The key to maintaining your own writing voice is to delegate tedious tasks like outlining and editing to AI, while absolutely never using the specific phrasing proposed by the AI.
Imagine this: This morning, you turn on your laptop and tell the AI, “Write me a great travelogue about my trip to Jeju Island last week.” A moment later, smooth sentences pour onto the screen. It doesn’t read badly. But somehow, it doesn’t feel like your writing. It feels like following a recipe from a famous restaurant, but missing that home-cooked touch.
Recently, generative AI (artificial intelligence that learns from massive datasets to create new content) has become a powerful writing partner. However, many experience losing their own personality while relying on the slick sentences produced by AI. How can we leverage AI while still keeping our own unique voice?
Why Does This Matter?
The biggest danger when writing with AI is that your work becomes “homogenized.” Ref 2. Because AI models have learned from vast amounts of data, they produce the sentences that are most likely to succeed in the most “average” way possible when we prompt them.
Simply put, if you just copy and paste sentences suggested by AI, your writing will become “generic AI text” found everywhere. Writing is not just a tool for conveying information; it is a vessel for your thoughts and emotions. If that vessel is trapped in a mechanical framework, the unique colors and personality that should be in the writing will disappear.
Simple Understanding: How to Use AI as a “Smart Assistant”
Security expert Thomas Ptacek recently proposed two very firm rules for writing with AI. Ref 2.
First, do not use a single word or phrase suggested by the AI exactly as is. Ref 4. Second, do not let the AI take the lead in your writing. Ref 1.
What does this mean? Metaphorically speaking, hire the AI not as a “writer,” but as an “editor to handle boring, tedious tasks.” Instead of asking the AI to outline your whole novel, you might ask, “Check this sentence for typos and grammatical errors,” or “I’m struggling to find a more appropriate adjective here—just give me a list of words to consider.”
Ptacek referred to treating AI-suggested expressions as taboo as “intellectual personal protective equipment.” Ref 4. Just as you wear a hard hat to prevent accidents, you must protect your thoughts from the smooth suggestions of AI.
Of course, AI is certainly helpful at times. It becomes a very useful assistant when writing drafts, editing repetitive sentences, correcting errors, or filling in difficult gaps. Ref 3. The important thing is whether you hold the reins of the writing process.
Current Situation: The Future of Writing with AI
Current AI technology is becoming more sophisticated. Frameworks like the recently unveiled “CtrlNews” go beyond simply constructing sentences; they have reached a stage where multiple AI agents (AI programs performing specific tasks) divide roles to analyze articles, ask questions, and create logical structures (hierarchical graphs) to assist in news writing. Ref 5.
However, as technology becomes more advanced, the reflection on “what to write” and “how to incorporate my own voice” remains more clearly the writer’s responsibility. In September 2026, Thomas Ptacek’s post sparked a heated debate on Hacker News, recording 390 points and 270 comments. Ref 2. This is proof that many are contemplating how to keep their own voice amidst the convenience of AI writing.
What Lies Ahead?
In the future, the core competitiveness as a writer will not be “how well you handle AI,” but “how well you maintain your ‘you-ness’ while handling AI.” You can delegate very boring and tedious tasks—typo checking, polishing sentences, organizing data—to the AI, and spend that time writing down the sharp insights and unique experiences that only you can capture. AI is a tool to enrich your writing, not a substitute to replace your thinking.
Writing in the AI era is like the process of brewing coffee yourself while having an excellent water purifier nearby. The machine provides the clean water, but the aroma and taste of the coffee are ultimately determined by your taste and the care you put into selecting and brewing the beans.
References
- Thomas Ptacek, “How To Write With An LLM — A Final Ward”, https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2026/09/17/how-to-write-with-an-llm/
- explainx.ai Blog, “How to Write With an LLM: Two Rules (2026)”, https://www.explainx.ai/blog/how-to-write-with-an-llm-ptacek-2026
- larsonoferik.substack.com, “Writing Smarter with LLMs: Tips, Stories, and a New Approach”, https://larsonoferik.substack.com/p/writing-smarter-with-llms-tips-stories
- simonwillison.net, “How To Write With An LLM”, https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/17/how-to-write-with-an-llm/
- ACL Anthology, “CtrlNews: LLM-based Multi-Agent Controllable News Writing via Expansion-Reflection Cycles”, https://aclanthology.org/2025.findings-emnlp.461/
- Using all sentences generated by AI as-is
- Not using specific words or phrases suggested by AI
- Delegating the selection of writing topics entirely to AI
- Tasks like correcting errors in sentences or filling in blanks
- Having it write a novel from start to finish
- Changing the tone of your writing entirely to an AI style
- Automatically generating entire news stories without human intervention
- Having multiple AI agents control and write news through questioning and graph analysis
- Simply performing spell-checks