Originality for the Sake of Language

It’s about time I published a rambling about artificial intelligence and its impact on literature.

I'm a full time content writer. This means I spend hours sifting through website after website to research complex or unfamiliar topics to create blog posts for clients. Naturally, I stumble across a lot of low-quality AI generated content during this research

When I get the feeling an article is AI generated I immediately search for a new source. But any internet user today is now exposed to so much AI-written content on such a massive scale.

Consuming AI-generated content is getting harder and harder to avoid.

One time I read through one of my thoroughly researched and of course self-written blog drafts about commercial construction and thought—wow, this sounds robotic. It was a tiring day for me, I was writing about a highly technical topic, and I was feeling very burnt out, so I assumed this was why it came across this way.

And then, because my mind is often all over the place, I thought, “I wonder how accurate those AI content checkers are.” So I popped my writing into a free online content checker. I was surprised to see a software advertising 99% accuracy claim that my post was 73% AI-written, even though I wrote the entire thing myself, word by word.

I did some research about false positives and discovered some tips for sounding more “human” in your writing to avoid robotic language:

• Regularly switch up your syntax and sentence length

• Cut out “fluff” and repetition

• Offer unique insights and analysis instead of simply regurgitating information

• Write conversationally, like you’re talking to another human

• Write actively, not passively

• Reference trustworthy sources within your writing (non-fiction)

• Don’t allow strict adhesion to grammar rules to compromise your voice and style

I believe I’m painfully human in my creative writing endeavors. But for professional projects where there is less emotional attachment, it’s trickier for me to make my work feel human—especially when it comes to writing topics that I am less confident about (even if I’ve done hours of research).

And I realized something: my creative writing is inspired by books, written by real humans, and my professional copywriting is inspired by other copywriting that is, nowadays, primarily AI-generated—at least the stuff that’s popping up at the top of Google searches. And I mean articles from websites, not AI overviews.

All this got me thinking—if I’m unknowingly consuming so much AI content when searching for information online, is this causing me to pick up on AI-style language patterns?

So much of today’s information is AI-generated. And again, I’m not talking about AI overviews alone. When you Google something, you’ll probably find at least one AI-written article somewhere near the top, but for me it’s usually more. It happens all the time during my research. These articles are written not to say something meaningful, but to rank well in search, which increasses traffic and gets people to click on ads or buy whatever is being sold.

Our brains are sponges. We’re constantly absorbing information every single day, and this is true now more than ever with the internet at our fingertips. However, things have changed over the last couple years. Now that vast world of information is tainted by AI.

I’m an author. Reading books is what fuels my writing. I taught myself to write at a very young age by mimicking language, grammar, and formatting from what I consumed, both consciously and subconsciously.

I think most other writers are the same way. We write in languages we know—and how do we learn languages? Through reading. So naturally, what we read is providing the fuel for what we write.

Whether we realize it or not, when we write, we are subconsciously mirroring patterns in what we’ve read, because that is what teaches us language.

I’m not talking about copying ideas—though sometimes we might draw upon other authors’ ideas for inspiration. I’m talking about syntax, sentence structure, and the way we strategically break grammar rules to express thoughts in ways that suit our artistic style.

Just like how an illustrator has a unique style and technique, authors have their own unique voice. One of the greatest signs of “maturity” and “skill” in a writer’s style is a disregard for rules. The greatest authors master an artistic balance between following and breaking the laws of grammar. Your writing still needs to make sense, of course. But choosing to leave out a comma because you want a sentence to flow a certain way—even if it should be there grammatically—is an example of breaking a rule to preserve your artistic style. It’s originality. It’s what gives us distinguishable fingerprints as writers.

This rebellion against convention is what allows you to truly nail down rhythm in your writing. Your rhythm is your style. It is artistic mutiny and that is what powers literature.

I’m not a tech-savvy person. But I know AI content checkers work by differentiating human language patterns from AI patterns. For the most part, AI-written content follows grammar perfectly. It sounds “robotic” because it sacrifices rhythm—which comes from human creativity and rule-breaking—for correctness. Sure, AI content generators have bugs and make mistakes all the time. But for the most part, they abide by strict language laws.

I believe the law-abiding nature of AI language models is what sets them apart from human writing. Humans have a unique way of saying things. Unless we’re writing something formal like a research paper, we infuse conversational patterns into our work. We give it a soul. We rebel and create rhythms and make artistic decisions and this is the heartbeat of literature.

