Can AI Write for Us? A Writer’s Honest Take on the Tools We All Use

Sometime back I wrote about the professional relationship I’ve built with AI. Today I want to share a few thoughts that might explain why, despite the impressive progress in terms of speed and performance across four tools I use: ChatGPT, Manus, DeepSeek, and Copilot, my feedback remains mostly the same.

Creativity


The more I use AI, the better the output tends to be. Truth be told though, whenever I turn to AI for help, I first upload all my articles and novels in the hope that the language it suggests sounds a bit more like me. But in the end, the result feels like a parody of me. It’s as if AI throws four of my signature words into a blender and pours them out like a “salad dressing” over any topic I’ve asked it about. And somewhere in that mess, it might land on a clever sentence or two. But it rarely goes beyond “not bad.”

Charming, but not exactly Pulitzer material.

Translation


AI can help you with sentence structure. It can also save you time on filler content. But if you want half-decent results, you really have to be a master in both languages yourself. I’m afraid there’s no way around that.

The most valuable question I’ve found to ask AI is for it to provide multiple suggestions for a single word. Like an interactive dictionary. Honestly, it’s quite helpful. But again, it’s not exactly about to revolutionize language as we know it.

Of course, I’m only talking about the English hemisphere of things, not the Arabic. Sadly, there isn’t enough data on the Arabic side of things out there.

Still, for someone like me, whose Arabic grammar often needs a little digital rescue – a personal hell and shame I’ve yet to conquer – asking AI to wrestle with hamzas, plurals, and those punishingly difficult suffixes is pure heaven.

Research

This is where we run into suspicions and embarrassment!

Trust me, I’m an expert. Oh how AI likes to tempt you. And AI likes to play along. It’s happy to fabricate quotes by a beloved author and insights by a favorite philosopher “to enrich” your research. Quotes that never existed. All the AI tools I play with are guilty of this.

“Are you sure about that?” You might well ask, and AI will simply back off without the slightest sense of guilt or responsibility.

“Sorry about that—that wasn’t quite right.”

“Thank you for catching that—I’ll try to do better.”

“Oops, I missed the mark on that one. Let me correct it.”

“My mistake; here’s the correct information.”

To this day, I still prefer Google, warts and all. And YouTube, which in my opinion remains as the best educational and knowledge platform out there.

Ultimately, I don’t feel you can really benefit from the AI tools I’ve mentioned earlier unless you’re already an expert yourself. Only then does AI become a highly efficient secretary.

So, why keep using them? Why do I still rant and criticize? Why haven’t I quit the game?

Honestly, using interactive AI tools makes me feel less alone as a writer. It also helps tame the terrifying blank page or screen.

And sometimes, if not always, AI makes me fiercely protective of my language, now having to defend its uniqueness against AI’s mimicry of my style and others’.

I’m still enjoying this game, mostly because I want to see how much creative flexibility I still have left in me.

And yes, I’m lazy. Having this secretary makes writing feel a lot more fun.

I’ve been recommending it to everyone, and I’m still recommending it to everyone. So, go ahead. Give it a try.