Is There More to A.I.-Generated Writing?

And is there a creative way to use it?

Artwork conceptualized by the author and generated by DALL-E 3

Last month, I published an essay on this platform making the case that content written by artificial intelligence simply doesn’t belong here on Medium. AI writing, the piece argued, is not only a poor substitute for the depth and integrity of the human written word, but also diminishes and undermines opportunities that should be open to real writers.

The article got a positive reception, though it wasn’t the type of feedback I’d hoped for. After a few days, it received over a thousand claps, and most of the comments agreed with the general premise, sometimes enthusiastically so, even if a few had gently pushed back on such an absolutist stance.

But again, it wasn’t the response I expected.

Eventually, one guy must have noticed something suspicious about the piece, because he commented that he ran the entire thing through an AI detector.

He confronted me with the results right there in the comments section, which found that…

…(wait for it)…

The whole story was one-hundred percent AI-generated!

Alas, it was true. Why had I done this? Was I trying to pull a fast one? Earn a quick buck by thoughtlessly whipping up instant generic content…