AI Made Me Start Writing Again

I used to write a vegan baking blog called DeadBeet Baker (which is where I got my start  building websites), but I absolutely loathed when it came time to share my recipes because it meant writing an extensive companion blog post that I simply did not care about. I thought ‘why do people always write these unnecessary, long stories prefacing the recipe?’ Just get to the point already! (FYI, it’s for the ad placements) 

Those blogs were undoubtedly bad because there was no heart in them, no soul, no passion, no artistry. So when my little baking blog adventure ended, I just assumed ‘well, I’m not a writer I guess’, and for the next few years I wrote almost nothing. 

That didn’t stop me from loving to attend my local poetry reading group once a month in the back of a quaint brewery, it just stopped me from feeling adequate enough to share, and even now I’ve yet to ever share my writing there. When asked if I had anything to read, I always replied “oh no, I’m more of a visual arts person,” and indeed as a designer, I am, but I always wished I could sound as eloquent or articulate my contempt with society and my love for nature as impressively as they do.

Enter the era of AI. 

ChatGeppetto (to quote comedian Jordan Jensen) seemed like just the tool I needed and I embraced it, for a while. It seemed like magic in the beginning. I’m sure we were all amused and kind of bewildered at our first time with Chat. Oh the rose colored classes were in fact almost opaque in the early days of AI copywriting, at least for me. 

But eventually, the sun shines through them more and more each day until you’re staring down at LinkedIn posts about em dashes from real copywriters and thinking “what have I done?.” My whole website was generated, my blog posts were fake, the social posts I’d made for clients had way too many emojis.. I felt like an idiot.

Then the AI generated images came and I truly felt the pain of copywriters. Our work was being stolen and used to train these imposters — generating us out of our own jobs. Yes, the em dash is for irony. Now they’ve shamelessly marched on to rape the work of video creators too. 

Unfortunately, AI has become the bestest friend to our billionaire overlords. More robots = less workers = lower wage expenses = more profit for shareholders, even if it ushers in a new interpretation of the starving artist. 

What can we do? What can I do? Well, I can start writing again. 

We (small biz owners) can make more meaningful hiring choices that support each other rather than let our collective human expression be ouroborosed into AI generations from AI trained on AI generations of our work. Even if it takes a little longer and costs more.

We can vote with our dollars to support companies that stand against AI generated creative. I mean, how much can you really trust the ad for a coffee mug made out of a solid gemstone for just $10? 

I still have some of my old AI assisted blogs on my site, cause I already wasted the water and carbon to generate them, but I've revised. And from now on it’s authentic Emaline Audra content only. 

** ugh, I still hate the word ‘content’ **

Happy to help,

Emaline Audra