Hey AI, WTF?! Cut Me Some Slack!

Nine o’clock in the morning. I was on my third coffee in a row since my local café was opened an hour earlier. I was looking at my laptop’s blank screen wondering what to write about.

Here comes my fellow freelancer - a pro photographer and editor. Oh boy, coffee tastes better when you throw in some conversation instead of sugar.

-Hey! How are you? How is your writing business doing?

-AI got me fired. Remember my client, Mr. X, you used to do some photo editing for him.

-Yeah, you guys have been working for years. He’s a great guy. What happened?

-I ain’t no longer his wonder-boy, he has a new AI toy. He told me that ChatGPT can write him articles in three seconds for free. My services are no longer required, buddy.

-But, what about the quality? I don’t get it.

-He says, it does the job. How about you? Have you already been “AIxed?”

-Nope. It’s actually quite the opposite. You wouldn’t believe how long my waiting list is.

-I don’t get it.

-You know that my best clients are models who want to have pro-Instagram profiles and portfolios.

-Yeah. But, don’t get me wrong. They don’t need you. AI image tools can do all the work for them.

-They’ve tried. It turns out it’s time-consuming. The craziest part is that people are into authenticity big time. So, it’s dangerous for your modeling career to get carried away. You have to know where to draw a line. If what you see online ain’t what you get on the set for some product promotion, ad, or event, you’re in trouble.

-Wow! It’s crazy, I give you that, but it’s also fair.

-How come you couldn’t find some middle-ground like I did?

-I used to write AI prompts for some time but got tired. It takes more time to proofread and rewrite what AI comes up with than to write it from scratch. So, I had to give up.

-Why don’t you give it another try, because…

Authenticity is the New Currency

So, I gave it another try. I didn’t take long to find a new client. I really felt good about it. I submitted my work.

I was already looking forward to writing the next article. Why wouldn’t I, the numbers were awesome.

One quick note on plagiarism. “Making your dreams come true,” and other common phrases were marked as “partially plagiarized.” Fine with me.

I didn’t get it. What do you mean “likely?” But, I guess that’s what you get when you use a free AI detection tool.

From 0.22% to 35%, WTF is going on here? How in the world? It doesn’t make any sense.

It should be ZERO AI, period. Keep calm and keep writing didn’t work for me.

I should’ve asked, what kind of an AI detection tool are you using?

Yeah, I didn’t use AI, but you keep showing me those ridiculous reports.

As you can see, it got even worse. First, I couldn’t write because of AI, and now, I have to prove that I’m not using AI to write.

The best thing I could possibly do. I just had enough of it.

I wouldn’t take a dime of it for myself. I lost my dog, but with that money, I can feed street dogs in Fifi’s memory.

Even all-powerful AI can’t come between two dog lovers (don’t like the word “owners”). In a way, this was “technically” a happy end for this AI yes-or-no story.

You can’t make this sh*t up, can you? I saw some articles where writers put disclaimers “written by a human.” Sad but true (Metallica). I don’t have to. I’m so authentic, no matter what you think about my writing, that AI just gives up when trying to come up with a meaningful TLDR (Too Long; Didn’t Read).

I’ve been thinking about it, though. What if I put all of my 120+ articles published on HackerNoon in some AI writing machine, and ask it to come up with a new piece mimicking my style? What would be the result?

“Spotify has today announced it is piloting Voice Translation for podcasts, a new feature powered by AI that translates podcasts into additional languages. But what makes this such big news is the language translations will all be in the same podcaster’s voice.”

Good luck with that! Fingers crossed! Oh, AI doesn’t have fingers. Sorry, my bad.