Who wrote this paragraph?
Their meeting on the banks of the Seine was not merely a coincidence, but, in a sense, an intertwining of fates, like threads woven into the tapestry of a Parisian night. It is important to note that the lights of the Eiffel Tower, like stars, were reflected in her eyes, conjuring an atmosphere of genuine romance. In this context, their kiss became not only the culmination of the evening, but the beginning of an entirely new chapter — a chapter filled with love, hope, and promise.
And who wrote the opening of an article about the fashion house Yves Saint Laurent?
The story of Yves Saint Laurent is not merely a brand chronicle, but, in a sense, an ode to revolution in the world of fashion. Founded in 1961, the house became not only a symbol of Parisian elegance, but a genuine embodiment of the spirit of the age. It is important to note that it was Saint Laurent himself who, like a bold pioneer, gave women the legendary tuxedo suit Le Smoking. ✨
Spoiler: not me.
You can be a romantic fiction writer or a fashion journalist. The language model's voice stays the same either way: neutral, and worse, instantly recognizable. Voice is the most demanding part of writing. Once you gather the facts and put the structure in place, the real work begins: filling a blank page with your own thinking. That's exactly where the temptation to hand the job off to someone else is hardest to resist.
When a deadline was breathing down my neck on this very article and it was past midnight, I made that mistake: half-asleep, I opened Claude and asked it to draft the piece for me from a ready outline. What I got back was smooth, competent, dead prose. I did the familiar Cmd+C, Cmd+V routine and told myself I'd clean it up later, rewrite it later. But with an inattentive editor, that "later" might never come.
A reader feels the AI’s input immediately — and closes the tab. The writing isn’t bad; it's often more polished than the author's own. It has no friction, though, no roughness, no person in it. Like a plastic fruit, it looks right, but you don't want to bite.
Voice isn't style, and it isn't tone. Style is built from rules. Tone comes from adjectives. Voice is what's left when you strip both away. It's how you declare your relationship to the thing you're writing about.
The next morning I looked at the paragraph above. Here’s how Claude wrote it in my place:
An author's voice is the unique imprint of their thinking, formed at the intersection of lived experience, professional intuition, and individual perception of reality.
So why use AI at all? Because there are tasks where it is genuinely stronger than a human. The model as an author's exoskeleton and the model as a co-author are fundamentally different approaches to AI. When I ask Claude to critically analyze my own text, I find the weak spots and immediately start figuring out how to fix them.
Who wrote this paragraph?
Beside him he heard the tired, uncertain footsteps of the woman who followed silently, head bowed, hands buried in her coat pockets — one more fragile, defenceless little flame of a life he knew nothing about, yet which at this moment, suddenly, in the middle of a deserted nighttime square, felt strangely close to him, almost his own.
Also not me. That's from Erich Maria Remarque's novel Arch of Triumph.
The model won't steal your voice if you don't let it write in your place. It can make your voice stronger if it's directing your thinking, asking you questions, and pushing back on the result.
I tested this on the very article you just read.
If you still haven't figured out who wrote the first two quotes, ask a language model. It won't deny it.
