Writing is the worst use of LLMs

I’ve been a professional writer for 15+ years.

My definition of “professional” is anyone who ever received a check in exchange for some words that they wrote. It’s not the highest bar but it’s something.

Everyone writes emails. Not everyone is a professional writer.

I tend to be an early adopter of technology. So, I got my hands on ChatGPT the first time that I heard about it. Over time, I’ve tested the whole range of LLMs, including Claude, DeepSeek, Notebook, Lovable, those embedded in SaaS products, etc.

I have never had a particularly anthropocentrist worldview, and therefore, what I have to say is not a result of anxiety about self-preservation or thinly-veiled defensiveness.

There’s no agenda behind my words. What you’re hearing is what I actually think.

I’ll break down my thoughts for this piece in three parts:

Generating writing does feel like magic

The first time I tried ChatGPT, I was blown away by it.

Filling up pages based on a few words of input? With flawless grammar and punctuation? That is leagues ahead of most human writing.

It’s hard not to consider the possibilities.

Why would anybody do the arduous work of putting one word after another? It doesn’t make any logical or economic sense.

In some shape or form, we need language in both our personal life and in business to get anything done. Want to build an A-team? You better be good at crafting a mission that people will buy into. Selling a product? You can’t do it without clear, differentiated copy.

Even the back of your shampoo bottle needs words that someone wrote in a doc first.

Now, imagine, all of that work… just done for you. Like magic. Why wouldn’t we want that world? Well, this utopia doesn’t work because, as it turns out, the output generated by LLMs fails the primary function of writing.

The real function of writing is holding attention

Writing serves many functions: Educating, entertaining, evangelizing, selling, etc.

However, to do any of that, writing first needs to be able to cut through the noise of all the other writing that exists and hold the reader’s attention.

In that sense, great writing is pretty much the polar opposite of fetching the next most probable word based on a statistical analysis of training data, i.e., what LLMs do. That’s a recipe for performant but ultimately boring writing.

Average writing fills whitespace, great writing breaks patterns.

You’ve likely sensed this firsthand: Coming across a piece of writing that is outwardly polished but no more interesting than a spreadsheet to consume.

This is going to become a genuine problem for any organization that was too quick to disband its brand/creative teams. Once the sterile language starts seeping into products and services, they too will acquire the same dullness of character.

Speed and quality don’t exist in the same space

Tying it all together, I think we’re heading towards a place where counterintuitively: A renewed premium will be placed on human writing.

LLMs don’t have a monopoly over churning out dull, lifeless copy. Substandard writing has always existed. The ability to generate text at 100x the speed has no correlation to its latent potential in the real world.

This disillusionment won’t be universal of course. LLMs will find their spot in the marketplace of creative services. However, founders, builders, and leaders who obsess over craft, quality, and genuine human connection in business will not be buying it for long.

The truth is en route: LLMs produce mediocre work at frightening speeds.