Now for some #AI news that’s both funny and scary for writers of all stripes…

Check out The AI-generated Onion headlines in this Time magazine piece. They’re funny, which makes them scary. Because it’s very, very hard to write funny. (Believe me – I’ve tried standup comedy.) It’s much easier to write corp comms, PR and marketing copy.

So let’s just accept today that AI will soon be writing better than any of us.

What to do?

First, learn all you can about text-generative AIs – what they’re capable of and how best to use them in your work. Today. (Yes, ChatGPT can seem dumb and it’s clumsy now – but, as Simon Rich says in this piece, it’s clumsy on purpose.)

Second, consider all the non-writing skills our profession uses – counseling, researching, planning, speaking, engaging audiences, creating experiences and events. Sharpen those skills. Because once writing is being done better by non-humans (think – a year or two), we’ll need to step up our #human game.