Tris Sherliker

Don’t put your name to bot-written content

I realised today that this:

… is the vibe I get when people put their name and face to AI-generated output, and publish it as if it’s their own work.<br>Any 80s kids like me will recognise that as Microsoft Word 97, which was made 30 years ago this year, and came with WordArt functions that mesmerised a generation who were instantly convinced that they were design experts. Of course, we were wrong and graphic design didn’t disappear as a discipline overnight. Word 97 is long discontinued and defunct,Though I think still much-loved for its simplicity but I wondered whether maybe it has some lessons to teach us?

I think it does, and first among them that even if something feels like it gave you a superpower, that new magic may not be as good as it seems at all. Worse still when everyone has it — the quirky rainbow art from 1996 faded to banality very quickly when all your friends’ school projects end up looking the same.

Second - perhaps sometimes the most obvious way to use a new tool isn’t the best way to use it? Just because you can now make your words pop, shine, and wobble with a few clicks doesn’t mean you should. Just because an AI can now create your social media “content” quickly and more easily without the need for any thought doesn’t mean that you should: it’s not so fun for your audience to read. I’ve benefitted from AI in so many ways - learning all sorts of things, finding mistakes, actually-useful research, vibe-coding quick tools and scripts. But asking it to generate writing to post as if I created it myself is not one of them, because it breaks the social contract of writing.Johanna Larsson is another Londoner who values AI but recognises its limits, and her blog is well worth reading.

The people that followed you aren’t reading your words any more, and your name and face has stopped being a guarantee of origin.

Finally, there are all sorts of things that software can do to take away the inhumanly boring tasks, improve our access to information and our ability to interface with the digital world. I love that I can find new information, link learning topics in ways I would never have been able to do before, and save time checking my spelling. Using it for all those things is great, but I’ll always pause before asking it to do the human things which make us human. Express yourself - don’t ask the AI to express yourself for you.

Microsoft got it right here too: their tagline encouraged you to "unleash the power of your words", giving you time to "focus on your content".

Even Clippit didn’t try to take away the human part of letter writing.

Speed isn’t everything. Some of the best ideas come when we’re forced to pause.

Image Credits

Clippit via Microsoft and Wikimedia

CD photograph via CD-Rom Preservation Project