Millions of words, many of them generated by the powerful A.I. natural language processing tool, have been dredged up about how ChatGPT will take over writing.

But just as the printing press took away the job of hand-copying manuscripts, in the brave new world of ChatGPT (and its competitors) the role of the creating or authoring those words will see originality commanding an even greater premium.

Why? And as ChatGPT itself says when queried:

• This means that the content generated by ChatGPT may lack the nuance, depth, and creativity that a human writer can bring to a piece of writing.

Of course, there are those websites and businesses which will be happy to pay the close-to-zero cost of words somewhat relevant to their product or service. 

Your social media marketers, content farms, e-commerce sites, affiliate marketers, business directories and the like mostly won’t care that the words they’re gushing out are generic.

However, as ChatGPT itself acknowledges: “It’s worth noting that while some companies may be happy to have generic content, others may prioritize unique, high-quality content that sets them apart from their competitors.”

Most people and businesses like to think that they’re ‘different’ (and we all are). The job of a good writer is to unearth that difference, and express it in a succinct and interesting way for their current and would-be customers.

ChatGPT and its ilk can’t, and probably will never be able to, do that.

Originality is what counts

This is because originality is the ability to make 2 + 2 = 5.

That is, originality is taking one idea, combining it with another idea and forming a completely new idea or way of looking at something.

For all the power of ChatGPT’s regurgitation, it doesn’t have ingenuity, inventiveness or innovation as its beating heart. It simply has the ability to pluck relevant data from the web, and present it back in a coherent stream of words (if anything, it’s ChatGPT’s competence in creating grammatically perfect english which is its most amazing characteristic).

Indeed, apparently it is this grammar precision which is one way for programs designed to spot ChatGPT’s use in school and university essays which gives it away!

Now, it’s not as if ChatGPT isn’t extremely useful. 

Part of its deep search abilities can reveal facts or opinions you haven’t thought about. You could call it a fantastic research assistant.

But as an original writer it’s not. 

And surely that’s part of the soul of our humanity.