The Authenticity Machine

Content sludge and Substack

This one has been sitting in the drafts for some time, but in the wake of Substack’s addition of an AI-transparency tool, the post felt ripe for release. Humor me for another soapbox moment.

(It’s worth mentioning that I ran a dozen posts I feel in the depths of my heart were written by AI, and the detector did not flag them. And when I went to publish this very post, I was given the option to both scan my own writing for AI and toggle off the ability to scan entirely. A step in the right direction, perhaps, but it seems Substack’s predicament is obvious: don’t bite that the hand that feeds pays.)

I asked my paid subscribers what they wanted more of from me, and everyone, by which I mean eleven people, said some version of design, project process, unsolicited opinions, and whatever it is that makes this not feel generated by a machine. One commented that there “isn’t a trace of ChatGPT” in my writing, which may be the second best compliment I’ve ever received, right behind Dan Marino calling me ‘hot.’ (He accidentally told my dad. A story for another time.)

proof of life

I read a few weeks back a post that, to me, seemed AI-assisted, arriving at the revelation that, in this day of AI-generated everything, readers value proof that a person is behind the words. Pulitzer-deserving journalism here! Do people also prefer the taste of a home-cooked meal to frozen dinners?

I know there are larger and more consequential arguments to make about AI. It spews misinformation (ChatGPT planned my Hamptons trip around the antique show and then got the dates wrong) and threatens jobs (a favorite family dinner dispute). But what irks me most is that it’s a killjoy. It drains candor and personality out of things people supposedly create because they love them. Substack, at least to me, intends to be an antidote to unending internet ubiquity. It’s a place where people write because they have a voice worth sharing.

I don’t object to AI as a tool. I object to outsourcing the parts that are meant to contain the person, particularly if it is a hobby. If you are using AI to organize your inbox, create a meal plan, or summarize a transcript, Godspeed. In fact, I am certain there are endless ways I could be making my work more efficient. Thus far, I’ve mainly used AI to tally totals and once to gauge if a long-winded email from a client was going to ruin my day before I read it myself.

But! If you are using it to manufacture another monetized cog in a lifestyle business disguised as a newsletter, and the writing itself is outsourced to the machine, what the hell is the point? What is the point of independent writing if there is neither independence nor writing?

It is especially rich coming from the corner of the internet that lauds artistry and craftsmanship as a case for “investment pieces.” The people who speak reverently about handmade luxury goods suddenly become very relaxed about machine-made language when there is a newsletter to monetize. Human touch: essential in leather goods and superfluous in prose.

What kind of human involvement matters? And where does authorship live when the work is outsourced? Would you buy a novel if you knew it was written by AI? Are sculptures made by robots art?

There was a great 60 Minutes feature on Jeff Koons a few years back that I think about from time to time. In response to the discourse of his use of assistants and craftsmen, he said, “It’s a legitimate criticism if you look at art in a way that you want everything to be done by the artist themselves. But it becomes very limited, what you can do within one life if you’re responsible for everything. I’ve designed and worked on the systems so that the whole process, at the end of the day, it’s as if every mark was made by myself.” He has a point. A rose by any other name is still a rose? A house is an architect’s work despite being built by teams of craftspeople and subcontractors. Many, many workrooms are behind the fabrication of my designs. But writing is different in my book (ha). It’s where thinking either happens, or it doesn’t.

Some of the backlash to the AI-detecting tool has framed the move as anti-AI, which feels telling. Perhaps, simply, this is not the platform for copy-pasters. I thought we were here to write. Alas.

My stance at this moment in time is that I am bored by inauthenticity, and of course, that is subject to change. But for now, as things grow more manufactured, I crave more and more crusty old reality.

Out, out, damned bot!

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Hope you are having a wonderfully relaxing summer from places near and far. My daughter heads to sleepaway camp this week, and I am soaking up our time together. Logging off for now xx