AI Writing and the Problem of Sameness

When writing is shaped by AI to maximize attention rather than pursue truth, it inevitably collapses into sameness, losing its power to form judgment, address real people, or endure in the mind.

As of today, you can spot AI writing fairly easily.

I suspect this will remain the case for some time, because much AI-assisted writing is produced in pursuit of maximal reach. That pursuit requires a flattening of creativity, and AI writing begins to sound alike.

Sameness will increasingly mark public writing. And it will be clear who is responsible for it.

Consider the long threads on X that read like this: THE TEN THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW TO NOT DIE TODAY. IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

Each of these follows the same pattern. It catches attention; in this narrow sense, it excites the passions. Yet on reflection, it offers little. The attention-grabbing form overpowers any substance.

This same dynamic now appears in longer-form writing. Recently, I came across an article on Substack titled Gen X — The Worst Generation. It had a catchy title and a confident tone. Gen Z is blamed. Millennials too. Boomers are named. But the argument points to Gen X as the real problem. The piece attracted attention. It felt new, fresh, and novel.

When I read it, however, the argument fell flat. It felt like a new Marvel movie: flippant, fun, and quirky—and therefore forgettable. There was no sustained argument and little evidence. It relied on assertion, delivered as quips. It read less like an essay than an extended post on X.

This is what AI-assisted influencer writing often does well. It imitates seriousness and borrows the tone of moral judgment and cultural insight. But the result is largely superficial.

AI writing, when used primarily to scale attention rather than to pursue truth, tends toward sameness. It may engage quickly, but it rarely endures in the mind.

If this pattern continues, the danger is not that writing will disappear, but that it will lose its capacity to form judgment, invite reflection, or cultivate understanding. We will no longer write to inform and challenge the few; we will write for everyone, and in doing so, say nothing. Writing for all loses any sense of particularity.

This is why political speech sounds so bland. It is addressed to everyone and therefore to no one in particular. It lacks specificity. It avoids exacting claims. It must remain generic, because it speaks to a demographic rather than to persons.

Good writing does the opposite. It writes for specific people. Authors know their audience, understand their concerns, and address real problems with concrete claims. Ideally, that audience overlaps with the author himself.

With AI-generated content, everything begins to sound the same. Writing is measured for maximal retention and attention. Audiences are treated as data to be analyzed and exploited for the longest possible engagement.

This is machine writing for machines.

It is not human writing for humans.