Let's put it into words.

This year, 2023, will go down in my personal history as the year of disruptions. To stay centered, it’s taken more than a rereading of the Tao. I’ve lost my beloved father to a disease that ravaged his body over the course of two years. The repercussions in the personal field are far-reaching and living in this new reality is something I’m still coming to terms with. Professionally, I’ve set out as a freelance writer, coinciding with the greatest disruption to the field of writing since … the dawn of the book press? If I didn’t love what I did, I couldn’t have stayed the course in the midst of (decently, and sometimes very well-written) computer-generated listicles, blog posts, and web content. But I’ve managed to stay sane, and I’ve also maintained hope that the writing profession will remain a profession, even if a computer is now able to write. Where does this faith come from? Why do I nurse this hope? I thought it prudent to list some reasons for those writers out there that may be losing the plot. Here goes:

• AI written content needs checking and proofing. You cannot, as a corporate marketing employee, take a churned-out text, paste it into a blog format, and expect your content to be done for the day. There’s potential copyright infringement, there’s plain plagiarism, there’s originality (duplicate content, anyone? Google?) and there’s professionalism to worry about. Brands take care for a reason. Once you’ve proofed, fact-checked and rewritten a piece of AI-generated text, you may find that the time commitment was the same, or perhaps even larger, than it would have been had you outsourced to a human writer that stays accountable for the words on the web page long after it’s been published.

• The lay of the AI land(scape) is still being shaped. Whether it’s enormous disruptions like Airbnb to hospitality, Uber to transportation or Facebook to data collection and mass communication, we’ve seen time and time again that technology is way ahead of legislation. Eventually, though, legislation catches up, adding rules and regulations and covering up loopholes. Copyright, for example, becomes fuzzier when AI is involved in producing the text, and can’t be claimed at all for a fully AI-written piece. Even though the disruption in itself is likely to stay, the field of AI content is already facing newly drafted legislation, and will likely face more in the future.

• Humans amass details and historical knowledge.When you start out working for a new client, you represent an investment. There’s learning about the brand, the industry and the value of their offering before you can produce smashing pieces that really make a difference in the long run. Once you’ve built up that knowledge base, you’re on solid ground. Articles take less time to write and they reach a much higher quality. Unlike a hired employee who take their insider industry insight with them when they leave, established freelancers tend to stay freelancers and can keep writing for the same client(s) for many, many years.

• If you’re a writer, you can possibly also create fiction alongside more commercial writing work. This is not to say that fiction cannot be AI generated – it is sometimes, and it will likely continue to be. Some books are genre-books or based on a certain plot formula. AI is already writing books, and some gain, or will, gain commercial success (gaining copyright might be trickier). But the kind of writing I seek, the kind of writing that creeps into my skin and seeps out in my bloodstream, has a human dimension to its words that a computer cannot replicate. I’m able to recognise the author behind the words. After a profound reading experience – but only after – I seek out the creator, and devour some information about him or her. It completes the experience, adds an origin to the story. I’ve met enough book worms in my life to know in my heart that this kind of writing will never go out of style.

• You’re a human, and humans want and need relationships with other humans. Cashiers, customer service reps and airline check in people have seen some of their tasks taken away by computers. But their professions, or in some cases altered versions of them, still exist. Whether it’s sorting out a bottle-neck in the self-checkout section or connecting with callers who have an issue that can’t be resolved by the chat-bot, that human being at the end of the line or at the airport is not only needed – it’s wanted. Stay flexible, stay the course, ride the new tide, and discover that the writing profession will prevail. It’s possible you’ll wear some new hats, but I’ve always loved what hats do to an ensemble that already feels complete.