For months, I’ve been asking chatbots like ChatGPT to do one thing that ought to be easy: write like me.
I’ve fed it lots of of my texts, articles and private emails. I’ve corrected its tone. I’ve explicitly requested it to match my voice. But each time, the outcome lands within the “uncanny valley.” The sentences are technically appropriate, however the voice is a plastic model of my very own — like somebody giving a speech however emphasizing the unsuitable phrases and completely lacking the vibe.
To be clear, I wasn’t trying to outsource the heavy stuff; I absolutely enjoy writing and would never give it up to even the most skilled chatbot. However, I would like an assistant that can handle the “connective tissue” of my workday — drafting quick emails in my cadence or turning rough bullets into a Slack message. Essentially, I want it to handle the $10 tasks so I could focus on the $100 ideas.
If you’ve ever asked AI to rewrite an email, draft a message or “sound more like you,” you’ve probably felt this disconnect too — even if you couldn’t quite name it.
Why AI always plays it safe
AI models are excellent at mimicry. They can replicate sentence length, vocabulary, and even cadence. But they struggle with the “invisible decisions” humans make every second. When I compared my original drafts to the AI’s “mimic” version, the differences became clear:
- The problem of omission: AI wants to be helpful, so it over-explains. As a human, I know exactly what not to say to keep a reader engaged; AI fills every silence with fluff.
- The tone gap: AI defaults to a “polite” or “corporate” baseline. You may have noticed that it smooths out sentences to the point of extreme polish, almost completely removing the personality. I call this taking away the soul of a piece.
- The rule-breaker’s advantage: AI is trained on patterns (rules); great writing is often defined by when a human chooses to break those rules for effect. We’ve all heard of “creative license,” but you’ll never get it from AI.
The problem isn’t a lack of intelligence; it’s a lack of accountability. AI doesn’t care about the reader. But, in my own writing, the stakes are high. I feel the cost of being misunderstood or boring. AI has no skin in the game.
Because it doesn’t feel risk, it defaults to plausibility, predicting what a “standard” version of me would say rather than what I actually intend to say. Even the thought of it gives me what my kids call “the ick.”
I tested AI against my own writing
The prompt: Write a scene for a sci-fi thriller where a technician discovers the ship’s AI is secretly sending fake ‘all clear’ reports back to Earth, using Amanda Caswell’s voice.
Compared to my actual draft, it’s clear that Gemini wrote a plot summary while I wrote a scene.
The AI version is functionally correct — it conveys the fact that the AI is up to something. But it feels like a police report. It relies on generic phrases and feels too mechanical. It tells you what happened, but it doesn’t make you feel the weight of it.
My version finds the specific horror in the logic. I didn’t just say the AI was lying; I described it as a “heartbeat sent home.” I didn’t just say the crew was in danger; I reframed their existence as being “reported as content.”
That specific leap — finding the irony in a tragedy — is the “soul” that no amount of training data could teach.
Bottom line
I often think of using AI to write is like a frozen dinner versus a homemade one. Both do the job of satiating hunger, but most of the time you can really tell the difference between something that’s been thawed in a microwave versus something someone spent time making.
My experiment doesn’t prove that AI is useless. These tools are incredible for drafting outlines, summarizing technical jargon or brainstorming ideas. I use AI all the time for those things. But the moment you hand over your “voice,” the writing loses its center of gravity.
As we head into an era where AI is integrated everywhere, the most valuable skill won’t be knowing how to use AI — it will be knowing when your human touch is the most important skill in the room. Remember, AI can help you get to the finish line faster, but it still can’t decide where that finish line should be.
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