AI Writing My Stories? Not While I’m Alive!

Sportswriting icon Red Smith famously remarked that penning a column is straightforward: “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” However, in 2026, there’s no need for any blood to spill. Now, you simply sit down at a laptop and let Claude or ChatGPT craft the narrative for you.

This seems to be the key takeaway from a series of recent reports from the journalism sector. Last month, my colleague Maxwell Zeff highlighted writers who openly admit to generating portions of their content with uncredited AI partners. The focal point of his piece was Alex Heath, a tech journalist who frequently has AI draft pieces based on his notes, interview transcripts, and emails. That same week, The Wall Street Journal showcased Fortune reporter Nick Lichtenberg, who detailed his reliance on AI to produce his work. Since July, he’s penned 600 pieces, and on a single day this past February, he had seven bylines.

After reading these reports—thankfully authored by human hands—I’ve struggled to sleep. The prevailing belief had long been that employing large language models to create commercial writing was off-limits. Numerous publications, including WIRED, maintain strict policies against AI-generated content. We also refrain from using it for editing, which is a concerning, though less shocking, practice among some of those mentioned in Zeff’s article. The book publishing industry, aiming to guard itself against an overflow of self-published quality issues, continues to monitor its catalog; Hachette Book Group recently withdrew a novel that appeared to rely too heavily on an LLM’s output. Yet, as these models produce text that increasingly resembles human writing, the ease and cost-effectiveness of utilizing AI for the challenging task of writing threaten to infiltrate the mainstream. The barriers are beginning to erode.

As anticipated, many were displeased to learn of this trend, especially those like me whose keyboards are metaphorically stained with blood. Nonetheless, the individuals at the center of these stories are not backing down. It seems they believe the future is on their side. When I reached out to Heath—whose work I respect—he acknowledged some backlash but dismissed it. “I see AI as a tool,” he stated. “I don’t view it as a replacement—only the drudgery I wasn’t keen on has been replaced.”

For many, like myself, the labor of writing is an essential part of the process, bringing one’s authentic self to the challenge of effective communication. Heath believes he still engages readers through his writing—he claims to have trained his AI to mirror his voice, and his Substack features personal snippets about his pursuits. Conversely, he shared that since his conversation with Zeff, he has almost produced several columns in one go. “When I say one-shot, I mean I nearly didn’t need to do anything,” he explained. However, Heath contests the notion that allowing AI to generate text means he’s sidestepped the cognitive process that many think can only occur through actual writing. “I’m just eliminating that chaotic, painful, zero-to-one blank page,” he remarked.

The Fortune journalist featured in the Journal article has faced backlash, not only from the public but also from friends and peers. “I’m feeling a strain in close and personal relationships,” Lichtenberg confessed in an interview with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. In a separate email, Fortune’s editor in chief, Alyson Shontell, sought to clarify that AI isn’t usurping the roles of reporters under her leadership. “Importantly, [Lichtenberg] isn’t using it as a writing substitute,” she stated. “His stories are AI-assisted rather than AI-written. There’s still a lot of ambitious reporting, analysis, and significant original reworking that he is undertaking.”