The Death of Authenticity

Over the past year, I’ve been genuinely amazed by the sudden, veritable improvement in everyone’s writing abilities. It’s as if there’s been a mass enlightenment. Awkward wordsmiths have now morphed into Shakespeare overnight.

Hallelujah! It’s a mirAIcle!

Everyone’s now crafting well-constructed, well-organized pieces with flawless grammar. Oxford comma? Immaculately placed. Single versus double quotes? Consistently on point. Punctuation within quotes? Exquisite.

And the em dashes. Oh, the em dashes. I see a sea of them where I used to see commas or awkwardly placed hyphens.

I know many of these folks. Not too long ago, some of them couldn’t articulate their way out of a verb-noun disagreement. And yet, here they are, now churning out impressive prose day after day. It is as if they each have their personal muses singing sweet linguistic secrets into their ears.

But, wait.

Why are they all starting to sound the same? All these newly empowered voices seem to sound… well, the same.

It is as if they are all reading from the same script, with slight tweaks here and there, a different profile picture, the same insights, the same phrasing, and the same echoing of regurgitated buzzwords.

How many variations of the Death of Agile article must I read?

Ah, the magic of generative AI. The great equalizer. The silent ghostwriter in everyone’s laptops.

No, I’m not being a writing snob or a grammar purist here.

But beneath that perfect grammar, there’s a sameness that makes me miss the raw, authentic voices I used to hear, grammar warts and all. It is more than just about grammar. It is as if they have outsourced their personality.

Is it a bad thing?

Maybe not, when it’s your own thoughts being expressed, albeit a little bit AI-massaged. A bit of a filter never hurt our profile pictures, after all.

What’s bad is when these are not your thoughts. We start losing something genuine when you get your AI to whip up a piece on a trending topic just to boost your profile views, rake in the likes, and collect a few virtual pats on the back.

Your voice is no longer your own.

In the pursuit of AI-perfection, you have lost what it meant to be you.

Congratulations! You are perfect now.

Just like everyone else.