Tech Meets Text: 11 Writers Talk about AI’s Role in the Freelance Writing Industry

One of our first (and biggest) questions was, do you use AI tools when you write? 

AI is controversial enough that we expected this to be a touchy subject. However, 9 of the writers we spoke to readily admitted to using AI, with only 2 saying they never did.

(Note that “AI” doesn’t necessarily mean bots like ChatGPT; we counted using tools that make use of AI in a more limited fashion, such as Grammarly, as a “yes.”)

What AI tools are freelance writers using?

We asked what tools, specifically, our respondents used.

What this means: Due to the small number of writers we surveyed, it would be a mistake to draw any sweeping conclusions from this, but our impression is that by and large, writers are open to using AI to:

• Generate ideas
• Check their grammar and spelling
• Conduct research when Google fails

None of this came as a great surprise to us; in our experience, even the best writers sometimes get writers’ block and struggle with a few thorny words they just can’t spell.

Notably—and arguably unsurprisingly—none of the writers we spoke to admitted to including any AI-produced content in their actual published work.

Marina Roukalova, a freelance tech writer, told us that in her opinion, “a smart writer is one who uses AI to enhance their writing capabilities and talent,” rather than using AI to completely automate their writing.

What the future holds as AI tools grow more advanced

As a separate but related question, we asked what role AI tools would play in the freelance writing industry in the years to come.

Overwhelmingly, respondents said that AI would remain a “supplementary tool for writers” or that it might “replace some formulaic writing tasks,” with 10 out of 11 in agreement. Just one writer offered the caveat that AI use depends on the writer’s skill level.

No one thought that AI would come to dominate the writing industry entirely.

How much do freelance writers use their favorite AI tools?

We also poked at how frequently our respondents made use of AI. What we found was that, although most had at least toyed with AI, few of them were avid users.

Our impression is that professional writers are willing to make use of AI tools now that they’re here, but by and large, they wouldn’t shed bitter tears if AI stopped working tomorrow.

Using ChatGPT as a brainstorming tool

We followed up with several of the respondents who indicated that they use bots like ChatGPT to help them brainstorm. We asked them to elaborate and give us a few examples of ideas they might turn to AI for.

Jessica Starks, the founder and CEO of J.D. Scribes, a small content writing and marketing company, said she uses AI to jog her thought process before she starts writing.

Brent Wiggins, an editor and freelance copywriter, told us he sometimes uses ChatGPT to produce outlines:

Cassandra Sigmon gave us a detailed breakdown of how she uses AI to save time when creating marketing or social media materials.

Marina Roukalova, who formerly worked in public relations, said that in the past, she turned to AI for ideas on how to put a new spin on an existing piece of content.

The takeaway: Some experienced freelancers are open to using AI to get their creative juices flowing or to develop outlines, but there comes a point when it’s time for the bot to step off and let a human being take over—and that point comes pretty early in the writing process.

Why you might NOT want to use AI

A handful of our respondents told us they never used AI tools in any capacity. One such writer was Michael Shapiro, a journalist who also owns and runs a network of more than 95 local news sites.

We asked Shapiro to elaborate on why he never uses AI—whether he has ethical concerns about it or just feels he doesn’t need it, etc. To hear him tell it, he’s not necessarily hostile to AI, but he’s certainly wary of it.

The organizations that Shapiro alluded to include several major publications. Famously, in early 2023, CNET and Bankrate (which are both owned by Red Ventures and cover technology and finance, respectively) published a number of AI-written articles.

Readers swiftly discovered that the pieces were riddled with errors, which necessitated a series of embarrassing corrections. The saga was extensively documented online, most notably in one Washington Post article.

The ethics of editing and publishing AI content

Some content agencies and publications are taking advantage of AI to save costs by generating an initial base of content with ChatGPT and then heavily editing it to give it a human touch.

We asked Jessica Starks, who runs her own content writing company, whether this was something she’d considered experimenting with to scale her business.

Although she was ambivalent about whether it was ethical or not, she told us she wasn’t particularly interested in trying it, and that she wasn’t convinced it actually would save costs after accounting for editing.

In January 2023, Nina Schick, an AI writer, made a widely reported prediction that by 2025, 90% of online content could be generated by AI. It’s too early to tell whether that will come true or not, but it’s far from inconceivable. In May, just 5 months later, a NewsGuard study claimed that nearly 50 news sites were using AI to write most of their articles.

This explosion of AI content has obvious implications for people who make a living from writing, but we also wanted to know what it means for readers.

AI-written articles are everywhere—but are they any good? Are they, as has been suggested, bland and generic, rife with misinformation? Can the average reader tell the difference between something written by a machine and something written by a human?

What professional writers think about AI’s writing ability

First, we asked our respondents how they’d grade AI’s writing ability on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being poor and 5 being excellent.

The consensus was pretty clear. Writers think that AI is okay at writing—but just okay.

We followed up by asking whether AI could eventually completely replace human writers, at least in some domains. Relatively few people thought they could, with 6 saying they either “disagreed” or “strongly disagreed” with the idea, 2 being neutral, and 3 agreeing.

Can most readers distinguish AI content from human content?

Although professional writers are ambivalent about the quality of AI’s writing, it’s possible not everyone is that discerning.

We asked our respondents whether they thought the average reader could distinguish AI content from something written by a skilled human writer (or whether that depended on the type of writing).

The response was definite: it depends. Jessica Starks, for instance, said that she didn’t think AI could handle speechwriting, informal blog posts, or personal essays—any kind of writing that has an emotional component.

Cassandra Sigmon disagreed, specifically mentioning blog posts as one type of writing that AI might be able to produce just fine:

Michael Shapiro said that he thinks readers can tell the difference between AI-generated “journalism” and boots-on-the-ground reporting.

