Writers Versus Chatbots

Since chatbots came into common use a few years ago, people like me who got paid to write for others have seen a huge drop in business. Using tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, you can prompt a chatbot to write anything from a resume to a business plan within a few minutes, and then the chatbot will do it in a few more minutes, and for free.

But here's the catch: chatbots may be fine for gathering and summarizing facts, but they're often poor at firing imagination. As Truman Capote once said after reading an uninspiring piece of work, "That's not writing. It's typing."

People who use AI for writing often don't know the difference between writing that moves the needle and writing that's just noise. If a chatbot's output is bland, context-free, or even maddeningly repetitive, those who use them may not even notice; and even if they do notice, it's worth the savings in time and money.

Chatbots are attractive, to be sure. In fact, many online ghostwriters leverage them to promise a lot of volume - so many posts a week on so many platforms - because if there's one thing chatbots are good at, it's volume. But volume isn't effective unless the work is compelling, and that's where chatbots fall short.

Grammatically correct prose used to be scarce; now it's free. Unfortunately, mere competence doesn't deliver results. Only writing based on experience, judgment and context delivers the results that matter.

These pieces are written for founders and C-level operators at B2B technology companies. If you want this kind of writing under your own name, that is how I work, and pricing starts at $1,500.