments telling me I was using AI. It’s the new game. The witch hunt is on. May the heavens spare you from having an AI detection tool deem your text robotic. You’ll be condemned to the stake.

But, despite all that, there’s still a way to save ourselves. It’s got little to do with literature. But we’ll take what we can get.

Books still sell. AI or not, who cares? What matters now is who wrote it. If you’re a writer and want to make a living from your art, you need to realise that the rules of the game have changed. Your words are your primary weapon. But who you are will be just as important.

Are you capable of making your voice heard? That will be your Herculean task. Managing to make yourself heard amidst a general cacophony. It’s not a writer you need to become, but an influencer. Once you’ve made it big, you can sell anything. Books, fizzy drinks, T-shirts, even the water from your bath…

And this influencer business has a bright future. Because the world is losing its bearings and is desperately seeking anchors to hold on to so as not to drown.

It’s no longer really about who writes what and writes it well. We’re in the world of theatre. Where you’ve got to make a splash. Target the right niches. Know the right people.

It’s still possible to succeed. But it won’t depend on what you say. It’ll depend on your ability to sell yourself.

In the end, perhaps it’s for the best. To be reborn stronger, without repeating the mistakes of the past, everything must be destroyed.

It’s a shame for those who find themselves at the end of a cycle. But it offers plenty of hope to those who are at the start of the new one, and who understand this new paradigm.

We are at the end of one cycle and the beginning of a new era. We could have had safeguards in place. But the capitalist market has become the master of us all. It dictates its laws impartially and brutally. Is the entire knowledge of humanity to be stolen by machines that will replace those very same humans in a great many industries? Perhaps we deserve what is happening to us, given the lack of human response.

You studied for years to specialise in a particular field. It cost you thousands of dollars. Sorry, but you should have realised that your knowledge would be obsolete ten years later.

The world created you. Nurtured you. Chewed you up. And spat you out. It’s not your fault. It’s ours. For never having defended what is ours. We allowed the monster to be created that will lead us to our doom.

Writing is dead.
Long live writing.

Why are you writing something so pessimistic?

I’m writing about reality as I experience it. Without holding back. And the internet’s full of lying arseholes who’ll tell you that anything’s possible with sheer willpower. That’s not true. The game’s rigged. And if you want to come out on top, you’ve got to play by the new set of rules. Understand the moves. And be ruthless. If you want to have a chance.