Look, I get it. You’re a writer. You’ve spent years honing your craft, finding your voice, learning the difference between “affect” and “effect” (and then promptly forgetting it again). And now here comes artificial intelligence, threatening to replace you with a chatbot that doesn’t even need coffee breaks.
I’ve heard all the arguments. AI is soulless. It’s stealing jobs. It’s the beginning of the end for human creativity. It’s going to turn us all into lazy plagiarists who’ve forgotten how to think for ourselves.
And you know what? Some of that concern is valid. Some of it’s worth taking seriously.
But most of it is missing the point entirely.
Because here’s what I’ve discovered after spending the last year and a half properly getting my hands dirty with AI… It’s not here to replace us. It’s here to make us better at being us.
The Thing Nobody Talks About
There’s this weird assumption baked into the anti-AI argument that using AI somehow makes your work less authentically yours. As if the moment you ask ChatGPT or Claude for help, you’ve tainted your creative process with something foreign and mechanical.
But that’s bollocks, isn’t it?
Because by that logic, we should also feel guilty about:
Using a thesaurus. Using spell check. Using Google to fact-check something. Reading other writers to learn from them. Having an editor. Having a conversation with a friend that sparks an idea.
Every single one of those things involves getting help from an external source. Every single one of them makes your writing better without making it less yours.
AI is just another tool in that arsenal. A really powerful, occasionally brilliant, sometimes frustrating tool… but a tool nonetheless.
What AI Is Actually Good At
Let me tell you what happened last Tuesday.
I was staring at a blank page, trying to write the introduction to a piece about creative burnout. I knew what I wanted to say. I could feel the shape of it in my head. But every sentence I typed sounded either too clinical or too self-indulgent. Delete. Retype. Delete again.
So I did something that would’ve made 2019 roll my eyes. I opened Claude and wrote: “I’m trying to write about creative burnout, but everything sounds wrong. Help me think through why this matters.”
And you know what happened? Claude didn’t write my introduction. It asked me questions. It reflected back what I was trying to say in different ways. It helped me articulate the thing that was stuck in my throat.
Ten minutes later, I’d written an introduction that was completely my own… but I’d never have got there without that conversation.
That’s what AI is actually good at. It’s good at:
Helping you think through problems you’re stuck on. Offering perspectives you hadn’t considered. Suggesting structures when you can’t see the shape of something. Breaking through the paralysis of the blank page. Catching the things you’re too close to your work to see.
It’s a thinking partner. A rubber duck that talks back. A very patient friend who never gets bored of your creative angst.
The Prompt Is Where The Magic Happens
Here’s the thing that most people don’t understand about AI… the quality of what you get out is directly proportional to the quality of what you put in.
Ask it to “write a blog post about productivity”, and you’ll get generic slop that sounds like every other productivity blog post ever written.
But ask it to “help me explore why traditional productivity advice fails creative people, using examples from my own experience of trying and failing to stick to a morning routine”… and suddenly you’re having a conversation that goes somewhere interesting.
The prompt is where your humanity lives. The prompt is where your voice, your curiosity, your specific weird brain comes into play.
Learning to write good prompts isn’t about tricking AI into doing your work for you. It’s about learning to articulate what you actually want… which, by the way, is a skill that makes you a better writer regardless.
AI Doesn’t Make You Lazy (Unless You Let It)
There’s this fear that if we start using AI, we’ll stop thinking for ourselves. We’ll become dependent. We’ll lose the ability to write without it.
And sure, that could happen. Just like you could become dependent on spell check and lose the ability to spell. Or become dependent on Google and lose the ability to remember facts.
But that’s not an AI problem. That’s a your problem.
The writers who’ll thrive in the age of AI aren’t the ones who refuse to touch it out of principle. They’re the ones who use it consciously, deliberately, as part of a creative process that’s still fundamentally human.
They’re the ones who know the difference between “let AI draft this entire thing for me” and “let me use AI to help me think through this section I’m stuck on.”
They’re the ones who edit ruthlessly, who inject personality, who know that AI can give you a solid foundation, but you’re the one who makes it sing.
The Real Threat Isn’t AI
You want to know what actually threatens human writers? It’s not artificial intelligence.
