ChatGPT Made Me A Bad Writer

ChatGPT made me forget how to write and that is shameful.

Let me explain. During COVID, like many people, I needed a new hobby, one that didn’t require me to leave the house. I’d always had an interest in writing, but never had a medium to do so publicly. That’s when I discovered the aptly named platform, Medium. A place where anyone could easily publish their writing in a public forum.

I was just starting to come into my own as a nutrition and wellness professional… but…

One of the first articles I wrote back then was totally out of my usual lane. It was an article about white privilege. I wrote it in the wake of the George Floyd murder. Now as a strength and nutrition coach, this topic was obviously completely out of my area of expertise but at the time, I was married to a woman who was a non-white immigrant… so I felt I had skin in the game on the topic.

Interestingly, the article took off. A few academics at the university level picked it up and shared it in their classes as a discussion topic and I got a bit of feedback on it from the good people of the internet (some of the feedback was good. Some of it was not so great… that’s the internet).

I was motivated by all of it. I started writing regularly. Nothing crazy, but I was publishing an article on Medium every week at least.

From there, other cool things started to happen… various publications started to reach out because they wanted to share my work on their websites. I was getting traction. I wasn’t making much money (I think my biggest payout from the Medium Partner Program to date has been a whopping $0.47) but I didn’t care about that… I was just happy to be writing and building a new skill.

Then something kind of cool happened. An app based health and fitness company reached out and asked if I would be willing to write blogs for their app. It was my first paid writing gig! The deal was $100 per article and each article had to be about a relevant fitness and nutrition topic.

There was a slight problem. At the time, I was still a full time project manager in the telecommunications space AND I was inching toward being a full-time online strength and nutrition coach. I was very busy… working basically 2 full time jobs. I didn’t have time to commit to a dedicated and deadline based writing schedule and I was reluctant to say yes.

I had a good conversation with a buddy of mine who worked in technology about all of this. It was a classic condundrum of the hustle culture entrepreneur: I wanted the work but I didn’t have time to do the work. But hustle culture is an article for another day. This is about ChaGPT…

My buddy chuckled at my problem and said “dude, just use chat gpt”.

I should probably clarify… this was happening in 2022 when Large Language Model AI had JUST come out on the scene. It was brand new and I wasn’t paying very close attention to it.

I asked my friend what he was talking about and he explained to me that this new tech was amazing… I could just dump a prompt into and it would spit out an entire essay on the topic I wanted. He suggested I take the writing gig and just use ChatGPT to pump out as many articles as I could.

I was reluctant… at that point, everything I had written had been 100% me. The thought of using a computer or AI to do my heavy lifting for me felt icky and a bit underhanded. But I also quickly realized that the technology was picking up steam and wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

And if there’s one thing I know as someone who was a freshmen in college when Facebook came out, it’s that once these new technologies and tools exist, you’re better off learning how to use it than you are ignoring it…

Because those who ignore the future often get left in the past.

So I decided to just dip my toe in the waters of this new tool that could do my writing for me.

Here’s what happened…

How About We Start With Just the Tip

I took the writing gig. And at first, I kept my use of ChatGPT fairly basic. I would feed it prompts just to get ideas for what to write. Then I would do the heavy lifting and actually write.

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This approach felt both ethical and useful. After all, I’m not an idea machine, so if this new AI tool could just give me some basic prompts for what to write about, why not use it?

This worked well for a while. I was pumping out about 1–2 blogs per week for this app (these weren’t works of literary genius… they were 1–2 page blogs about topics like how to eat enough protein or how to eat right during the holidays).

Things were good. I started collecting the checks for the work I was doing.

The app was happy. I was happy. ChatGPT was a tool and I was using the tool to help me earn a little extra cash and build a name for myself as a writer. No problem.

I’m A Little Busy This Week

Then I had a busier week than usual. My commitment was 2 articles per week and it was going to be tough to pump out two that week.

