Red Smith, a sportswriting legend once stated that it is simple to write a column. “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” However, in 2026 no blood will be required. You simply sit at your laptop, and Claude or ChatGPT will write the story.
This is the conclusion that seems to have emerged from recent reports on the journalism front. Maxwell Zeff’s article last month about the writers that unapologetically generate AI can be used to write at least some prose for them, without their names being mentioned. Alex Heath is the main character of Heath’s piece. He said that he regularly has AI create drafts from his interview transcripts, notes and emails. The Wall Street Journal featured a story on Alex Heath, a tech reporter who said he routinely has AI write drafts based on his notes, interview transcripts and emails. Fortune reporter Nick Lichtenberg explained in the newspaper that he relies heavily on AI for his work. Since July, Lichtenberg has written over 600 articles. On one particular day in February of this year, he was credited with seven bylines.
Ever since reading these reports—thankfully produced by the human hand—I have been having trouble sleeping. It was generally believed, until very recently that it is illegal to use large language models in order to create commercial prose. The majority of publications do not use large language models. including WIREDAI-generated content is strictly forbidden. Zeff’s article mentions several other companies who use it to edit, a practice that is not as alarming but no less troubling. Hachette Book Group has recently announced that it is still reviewing its entire catalog to guard against an avalanche self-published crap. retracted Apparently, the novel relied far too heavily on the LLM output. As the AI models produce prose which is increasingly difficult to differentiate from the output of humans, they are beginning to threaten to enter the mainstream. Walls are beginning to fall.
It’s not surprising that many people are unhappy about the news, especially those who have bloody keyboards. The subjects of these stories don’t seem to be backing down. As if the future was on their side. When I contacted Heath—whose work I respect—he confirmed that he had gotten pushback but shrugged it off. “I see AI as a tool,” “He says” “I don’t see it as replacing anything— the only thing that’s replaced is drudgery that I didn’t want to do anyway.”
The hard work involved in writing, and putting oneself into the role of effectively communicating, is for me a vital part of this whole process. Heath thinks that he does connect with readers through his writing—he says that he has trained his AI to sound like him, and his Substack includes personally written tidbits about what he’s up to. Heath tells us that he is almost completely different since speaking with Zeff. “one-shotted” A couple of his articles. “When I say one-shot, I mean I almost didn’t need to do anything,” He says. Heath, however, disputes that by letting AI create his prose he has bypassed a thinking process which many people believe is only possible through actual writing. “I’m just getting rid of that very messy, painful, zero-to-one blank page,” “He says”
Fortune, the writer of the Journal’s article on the Fortune writer has been slammed by the public and his colleagues as well. “I’m feeling a strain in close and personal relationships,” Lichtenberg admitted In an Interview with The Reuters Institute For the Study Of Journalism. Alyson Shuntell, Fortune’s editor in Chief, sent me an email to try and dispel the notion that AI is taking the place of journalists under her supervision. “Importantly, [Lichtenberg] is not using it as a writing replacement,” She writes “His stories are ai assisted versus ai written. Still lots of ambitious reporting and analysis and reworking he is doing that’s highly original.”