It’s the assumption that faster is always better. It’s the content mill mentality that treats writing as nothing more than SEO fodder. It’s the race to the bottom where “good enough” becomes the enemy of “actually good.”
AI didn’t create that problem. That problem’s been around for decades.
What AI does is force us to confront it. Because if a chatbot can pump out generic content faster than you can… maybe the problem isn’t the chatbot. Maybe the problem is that we’ve been rewarding generic content in the first place.
The writers who matter… the ones who actually connect with people, who change minds, who make you feel something… they’re not going anywhere. Because AI can’t replicate the thing that makes writing matter.
It can’t replicate your lived experience. Your specific worldview. Your sense of humour. The way you put words together what makes someone halfway across the world feel less alone.
It can’t replicate you.
How I Actually Use AI
I should probably be honest about how this all works in practice.
I don’t use AI to write things for me. Not really. I mean, occasionally I’ll ask it to draft a quick outline or help me rewrite a clunky sentence, but that’s not where the value is.
Where the value is… It’s in the conversation.
I use AI to:
Workshop ideas before I commit to them. Get unstuck when I’m halfway through something and lose the thread. Test whether an argument actually holds up or if I’m just talking bollocks. Find examples or research that support what I’m trying to say. Identify the gaps in my thinking.
It’s like having a really smart, really patient editor on call 24/7 who never judges you for asking stupid questions at 2 am.
But here’s the crucial bit… I never just take what it gives me and call it done. That would be like asking your mate for feedback on your novel and then just submitting their feedback instead of the novel.
Everything that ends up in my published work has been through my brain, my voice, my editorial judgment. AI helps me get there faster and with less frustration. But I’m still the one doing the actual work.
The Future Is Already Here
Whether you like it or not, AI is now part of the landscape. Not using it won’t make you a better writer. It’ll just make you a writer who’s deliberately working with one hand tied behind your back.
And look, if that’s your choice… fair enough. Some people still write longhand. Some people still use typewriters. There’s something admirable about that commitment to a particular process.
But don’t confuse nostalgia for virtue.
Don’t pretend that refusing to engage with new tools makes your work more authentic. It just makes it take longer.
The writers who’ll thrive over the next decade aren’t the ones who bury their heads in the sand. They’re the ones who lean in, who experiment, who figure out how to use these tools to amplify what makes them human rather than replace it.
They’re the ones who understand that AI isn’t the enemy of human creativity.
It’s just the latest chapter in the long history of humans using tools to make things.
So What Now?
If you’re still reading this, I’m guessing you’re at least AI-curious. Maybe you’ve dabbled a bit but haven’t quite figured out how to make it work for you. Maybe you’re still sceptical but willing to be convinced.
Either way, here’s what I’d suggest…
Stop thinking about AI as something that’s going to write for you. Start thinking about it as something that’s going to help you write better.
Learn to write prompts that actually tap into what makes AI useful. Not “write my article” but “help me think through this problem.” Not “give me five headline options” but “I want to explore why this topic matters, can you help me interrogate my assumptions?”
Use it as a tool for thinking, not a shortcut to avoid thinking.
And most importantly… keep your humanity at the centre of everything you do.
Because at the end of the day, that’s what people actually want. They don’t want perfect, polished, algorithmically optimised content. They want to feel connected to another human being. They want to read something that sounds like a real person wrote it, with all the mess and humour and vulnerability that entails.
AI can help you get there faster. But it can’t get you there on its own.
You’re still the magic ingredient.
You’re still the writer.
The truth is, we’re living through one of those moments where the rules are being rewritten in real time. And yes, that’s uncomfortable. Yes, it’s scary. Yes, there are legitimate concerns about how this technology gets used and who benefits from it.
But the solution isn’t to pretend it doesn’t exist.
The solution is to engage with it thoughtfully, to use it in ways that amplify your humanity rather than replace it, and to remember that writing has always been about connection.
The tools change. The technology evolves. But that fundamental truth… that what matters is reaching another human being and making them feel something… that doesn’t change.
AI isn’t going to take that away from you.+
Unless you let it.
Most people don’t get bad results from AI because it’s “limited”.
They get bad results because they rush the first question.
When you ask AI to help you build the right prompt before you start, everything shifts.That’s what The Promptsmith is about…
clarity before output.
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