So I thought “well what if Chat writes the outline for me instead of just brainstorming ideas”. I was still able to justify my work. Sure I was using Chat a little bit more than usual to write those couple of articles… but it was still just an outline. I filled in the meat of the articles with my own words and thoughts.

We all continued to be happy. Articles went up on the app’s blog. And everything was ok.

The App Went Under

I bet you didn’t think that would be the next section. Yeah… the story of being a paid writer ended here. I got an email one day from my editor at the app that they were in bankruptcy and would no longer be accepting new articles. Just like that, my first (and to date only) paid writing gig was gone.

Bummer.

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But This Is Still About ChatGPT, right?

Of course it is. I was no longer a paid blogger, but by this point I had transitioned into full time nutrition and strength coaching. And when you run an online business… content is king. Pumping out daily social media posts, emails for your email list, and any other attention seeking content is a job requirement.

And the thing about being a business owner, is that time becomes your biggest commodity. If you don’t manage your time, you don’t manage your business.

The thing is that at this point, ChatGPT was being widely used, but it wasn’t what it has become today. There was still a uniqueness to what it wrote for you as opposed to the white noise it has become.

I used Chat gpt to help me come up with a brand language for my coaching brand. I wanted to speak to a specific audience. So I would write my captions, emails, and posts… and then feed them into ChatGPT with the prompt to re-work my writing into a certain voice to ensure everything spoke to the type of person I wanted to work with in my coaching business.

Again… still my ideas, still my writing, just edited a bit to calm the tone and speak to one type of person instead of the ether like so many coaches were doing at the time.

It Helped But Felt Icky

This strategy for using Chat actually helped a lot. My brand language became crystal clear. I started to learn to mimic chat’s edits in my own writing before I ever ran it through the AI for editing.

And this is when I started to realize something was wrong. This is backwards. Alarm bells. Why am I trying to think like an AI? I am me. I have my own personality. I am going to attract the people who align with my own unique personality. It’s completely ridiculous to adjust how I speak on the internet. Not only ridiculous, but fake and inauthentic.

It Kept Getting Worse

And It didn’t stop at just creating a brand voice. Suddenly Chat was showing up in how I wrote all of my posts. Everything I wrote, I was funneling through the filter of ChatGPT. Could Chat make it punchier? More concise? Cleaner? Better? And for the longest time, I felt like it was doing just that. Chat was a better writer than me, so why not just let it do what it does best…. Manipulate human language into something better than I could do myself.

I also podcast. I’m proud of my show… it has 116 episodes and I do believe that the content helps people. But for the first 75 episodes or so, they were ALL me. I’d come up with an idea and riff on it for 20 minutes… boom episode complete.

Then I started using chat gpt to help generate ideas for my show. Same cycle… it started with some idea generation, that turned into episode outlines, and then one day I realized my off the cuff podcast was turning into no more than me reading a script that chat gpt had written for me.

Sure, I can give myself some credit for being able to fill in the gaps on a verbal platform that required you to have a fairly deep knowledge base on your subject matter in order to speak about it unscripted for 20 minutes… but I was removing that capacity by continually allowing chat to do the work for me.

My Breaking Point

Then one day I started to noticed a couple of things.

First, I realized that I couldn’t create without chat. Posts, podcast ideas, blogs… I was relying on chat to come up with all of my ideas. As someone who has been consistently creating content on my own since 2017, this was distressing. I am good at this. But now I have become bad at it… at least through the lens of coming up with my own ideas.

Secondly, other coaches and influencers on the internet were starting to sound exactly like me. Or perhaps I was starting to sound exactly like them?

OR… perhaps neither option was true… perhaps all of us were filtering our work through Chat gpt and Chat was simply starting to make ALL OF US sound exactly the fucking same.

It is like ChatGPT took your best quick witted millennial, turned it into a language, and we all started speaking that same language.

And therein lies the problem.

I have no issue using a tool that helps me generate ideas, organize my thoughts, and generate content consistently.

But I take massive issue with using that tool in such a way that suddenly almost out of no-where, we all sound exactly the same and there is no originality anymore.

