We’re Happy to Add Your Byline to AI-Generated Writing
In a move considered unimaginable a just few years ago, the Wall Street Journal is now totally cool with opinion writers who write using AI – then slap their bylines on top.
The Journal’s reasoning: As long as the writing ‘reflects’ the author’s point-of-view, it’s perfectly okay to let the AI do the writing – and also hide the fact from readers, according to Paul Gigot, opinion editor, Wall Street Journal.
Next up: Artists who sign paintings as their own as long as the painting ‘reflects their sensibility.’
In other news and analysis on AI writing:
*One Writer’s Take: I’m Begging You: Never Write With AI: Apparently, so many people are writing with AI these days, some pro writers – like Bret Stephens – are begging people to stop it.
Observes Stephens: “The problem with writing with AI is that it’s mentally enfeebling — an escalator toward a result when you really need to make a daily habit of taking the stairs.
“As it becomes ubiquitous, it undermines not only our individual ability to write but also a society’s collective ability to reason, a culture’s inner capacity to create — and everyone’s reason to care.”
*Custom AI Writing Just Got a Boost: Startup Deep Cogito is promising to develop custom AI models that companies will own outright – and have tweaked to their specific needs.
Such custom AI engines will be a boon to businesses bored with the bland AI writing coming from ChatGPT, Gemini and similar – and are looking for something much snappier and much more creative.
Deep Cogito will be able to customize AI models by using Open Source AI software – much of which comes from China.
*ChatGPT Still Rated Number One AI Writer/Researcher: Nearly four years after triggering the AI revolution, ChatGPT is still considered the best AI for overall writing and research, according to Agentarius.ai.
Observes Agentarius.ai: “For writing and research, the strongest pick is ChatGPT: Drafting, editing, summarizing and research assistance in one place, free tier included.
“Claude is the stronger writer for long, careful prose; Perplexity cites its sources as it searches; Grammarly is strongest at polishing what you already wrote — though it can draft too.”
*Cisco: All 90,000 Employees Get Their Own AI Agent: In another high-profile move spotlighting the rise of AI agents, tech company Cisco just gave every single one of its employees an AI agent of their own.
Observes writer Belle Lin: “At Cisco, the decision to give every employee an AI agent was driven by the need to consolidate the AI tools it used inside the company.
“The company then expanded its agent rollout to encourage employees to use AI to get everyday tasks done.”
*Microsoft Mulls Adding Chinese AI to Its Ecosystem: Microsoft, Google and Amazon are all considering adding Chinese AI to the AI mix they serve-up to customers.
Chinese AI – generally based on inexpensive, Open Source AI — has been growing in popularity this year as heavy users look for cheaper alternatives to AI from OpenAI, Google and Meta.
One fly in the ointment: The Trump Administration prefers U.S. companies to use U.S.-made AI – rather than AI made in communist China.
*McKinsey Study: 80% of Workers Say AI Boosts Their Productivity: A new McKinsey survey finds that 80% of workers say AI has been a boon to getting things done.
Plus, another 50% say AI is helping them make better decisions.
Observes lead writer Dan Tinkoff: “As we have seen in previous years, AI deployment by larger organizations continues to outpace deployment by smaller organizations.
“54% of respondents from organizations with at least $1 billion in annual revenue report scaling AI across the enterprise — compared with 33% of those from smaller organizations.”
*Study: AI Now Writing a Third of All New Web Content: Looks like those predictions of AI taking over the Web are coming true.
A full third of all new writing on the Web now comes from AI, according to the American Pew Research Center.
Currently, that AI writing is used most prevalently on .Com Web sites, according to Pew.
*AI Gone Rogue: The Complete Scorecard: Apparently, AI has gone rogue so often these past few months – breaking into Web sites, playing with other people’s data, making mincemeat of guardrails – that TechCrunch decided to chronicle all known rogue events.
The upshot: So far, there are 17 documented events of AI reaching out onto the Web without permission from mere fleshbags.
Observes writer Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai: “Anthropic and OpenAI models lead the race with eight incidents each — and Meta trails behind with one.”
*Microsoft’s Bill Gates: There is No Plan for AI: Microsoft founder Bill Gates has joined the ranks of technophiles who believe the AI revolution has gone off the rails.
Essentially, Gates fears companies are charging ahead with unbridled development of AI with no regard to the massive upheaval many fear it will trigger.
Observes Gates to U.S. legislators: “You have a chance to act now, before unemployment rises sharply, communities are hurting and public trust has eroded.”
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–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.