There’s a little theatre that plays out on Substack, LinkedIn and other social media. A tidy post appears—hint: correct use of oxford commas—and almost on cue someone comments: “This sounds like AI.” The tone implies a sting operation: the grammar is too clean, the paragraphs too disciplined, the culprit surely silicon.
Since when did coherent prose become suspicious behaviour?
Somewhere along the way, “authentic” got quietly redefined as “unfiltered.”
Typos became personality. Rambling and raging turned into sincerity.
We began treating rough edges as proof of life.
Is the only honest song the one performed out of tune?
It’s charming in its way, like old cassette hiss (remember the SONY Walkman?).
But must every post sound like a live rehearsal?
A rude question: Are we defending authenticity—or defending the old inefficiencies that made us feel special?For years, first drafts were expensive in time and ego. That effort conferred a little halo: “I suffered for these sentences; kindly clap.” Now, with a single nudge, a language model can take your thought from muddy to presentable. The halo slips, and we call the polish “fake.”
But authenticity was never about the presence or absence of mistakes. It was about the presence of self. A post feels human when there’s a recognisable mind behind it: a choice made, a risk taken, a detail only you could supply. Whether the comma arrives by your hand or with a bit of algorithmic help is frankly none of the reader’s concern. They want clarity; they care who’s speaking; they don’t mind who wrote the script.
Do you think President Obama wrote all the soaring speeches he gave?
“But AI posts feel robotic,” people say. Sometimes they do. Then again, many human posts feel robotic too—parades of well-meaning platitudes.
The real offence isn’t the polish; it’s emptiness.
When a post has no friction, no specificity, no argument, it is humbug. Whether typed by a monk with a quill or a model with an NVDA Hopper GPU.
This is hardly the first time presentation tools made us anxious about “realness.” We fretted at print, then telephones, then radio, then the web, and yet somehow the human voice kept smuggling itself through.
A small confession: we are sentimental about creative suffering. We love the myth of the writer battling the page like a wrestler in a dusty akhada. It flatters the rest of us when our own drafts look scruffy; at least we are “real.”
So what is the bottomline? AI is here to stay. DEAL WITH IT !.
If you’re still uneasy, try this framing: AI doesn’t diminish writing; it exposes it.
AI writing does all of us a great service by leveling the playing field. By removing the role of writing aesthetics, it allows concepts to be judged for their truth.
Food to be judged by smell, taste, and nutritional value- not by visual presentation
It brings the idea to the front and asks, politely but firmly, “Is there anything here?” If the answer is no, the gloss won’t rescue it. If the answer is yes, the gloss helps it land. That is uncomfortable for anyone who relies on visible effort as a substitute for visible thought. It is also, modestly put, progress.
If you need a rule of thumb, make it this: Soul belongs to the writer; shine can come from anywhere. If you bring only shine, the post glides across the feed and vanishes. If you bring only soul and refuse any shine, the post may trip over its own shoelaces before it reaches a reader. But if you bring a real idea and allow a little polish to help it arrive on time, full marks. The reader is served, the conversation moves, and the platform becomes slightly less of a fish market.
A final, mildly naughty question to leave hanging in the air: if you can have an authentic thought and a clear sentence, why insist they travel in separate compartments? The muse does not award extra credit for split ends. She cares that you brought something only you could bring.
So yes—boo the emptiness. Applaud the clarity. And if the clarity arrives with a touch of robot polish, please adjust. The human inside the words is still the one wearing the shirt.