What AI Can’t Write
How to Find Your Voice
I’ve read enough AI-generated articles and posts to know if something was written by a human or a machine. It’s like looking at a painting and knowing how it’s done. There is a level of depth that AI does not know how to penetrate, and this is the way voice works in writing—or in any artistic endeavor, for that matter.
Several years ago, I felt as though I had lost my voice, both physically and artistically. I spent much of my time trying to get back to what it means to be human and do this human thing we are placed on earth to do, but it was difficult, as I felt dissociated from my own humanity. In other words, I felt devoid of meaning.
I remember getting on a podcast episode with my friend and barely feeling able to articulate my thoughts. Even making a simple recording of my voice was difficult. Returning to my voice meant slowly reconnecting with my interests— theology, philosophy, human nature, art, and even film and television. It also meant hiking, taking trips, exploring the world, and expanding my boundaries beyond what I was used to.
Voice is not only a matter of being different from the crowd, but of communicating one’s unique perspective—one’s point of view. Unless a person is infinitely inventive, it’s difficult to be entirely original. There are approximately 11,000 books published each day, and 4 million each year. With the advent of print-on-demand, becoming an author has never been easier. When I was in college, it was only a fantasy to have something published. But how does one stand out from this kind of crowd?
I remember the first time I saw something I wrote in print—a short letter to the editor in Christianity Today magazine, about a year or so into seminary. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and I thought writing would be part of my life forever.
But naïveté is often eclipsed by knowledge. The more I learned about publishing and the publishing world, the more fearful and cynical I became. To publish something truly different—to stand out from other works—is quite a difficult feat. As soon as I could come up with a book idea, there would be something very much like it out there, among the millions of other books. Although it’s debated how many original plots exist—3, 6, or 38—searching for the one spectacularly different story is akin to looking for the Ark of the Covenant. Even in the nonfiction world, thinking of new topics and book ideas isn’t any easier. Unless one is consistently working on groundbreaking research, there’s no hope of getting ahead of the writing game. And even the best researchers can turn off an audience by not knowing how to craft their work in a compelling way. Then, the work becomes simply about delivering information.
There are probably a hundred books on the same topic, but the person who knows how to deliver the message from a unique perspective—that is where the reader is found, or lost.
Voice comes not only from one’s unique experiences, but from the ability to funnel everything we encounter into what we call the self. We craft these indiscriminate moments into something meaningful.
Jimmy Carr has said, “AI is a covers band.” It can imitate writing and style, but it is not as infinitely creative as its source. Besides making many factual mistakes, AI lacks the experience and meaning-making faculties that humans need to be creative. It does not know the experience of loving someone—and the millions of nuanced feelings that accompany what it means to love and be loved. It depends on us for input and programming. The results may feel human, but they are far from it. “The Beatles aren’t worried about The Bootleg Beatles,” continues Carr.
My miter saw can cut a plank of wood straighter than I can, but it can’t create a desk—or even bookshelves. Even if I could program one that could fabricate a desk, I would still have to design it. Have you seen AI-generated designs? Perhaps they are slightly better than what a five-year-old might create, but they lack imagination. AI scrapes millions of images from the internet to cobble together something that resembles a design, but it always feels off. AI is a technology—a great technology—but still a tool for humans to advance their skills and increase efficiency.
Remember the chatbots from the 80s and 90s? We’ve been using AI to correct spelling and grammar for decades, but AI still has many limitations and struggles to perform large and complex tasks. It will not—and cannot—catch everything or do everything. Knowing these limitations allows the user to know how to use it. However, we are still left without what makes humans unique: our ability to make sense of the world.
This is what voice is about: the capacity to take all of the discrete happenings from the moment we are born and create something beautiful that no one else could.
This article arose from the fear and anxiety I felt after reading another publication—one by an impressive academic press. I’m currently revising three chapters of my book, In Their Image: How Atheists and Evangelicals Created the Same God, and working on balancing sound, cogent arguments with a compelling narrative tone. Among the four million books produced each year, perhaps hundreds of thousands are on theology. But only a handful are readable to those who aren’t seminary nerds.
But what if that fear and anxiety is what will propel the book toward what I want? Meaning, what if in every act of good art, there is that fear and sense of dread, but instead of trying to bulldoze over it, it is reconciled and made meaningful. That is what my book is essentially about, so why not use all this energy—what I feel negative about—and refocus it into something that helps me get what I need done?
Voice, whether in art or writing, comes from this:
What you make of your experiences, no matter how mundane or painful
Where you are right now in your life, in your particular space, with your particular struggles, in your particular relationships
How you are communicating to the world—Not to zen koan this, but if no one hears you, do you still have a voice? Work to affect those who are closest to you with your ideas, point of view, and vision of the world—not to impose, but to refine your ideas
Evaluating the media surrounding you—The greatest thief of one’s voice is all the noise from everywhere else
Last night, I attended a reading and interview with the poet and novelist Ocean Vuong, with a friend. It was a delightful evening, and one thing I noticed was that he became an overnight success fairly quickly in the six or so years since his last novel. It was a sold-out event at Christ Church Cathedral instead of a small West University bookstore. He was escorted out by a security guard rather than signing books after the talk. His cover had “Oprah’s Book Club” stamped on the front this time.
However, one thing I noticed more than the fanfare was that he had honed his voice into something I could clearly expect from a writer of that nature. I can tell what is an Ocean Vuong way of saying something, apart from what anyone else would say on the topic. This is because one of his themes—something he emphasized in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous—is proximity and place. Sometimes people are trapped because of their circumstances and relationships. Unless there is a happenstance that can alter that, the only recourse is to move within oneself—and this may be where the beauty really is.
Ocean’s journey is not really one of overnight fame and success, but of seeing where one is in one’s life and making that a place of resonance, a place of voice. Because for some people, having a university tenured position is a form of imprisonment. And even trying to write another novel after the first was a New York Times bestseller is not as freeing as some might think.
And this is the journey—perhaps the journey for all of us. To find that voice that is ours, that tone, that inflection, that helps others hear us, and helps us find ourselves.
What is your voice saying today? What story are you the only one equipped to tell? I’ll love to hear it. Please leave a comment.
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Yes! I agree indeed that finding one's voice arrives only through struggle. When the art is hard and one is searching, that is when voice emerges. Successful artists are those who have struggled.