It’s kind of funny. Now when I am doom-scrolling on social media (which I am sad to say is still something I find myself doing far too often), I can spot a chat gpt caption from a mile away. And it’s not just small-time coaches like myself. I’m seeing massive pages I have followed for years transition to captions that are clearly AI generated.

the short punchy sentences.
hyperbole masked as quick wit.
that weird long hyphenthat most of us have learned to delete, but others haven’t (“ — “ dead giveaway).
the yellow 3-star ✨✨✨ emoji at the end of every post
A declarative sentence immediately followed by its antithesis to create a contrast that emphasizes a key point.

Honestly, I am sure there are more. Someone could probably do an entire study on how LLM’s have evolved to basically create an entire writing style based off of what once were a lot of unique voices known as human writers.

They are all the same.

And it makes me sad.

I hate it.

It’s made me a worse writer. Frankly, it’s made me worse at thinking for myself. And it is one more piece of technology that has yet again shortened my attention span (seriously, I had to stop 6 times for a break just while I was writing this short piece… and it’s just an anecdotal story I could easily have told out loud over a coffee!).

I used to write entire articles that got picked up for publication. From start to finish. I’d generate an idea, outline the idea into a frame, write the article, edit the work, and publish it… all by myself and without the help of some all knowing large language model who has the breadth of human knowledge at it’s fingertips.

I could do that.

Today, trying to write a few hundred words without first getting a little help from chat feels like a Herculean effort of the mind.

How Do We Proceed?

Honestly, it’s very conflicting. Because I’m not going to stop using chat gpt and other LLM’s. It is the future (unfortunately).

But what I will say, is that the writing is on the wall. If you are someone who relies on creating content and writing to generate leads for your business, you are in severe danger of becoming more white noise… that is if you use chat gpt to do your work for you.

Because your writing style is evaporating. It is being assimilated into the ether of the large language model. If you’re over-using chat gpt, your content is no longer unique. Your post has no voice. Because an AI can’t have a voice… it’s not sentient (not yet at least)… it’s just the world’s best imitator (I mean, LLMs have literally driven the famous Touring test into obsolescence).

The problem is that it is imitating you and your words into a distinct shade of grey that looks like every other post on the internet.

Speaking strictly anecdotally, I can say that my subconscious has started to pick AI generated work out almost instantaneously and scroll right past it.

On what seems to be the rare occasion that I come across a caption, email, or piece of content that was clearly written by the real human who is sharing it, I give it far more credence. Not necessarily because it is better written than what chat could create (although in many cases it is), but because I know there is a soul behind it. I know that someone actually put their mind and effort behind their words, and in a world where a soulless AI can do that work for you… that takes guts. And I respect that.

I believe that in the coming year, your ability to stand out will directly correlate to your willingness to put ChatGPT aside and just show up as yourself, imperfect, unedited, and ‘not punchy’ as you may be.

My Plan

I’d be lying if I said I was going to never use chat gpt again. It’s a tool like anything else. If used well, it can enhance your workflow, help you generate ideas, and even clean up your near-finished work product.

If mis-used it can turn into an addiction that leaves you feeling completely dis-empowered to create anything by yourself.

I realize that over the past year I have inched toward the wrong side of that spectrum, and I plan to work my way back to the left. I have a sense that it will be similar to weening myself off of social media doom-scrolling. It’s not a perfect science. After all it’s a technology designed to beat my ‘meat brain’ on every level (up to and including keeping me addicted to it).

But today’s win is simple:

I’m sitting on an airplane on a long flight. An idea struck me. I opened my laptop (with zero internet connection and no access to an LLM). I wrote that idea down and kept writing until it turned into this piece. I edited the work after I wrote it, and the moment this plane lands and I have an internet connection, I’ll publish it with absolutely zero help from ChatGPT.

How will you take a step back toward thinking for yourself today?

Joey Szolowicz is a Lifestyle, Nutrition and Health Blogger and Vlogger. For weekly tips join his community here.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.