It Doesn’t Matter If AI Wrote It
Does it?
My Medium friends can read this story over there as well.
Every couple of days, someone on the internet loses their mind about AI writing.
“People will flood the web with garbage.”
“No one will care about craft anymore.”
“Everything sounds the same.”
We’ve all heard the complaints. Some of us made them. I sure did. And yes, there is plenty of AI trash out there. Pleeenty…
But the internet wasn’t full of original masterpieces before AI came along, either, was it?
That’s not the point of this story, though. We’ll get to that.
Why the AI hate?
The writers who love to write (well) usually hate AI.
And I get it. We have never had more competition, more noise, or more tools messing with the idea of what writing even is.
Half the internet is automated, half is soulless, and the rest is either trying to sell us something or insisting that they don’t use AI.
But all of this noise and complaining hides the fact that it really doesn’t matter at all if AI wrote anything.
Does it?
Before we answer, let’s talk about something else.
What people are actually afraid of
Most writers aren’t afraid of AI becoming “too smart”, I think.
Or we are, but not in terms of writing or creating, but in terms of AI becoming dangerous to us.
That fear I get.
But when we talk about AI writing and creating, we creators are usually afraid of AI making it harder to stand out.
If anyone can draft a clean paragraph with AI, where does that leave the hours we spent developing our style, tone, and voice?
If anyone can explain a topic in seconds, what happens to people who relied on being the explainer?
If anyone can sound polished, do we still need to be good?
That’s the fear under all the loud arguments. Not so much craft. More so ethics. And relevance.
Another fear I totally understand.
We worry that our identity as writers gets diluted the moment a model can produce something close to what we do.
Writing isn’t about the writer
But the thing is, writing isn’t about the writer.
Most of us writers judge writing from the inside out. We care how it was made. We care how long it took. We care about the process. Because we have a similar process.
But the internet doesn’t work that way. Books don’t work this way. Newspapers don’t work like this.
Never have. Why? Because of the readers. Readers don’t care how Stephen King wrote the book, they care about the effect.
Readers don’t see drafts.
Readers don’t measure effort.
Readers don’t grade process.
Unless the reader is a writer, they only see the final thing.
One page. One post. One story. One book.
Nothing else comes really through the screen. And nothing else matters. Metallica was right.
When we obsess about whether something was typed by hand or assisted by AI, we’re focusing on something unimportant.
The moment things click
Let’s flip the perspective for a second.
Think of the last piece you read that really stayed with you. Something that made you think differently or hit you emotionally, helped you with an issue, or just made your day a bit better.
Did you stop at the end and wonder: “Was this human or AI?”
Probably not. Maybe we writers do. But a “normal” reader? Not so much.
And I guarantee you, some of those pieces were written by AI.
Writing is not about who made it. Writing is about what it does to the person reading it.
We writers don’t get to decide what’s valuable. Readers do.
We can complain all we want. All the while, AI is winning readers.
What readers really pay attention to
Readers don’t analyze process. They read. And feel the impact.
Depending on the topic, they care about clarity, about emotion, about insight, about relevance, about whether the piece earned their time.
They don’t care who wrote it.
A story that hits, hits. A guide that helps, helps. A joke that lands, lands.
Whether AI wrote it or not.
This doesn’t mean everything AI produces is good. We all know it isn’t. Not even close. Which is great news for us writers. We are still miles ahead of AI writing in so many aspects.
But we have to know that readers don’t grade the tools.
The Bottom Line
The definition of “writing” is starting to blur, isn’t it?
The debate about whether writing “counts” if AI was involved misses the only thing that has ever mattered:
Readers decide the value of writing, not the writer and not the workflow.
Readers don’t care about the tool, they care about the effect. They care about what a piece gives them, teaches them, or makes them feel.
And in some cases, AI can do that perfectly well. Luckily for us, it sucks in most cases. For now.