AI as Feedback Coach, Not Ghostwriter

If you let AI write your texts, you’ll probably get worse at writing, not better: after all, you no longer have to think about how to phrase things. But there’s another way to use AI, one that actually makes you a better writer much faster. The difference lies in who remains the owner of your text: you or the AI.

Why AI-generated texts are so tempting

For most people, having AI write for you is ideal! What a lifesaver! Many people hate writing, find it difficult, and often doubt their spelling and grammar.

Yeah, for them it’s a godsend.

But there’s a major downside to this. Sure, you get a ready-made text, but you learn absolutely nothing from the process.

Of course, that’s fine for many people because they don’t need it for their work and dread writing.

But the AI won’t make them better either. They’re just done faster with something they don’t enjoy doing.

Got a job where you regularly need to report, argue, and reason? Then you learn nothing from an LLM or SaaS solution that churns out your texts for you.

The only thing you learn is better prompting. But the time you’ve spent learning to prompt, you probably could have better spent learning to write.

It helps you learn to organize your thoughts, to argue, to reason. Handy, even in daily life.

Besides, you make yourself dependent on AI when you let it generate those texts. If you do this long enough and never have to think about how to phrase a sentence or spell a word, your writing skills will decline. Because writing is like a muscle you need to train, or at least maintain.

The feedback option: AI as mirror instead of ghostwriter

Now, I’m not saying AI is completely bad for people. Definitely not. There are also very useful applications.

Like pattern recognition, which can be extremely useful in a scientific context. AI also has an excellent application for writers: a large language model (LLM) can give you feedback too. And that’s where the value is!

You upload your text and ask for feedback. To see what you did well and where it could be (even) better. To learn from your mistakes.

In other words: you develop your skills through the mirror AI holds up.

With AI, you also get feedback whenever you need it. You don’t have to wait (days) for an editor, writing coach, or your neighbor who’s a language teacher.

When people point out your mistakes, you know what you shouldn’t do anymore or how to do it differently. AI can largely do this too.

Sure, AI has no feelings, can’t properly assess cultural aspects, and hasn’t gained experiences in the world like you have.

That’s a (major) disadvantage. But AI always delivers the same level (more or less).

At any desired time of day. An LLM doesn’t suffer from fatigue, doesn’t have a bad day. And that’s almost invaluable for you as a writer.

Why the distinction between AI text production and AI feedback is crucial

The market is flooded with AI content. LLMs produce texts based on settings, probability, and training data.

The result: all those texts start to resemble each other.

You know this. If you read enough AI texts, you start recognizing patterns and quickly see whether a text was made by AI.

They have little character of their own, feel soulless. And even when they do have character, you’ll recognize patterns if the text is long enough.

Fortunately, you can easily distinguish yourself as a writer. And that’s what makes you you: your authenticity.

You write your texts in your voice. The voice you’ve developed yourself. If you want to keep developing and improving it, then using AI is actually smart. Like a coach, it can point you to the things you’re not doing well, the things you’ve become blind to in your own text.

Then you work on the things in your writing that could be better, must be better. That’s how you grow as a writer, and you do it faster than ever before. Because you don’t have to wait for the feedback. Pretty straightforward, right?