On a catchup call, I told my friend Nick Wignall how someone had trained an AI model to write blog posts in my style. It was a pure research exercise on their part. The idea was to train the tool on my past work, then give it the headlines and opening paragraphs of my 2025 posts. Could it generate the rest of each piece in a similar fashion?
I only compared a handful of posts from their AI versions to their originals, but I quickly concluded the writing suffered from the same uncanny valley effect as many AI-generated images: It all looks fine enough at first glance, but pay attention just a little longer, and something feels off. The AI would veer off in a different direction or end up making the opposite arg…
On a catchup call, I told my friend Nick Wignall how someone had trained an AI model to write blog posts in my style. It was a pure research exercise on their part. The idea was to train the tool on my past work, then give it the headlines and opening paragraphs of my 2025 posts. Could it generate the rest of each piece in a similar fashion?
I only compared a handful of posts from their AI versions to their originals, but I quickly concluded the writing suffered from the same uncanny valley effect as many AI-generated images: It all looks fine enough at first glance, but pay attention just a little longer, and something feels off. The AI would veer off in a different direction or end up making the opposite argument. It sounded confident where I would have been doubtful and vice versa. And so on.
The creator wanted to know if such a model—once it worked properly, of course—could be useful to me. I told him even if it worked perfectly it wouldn’t. Why? Because I don’t write a daily blog to crank out a post every day. If that was the point, I’d have switched to AI long ago already. I write a daily blog to make sure I remember how to think. It’s a daily practice for my brain. A creative ritual to strengthen my writing muscles. And a commitment to my readers. A promise that I’ll show up for them once a day. AI can generate output, but it can’t give me any of these benefits. The output is secondary. If it happens to attract new readers, all the better. And if not? That’s fine too.
Nick said my story reminded him of an interview with writer and Vox-founder Ezra Klein. Klein explained that, so far, AI hasn’t been all that useful to him. He uses it for light research or to structure some data, but that’s about it. Why? Because the writer doing the research is what makes the writing unique.
When you’re using AI as a writer, you’re “outsourcing the part of the work [you] need to do the most,” Klein believes. “Having AI summarize a book or a paper for me is a disaster. It has no idea what I really wanted to know. It would not have made the connections I would have made.” This is why reading actual books in full might now be more valuable than it ever has been: Only if you’ve seen every word will you discover insights and links an AI would never include in its average-driven summary.
Nick pointed out the same applies to a writer struggling when creating a piece. “When you’re stuck and sit there, thinking, trying to come up with what’s next, that’s the valuable part of writing. It’s tempting to use AI to remove that stuck-ness, but it’s basically cheating—and leads to a very different result.” AI is great at giving you a list of ideas. You’ll almost always find one you can plug in and keep writing. But is it the idea that needs to slot into this gap? Or just a bad piece of filler that’ll make for a fragile mental bridge most readers won’t dare to cross?
The more I think about it, the happier I am that AI is transforming the world of writing. In a way, I think it’ll make it even easier to stand out—because the more people take shortcuts, the less quality will remain for readers to flock to, even if the overall quantity of options is much larger.
Whenever technology makes it feel like you can avoid the suck, it’s most likely a mirage. The path behind easy only leads to the lowest common denominator. The real artists, fighters, makers—they stick with a truth as old as time itself: The suck is why we’re here, and only those who overcome it themselves will reap all the rewards of their hard labor.
Nik
Niklas Göke writes for dreamers, doers, and unbroken optimists. A self-taught writer with more than a decade of experience, Nik has published over 2,000 articles. His work has attracted tens of millions of readers and been featured in places like Business Insider, CNBC, Lifehacker, and many others. Nik has self-published 2 books thus far, most recently 2-Minute Pep Talks. Outside of his day job and daily blog, Nik loves reading, video games, and pizza, which he eats plenty a slice of in Munich, Germany, where he resides.