The takeaway: Although writers agree that AI’s touch is more evident with some types of writing than others, they don’t fully agree about what those types are.

Is it easy to tell an AI-written blog post from a real person’s? Can ChatGPT write a good obituary, or is it still too limited to convincingly fake human emotions? That depends on who you ask.

The reader matters, too

Brent Wiggins offered a slightly different take, noting that this might depend more on the reader than the actual written content.

“A discerning human with EQ will see the lack of thought from generative AI responses,” he said. “A less discerning human with less EQ might not see the differences.” (EQ is a common shorthand for emotional intelligence.)

Marina Roukalova agreed and offered a more pessimistic take, suggesting that since it “has been shown that the average American reads at a 6th grade level,” most probably wouldn’t be capable of distinguishing AI-generated articles from human-written ones.

Will readers ever get tired of AI content?

Not everyone is happy about the rise of AI. If you spend any time on Twitter, you’ll see this firsthand; the mere suggestion that a book cover might have come from DALL·E (an AI image generator) or that a blurb might have come from ChatGPT can be enough to whip the mob into a frenzy.

In August 2022, Charlie Warzel, a writer for The Atlantic, learned this the hard way when he inserted an AI-generated illustration into one of his newsletters. He wrote about his experience a week later in an aptly titled article, “I Went Viral in the Bad Way.”

But that’s the situation in the content creation circles on Twitter, which are filled with people who believe that AI threatens their livelihoods. Do consumers—not creators—care? Will readers ever get fed up with articles written by machines?

We asked Cassandra Sigmon about this. She was one of the least optimistic about the ability of human readers to tell when they’re reading something by an AI, despite having previously characterized AI content as “generic.” In her response, she doubled down:

In other words, although AI content isn’t always inspiring, it’s here to stay.

The expectation—at least in the freelancing community—is that AI will lead to a loss of jobs and a drop in the compensation offered for the work that remains.

We asked our respondents how they expected AI to affect rates for writers. Here’s what they said:

AI may raise the barrier of entry to the writing field

Several people said that they expect that highly skilled writers will still be able to find well-paid work, but that poor or mediocre writers might not be able to compete.

Brian Hartz, a freelance journalist who expressed negative views of AI overall, said that it “will likely weed out writers who aren’t good enough,” a sentiment that was echoed by a few other respondents.

Perhaps our most pressing question was, what should aspiring freelance writers do to get started in an increasingly competitive, AI-saturated field?

It’s one thing to hang onto your clients if you’re already established, but what about newcomers? How can they convince anyone to give them a chance when AI can produce content more quickly and cheaply than they can?

Work efficiently, develop your skills, and stand out

Cassandra Sigmon stressed the importance of focusing on writing quality, since it’s impossible to compete with AI on quantity.

To this end, she recommended embracing AI tools to save time and to work more efficiently, as well as picking a type of writing and specializing in it (although she admitted that this was a case of “do as I say, don’t do as I do”).

Not everyone was on board with the idea of specializing. Jessica Starks recommended being versatile while making sure you’re offering something that AI can’t.

Brent Wiggins took the advice to stay versatile even further. He recommended honing your skills by reading (and even writing) about anything and everything—potentially even things you’re not particularly interested in.

Michael Shapiro had some advice specifically for aspiring journalists. He said they should look for opportunities to embrace the physical nature of the job (something that AI can’t do), as opposed to regurgitating news they found elsewhere online (something that AI definitely can).

Resources to help you land work and develop as a writer

Of course, it’s one thing to hear that you should focus on honing your craft like our respondents suggested, and another thing to actually do it.

If you’re a newcomer to the field who’s looking to start a writing side hustle (or turn writing into your new full-time career), you can check out more advice from another veteran writer we previously contacted, Holly Riddle. She helped us create a step-by-step guide on how to become a freelance writer even if you have no experience.

You may also want to visit one of these freelance writing websites, which feature ads for entry-level jobs, as well as resources that you can use to perfect the skills you’ll need.

AI-proof content

Our respondents singled out several kinds of writing that they believe AI will continue to struggle to produce. As a new writer, focusing on one of these may give you a boost when it comes to competing with AI:

• Speechwriting: As mentioned, Jessica Starks told us that she just doesn’t believe that AI will ever outshine humans at this: “I don’t believe that AI will do a decent enough job when it comes to truly connecting with an audience.”
• Local journalism: Michael Shapiro singled out local news reporting as particularly hard for AIs to do competently. “The guts of original local news reporting is conducting interviews and being on the ground,” he said. “AI cannot do that.”
• Any writing that demands critical thinking: Barbara Saunders, who teaches writing and is self-employed as an editor, didn’t single out any particular genre or medium, but she commented that the writers who are likely to remain successful are the ones who bring something to the table other than their pure writing chops. “There are two main types of writing work: those that demand the writer’s original thinking and those that are essentially just wordsmithing,” she said. “AI will decrease opportunities for the latter.”

Again, Cassandra Sigmon said she expected fiction to remain AI-proof for the foreseeable future, but she also didn’t suggest it as a particularly lucrative market for would-be writers (the fiction publishing industry is notoriously competitive and hard to break into).

That segues into a larger point: writing was a tough industry even before the advent of large language models. Whatever subfield you pick, it’s important to perfect your craft so that you can compete with the other would-be writers out there, not just with AI. Technology isn’t going to stop improving, so you shouldn’t, either.

About the author: Robert is the Managing Editor of SideHustles.com. He rarely uses AI tools like ChatGPT when writing or editing, but he’s a fan of Coca-Cola’s AI-created Diet Coke and drank 6 bottles in the process of creating this article.