The Writers Who Can No Longer Explain Their Own Words

When artificial intelligence first became widely available, I was already worried about what it might do to young writers.
Working in publishing, I discouraged interns and junior writers from using it for anything beyond grammar and basic editing. It wasn't because I disliked the technology. I could already see its potential. What concerned me was how quickly it could disguise someone's actual ability.
Almost overnight, writers who struggled to produce 300 words of decent English were submitting beautifully constructed articles. The vocabulary was impressive. The sentences flowed. But ask them to explain what they had written, and sometimes they couldn't.
I raised the issue repeatedly. I wanted them to develop their own voice, make mistakes, question their choices and eventually establish standards they could call their own.
It was difficult to enforce then. Today, I wonder how many of those young writers continued learning their craft.
The backlash we're seeing now doesn't surprise me.
People are beginning to question photographs that look too perfect, articles that sound suspiciously alike and professional posts filled with impressive words but very little to say.
LinkedIn has even introduced a way for users to flag what it calls AI slop. By September, more than a million members had used the feature. Apparently, people are growing tired of reading content that could have been written by anybody.
Research offers another reason for concern. A 2025 study examining 2,200 college admissions essays found that human-written work contributed greater diversity of ideas than AI-generated writing.
Yet I wouldn't argue that AI has been bad for creativity.
It has made research faster, shortened working hours and given people access to tools that once required considerable resources. Even producing a convincing AI image or developing a worthwhile prompt demands imagination and judgement.
The problem begins when we confuse producing something with knowing how to create it.
A well-written article doesn't necessarily make someone a good writer. An attractive image doesn't automatically make someone a photographer. And having access to sophisticated tools doesn't guarantee that we have something interesting to say.
Perhaps this is where originality becomes valuable again.
Not because everything must be created without assistance, but because personal experience, curiosity and the ability to form an independent opinion cannot simply be outsourced.
I still believe young writers should learn to write before allowing technology to write for them.
After all, the struggle to find the right words, the frustration of rewriting a paragraph and the satisfaction of finally expressing an idea are part of becoming a writer.
Which leaves me with one question: What happens to the next generation of writers if they never experience the difficult, frustrating process of finding their own voice?