It’s very easy—and very tempting—to use AI to write. Whether it does a good job or not is debatable.
Its speed is unquestionably astounding. The writing is… sufficiently reasonable, sensible, and topic-centered. Best of all—it sounds right.
This is the trap I find most people fall into when using AI to write. Sounding good is not the same as being good. The difference can sometimes be really vast.
I’m no expert at this. But I do love writing. And reading. And I’ve tried using AI as a proxy enough times to know I don’t like what it throws at me. In fact, in the last two years, I feel like I’ve developed an inner “written by AI” sensor, like many of us.
And I see people falling into the same traps again and again. Here are some pitfalls to avoid when using AI to support your writing:
Trap One: Starting From Nothing
It’s tempting to leverage AI as a thought partner. Let it suggest topic ideas, blog sections, and course outlines.
The issue is that it starts dictating your thinking. It hampers original thought.
If the presented outline looks good enough, then new, non-standard ideas might not even occur to you. They won’t even enter your mind. And you will robotically follow the parameters AI has generated for you.
And since all of this is from its training on existing data and content, do you really expect anything brilliantly creative or original in there?
Nope.
It’s better to start with your own original ideas. Struggle with what you want to say. Write it down—messy, handwritten, unclear—before you even type your first prompt. Don’t let it guide you—you guide it instead.
Trap Two: The Speed of AI
AI’s response can be blindingly fast. But that comes with a huge danger.
Thoughts worth reading have a unique birthing process. They fester, marinate. They linger. They wrestle with other thoughts before taking shape.
This doesn’t have to take days or weeks or years—though sometimes it does. But even if it’s just a few minutes, it’s never instantaneous.
Writing with AI should be a collaborative, multi-step, iterative, chained process. The writing evolves over a thread—much like two friends engaged in a conversation at a café, who both go much deeper than either would alone.
Trap Three: Right or Honest
AI is great at correcting my writing for spelling, grammar, and structure. It’s also great at sucking out all the soul from my writing. The result is often so texture-less, it could have been written by anyone.
Where are my run-on sentences? My dash-punctuated text? The way I think reflected in the way I write? Where are the adjectives that come from my lived experience, now replaced by bland, popular descriptors? Where are my conversation starters that turn into generic hooks?
Instead, almost everything starts with “In this fast-changing era of blah blah blah…”
So, with AI, the start of this section becomes: “AI excels at correcting grammar, spelling, and sentence structure. But in doing so, it can also strip away the personality, nuance, and voice that make writing truly yours.”
Don’t let AI take your voice. I often go back to AI-corrected text to re-correct it and re-insert my voice into the narrative.
These traps have consequences beyond flat prose. The hidden risks of AI writing in eLearning covers what they cost you, and AI copyright 101 covers who actually owns the result.
4 Takeaways to Remember
Do I use AI for my writing? I do. But I approach AI with skill, caution, and constraints.
If you’re starting to use AI to help you write and finding it difficult to get it to write your way, you need some help. Here’s my four big pieces of advice for anyone wanting to use AI as their writing partner:
- Use it as a copy editor, not as a writer. You’re still the writer. Own it. Enjoy it. And don’t be afraid to make it your own.
- “Good” is often another word for “typical” or “standard.” It’s okay to draw outside the lines and write differently.
- It’s worth the time to train AI in your voice. Using few-shot prompting to teach it your style is effort well-spent and saves many corrections.
- Write to express, not to inform. Information is cheap. It’s everywhere, and it’s easily commoditized. But your opinions, your experience, your take on something…that is completely yours.
And no AI can outshine you at being you. Ever.
For a workflow that keeps the human judgement up front, see a human-centric writing process for instructional design.
Our AI Accelerator Certificate for L&D teaches this hands-on: how to use AI with skill, caution and constraints rather than instead of your own thinking.
First published in TD blog at td.org/content/atd-blog/avoid-pitfalls-when-using-ai-to-write