We also have meaningful things to say. Artificial intelligence cannot draw upon pain to create something beautiful. It also lacks human insight, reasoning, and contextual analysis. It is very good at stealing and regurgitating the hard work of real human writers, but it cannot create anything new.

I am concerned about the state of language and the direction our primary information reserve is headed.

If written web content is gradually getting more and more AI-generated, and AI is heavily trained on what’s published on the internet, won’t it eventually start regurgitating the same content over and over again? Without creating anything new?

What will happen when there is less new writing? What will happen when we stop caring whether something is written by a human or not?

If we begin consuming more and more AI language, won’t we start subonsciously picking up on those patterns? Will we slowly lose the ability to produce unique, engaging writing styles? What will happen to voice?

To me AI content is a symbol of capitalism and overconsumption and—just like generating low-quality content for the sake of ranking well in search—so is writing a book for the sake of marketability alone.

There is much talk on social platforms nowadays about the declining quality of literature, especially after the pandemic. Publishing is more accessible now than it has ever been, which is fantastic because it gives people an avenue to deliver their voice and stories to the world, without relying on luck, privilege, or knowing the right people.

However, this also means the amount of “low-quality” books is higher than ever.

I don’t mean this in a way that is critical of other genuine authors. If you are passionate about a story then “good” and “bad” doesn’t matter and you should tell it however you’d like. “Good” and “bad” is subjective anyway.

I’m talking about the books that are being produced without passion, to be consumed quickly and on a massive scale.

Example: there is a popular business model where people hire cheap ghost-writers to produce a short, low-quality novel designed to be consumed effortlessly and quickly, typically in the romance and mystery genres.

Then they put it on Amazon and market it toward those with a KU subscription who breeze through a book a day.

It’s a successful business model for many. I’m not trying to shame these people in any way; income is important and if this is how some people feed themselves and their families then I applaud their success.

But as a reader, a writer, it breaks my heart. Because it turns reading—our escape, the thing that saves us again and again—into a business-first endeavor. It turns it into something “cheap.” You can compare it to how fast fashion has tainted the clothing market.

We authors don’t enter this field to get rich. It’s entirely possible to make a living and be successful as a writer, but there are always other reasons. We have stories to tell and readers to reach. We write because we love doing so; because we must.

I see the direction literature is headed and I fear for the sake of human nature. For the sake of language.

As a dystopian writer and someone with once-debilitating anxiety and OCD, there is little else I fear more than the future. So I write about it. I try to understand it and convince myself there is hope. But I still fear the possibility of a world that may slowly silence the beauty of voice.

This all sounds very pessimistic—the decay of literature. It gives me the same feelings I get when I think about how we are poisoning the planet and our bodies, and the world is dying, and we are dying, and climate change and the chemicals in our food and water will bring our demise.

But just as one can make sustainable choices like recycling or being mindful about energy usage to help preserve the planet, we can make choices to preserve literature, language, and our own style.

I fear absorbing too much non-human content. I fear letting my writing become robotic. But I will not allow it to happen.

So what can we do about this? How can we preserve literature?

Read. Read as many human-written books as you can. Find the weird ones and devour them.

Absorb strange things. Absorb the unconventional. The odd.

And then write it.

Don’t be afraid to say things that haven’t been said before. Don’t be afraid to stray from conventional plot structures and grammatical law. Don’t be afraid to shock, disturb, and scare people with the story you want to tell. Feed into your authorly impulses—the ideas that pop into your head, that you may shove down for being “too weird” or “too risky.”

There is this saying in a town close to mine. “Keep Cotati weird.” I have no idea where it came from or why people put it on T-shirts and bumper stickers. But I like it. I think this concept can be applied to literature. I’m not saying we’ll be overrun by robots someday—but literature is at risk and this is our line of defense. The “weird.”

Write weird things, read weird things, and your mind will be okay. Infuse as much of your own original human essence into your writing as possible for not only the sake of your voice, but the sake of preserving language as a whole. Don’t fit in; don’t write for marketability; write for your soul. Write because we all need you to produce original language.

Write to make people laugh, to make them cry, to give them that gut-punch resonance you get when you close a really good book and start tearing up because you remember why you love stories so much and you can’t wait to fall in love with another one.

Write because we are human, and to be human is to feel—and by God does real, human writing make me feel.

Mutiny.

Do not surrender.