AI Writes, But It Doesn't Right: Why Humans Still Have the Upper Hand

If you’ve been paying attention these last couple years, artificial intelligence (AI) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and even Snapchat’s Olivia are all the rage. It feels like everywhere you turn, people are talking about AI and how it’s going to be the downfall of creatives everywhere. Although it’s tempting for small businesses and brands to turn to AI as their savior for blogs, content creation, or even art - it’s definitely no substitute for something created by an actual human. We’ll openly admit that we’re biased, but just hear us out, here are just some of the reasons we think that AI is no substitute for the real deal Holyfield: a human writer with REAL intelligence. ;)

All Imitation, No Innovation, Plenty of Limitations

We’re coming out the gate swinging on this, because AI lacks a serious ability to come up with original content. It’s the equivalent of pop music when it comes to writing. The first couple times everything seems normal, but don’t peek too deep below the surface because you’ll be truly disappointed. All you’ll find will be a formula for mimicry. AI uses something called a Learning Language Model that pulls huge amounts of data from all over, analyzes it, identifies patterns, and predicts what should come next. The kicker is: it’s not making anything new. All it does is piece together elements that already exist based on patterns it’s been trained on.

AI knows the rules, but it can’t bend or break them to create actual innovation or new ideas. Your end results can only ever be a remix of the input on which it was trained. 

Kiddie Pool Levels of Emotional Depth

Even if you don’t consider yourself a reader, you can spot the difference between AI generated content and that written by a human almost intrinsically. Writing that’s done by an actual person has true emotion behind it. On the flip side, AI writing makes attempts at emotional connections in its writing but always ends up falling short. That “human connection” piece that’s hard to place your finger on is always lacking because it can only touch things on a surface level. There’s no lived-in experience or deep understanding behind the text it generates.

Human writers bring real-world emotion to posts whether it’s humor through pop culture references too nuanced for AI, a heartfelt status about a loved one, or even just a witty caption on an Instagram post. People can empathize, relate, and grasp emotional truths that AI can’t even dream about touching. And that’s not just because AI doesn’t dream. 

Contextual Harassment

This lack of varied experiences means AI can’t grasp context. It just doesn’t “get it”. That can lead to some really weird writing when a situation requires understanding of abstract ideas, sarcasm, or concepts with deep contextual content. All these learning language models are actually capable of is deciphering and recognizing patterns in ideas from a limited dataset that is provided to them. There’s no emotional intelligence, cultural awareness, and a complete lack of layers of meaning or depth that a human writer is capable of providing. In turn, the writing from an AI often feels flat, generic, and generally pretty emotionless.

Punchlines that Hit like a Girl

We’ll be the first to admit that not all our jokes land. Heck, sometimes we’re out here telling jokes just for our own entertainment. Making jokes requires a grasp of timing on when inserting a joke is appropriate, delivery, and a deep understanding of your audience. It takes more than a surface level knowledge of pattern recognition. Human-written jokes are flexible and are capable of capturing the quirks that only actual existence can provide.

The Real McCoy

That lack of emotion results in an overall lack of authenticity. What draws many of us into a piece of writing is the author’s voice. When you’re reading something like this blog, your social media feed, or a novel you want the real thing. You want nuance. You want more than just facts, data, and regurgitated patterns.

Think of your favorite author, let’s say it’s Stephen King or Kurt Vonnegut. They both have a distinctive style that is unmistakably theirs. Artificial intelligence can’t do that because, like we’ve talked about, it lacks any real world experience to pull from or capability to truly process experiences the way a human would.

At the end of the day, it’s truly about a human connection. People don’t want to read just words on a page; they want a story, a voice, and something that speaks to them on a personal level. Sure, AI can string some sentences together that make sense, but it lacks the lived experience, emotional intelligence, and creativity that make writing so much more than a mechanical process.

AI can absolutely assist with the mechanics of content creation, but it lacks the ability to capture that human element that makes great, or even good, writing so powerful. AI can give you words, but only a human can give you depth, context, and connection. Your business deserves more than just a collection of predictable, pattern-based content. It deserves writing that captures your unique voice, builds relationships, and stands out from the crowd. At tawc multimedia, we’re not anti-AI - we’re just pro-creativity. And in the words of Forrest Gump, “That’s all I have to say about that.”