Robotic hand pressing a keyboard

It’s not enough that all my friends are writers.

Now we have robots, i.e., Artificial Intelligence, to contend with.

I was on a call with a bunch of writers the other day, and one of them pointed out the power of using AI to generate words.  Not just words really, but rather entire books.  In seconds.  The guy on the call wondered if this new reality would give authors access to a new world of achievement.

Maybe so if the goal of creative writing, especially fiction, is to develop a writing style that can pass as the work of a machine.

But the new world of AI raises a fundamental question for human writers: What distinguishes our writing from computer-generated words?

Doesn’t it all come down to voice?  The uniqueness of each person’s experience provides the grist out of which an author creates a world known only to him or her.

I’d rather work for days to produce a story that touches someone, than to punch a button and have a computer generate 60,000 words.

Wouldn’t you?