Unpacking the Question: Did AI Write This?
By Richard Udell
Published April 7, 2025
1. The Gut-Check
"Did AI write this?"
It’s not just a question — it’s a gut-check. It carries with it a whiff of suspicion, or maybe just curiosity, but either way, it shifts the focus. Suddenly, we’re no longer asking What does this say? but Who gets credit? or Is it real?
But the truth is, we’ve been writing with help for a long time.
Spellcheck caught our typos. Grammarly flagged our comma splices. These tools nudged us. But LLMs? They join us.
They don’t just fix — they generate. They suggest whole sentences, ideas, turns of phrase. They show up with a voice that might sound close enough to yours that you start to wonder: If I accept this suggestion… is it still mine?
Still, the standard isn’t the same across the board. Maybe it’s okay for an email to be AI-assisted, but a poem? A eulogy? A journal entry?
The fear isn’t just about machines. It’s partly about losing the scent of a human. Losing the mess. It's also about losing the intimacy with self that writing brings. The deep connection writing can bring to yourself and with others.
2. The Shape of Voice
That’s probably why I write differently in texts than I do in emails. Why I drop capitalization in DMs but pull it together for Slack. I don’t speak the same way to my family as I do to my boss.
I adjust my voice based on the shape of the relationship. So when I sit down to write something real, something that matters, I’m not asking, Did I write every word by hand? I’m asking, Does this still sound like me?
3. The Risk of Becoming an Editor of Ideas You Didn’t Have
AI didn’t write this.
Not really.
But it did sit next to me while I tried to say something true.
And maybe that’s not enough.
Because the deeper fear is about creativity itself. The worry that we’re not just getting help refining a draft, but skipping the act of forming ideas in the first place.
In the old world, we wrote rough drafts and shared them with friends. Now, we ask AI to generate the rough draft. We tweak. We trim. We feel clever for saving time. But in doing so, we become editors of ideas we didn’t fully live.
4. The Loss of Wordsmithing as a Form of Thought
And then there’s the writing itself — the actual words.
Because writing isn’t just conveying an idea. It’s shaping it. It’s choosing scent over signal. Breaking a line on purpose. Letting a sentence fragment sit because it hits harder that way.
That’s not just output. That’s craft.
And when I use AI too early in the process, I reach for my thesaurus less. I chase metaphor less. I stop mid-sentence less often — which used to be the moment I’d catch something real. The good stuff used to live in the friction.
Wordsmithing is a kind of slow thinking. A way of knowing yourself. A way of holding tension. And when the tools smooth too much too soon, they can round off the parts of us that readers most want to feel.
5. So What Matters Now?
Maybe the question isn’t, "Did AI write this?"
Maybe it’s, "Did I show up for this?"
Did I wrestle with the thought? Did I shape the sentence? Did I leave a trace of my voice in the weave?
Because that’s what readers are looking for. Not perfection. Not provenance. But presence.
Something that sounds — and feels — like you.