No, this article isn’t AI-generated nor is it AI-assisted. And you’ll be confident that’s the case by the end of it, because it meanders, makes random detours and goes on tangents, and doesn’t really go anywhere. But a tiny part of my soul’s in it, which I think is enough to make this a hopefully engaging piece of writing.

Let me set the stage. I don’t like the idea of autonomously AI-generated content, but I don’t really frown as much at AI-assisted content. I’ve been trying to use the tooling here and there in my work, with a varying degree of success: it’s a tool like any other - sometimes it works okay enough, and sometimes it doesn’t. Outside of work, I write for fun, and I while I used AI for on-the-fly proofreading and even some occasional brainstorming, I haven’t really tried engaging in a writing exercise with AI end-to-end in my leisurely writing. Writing is a creative outlet, it’s fun figuring out how ideas come together, and I enjoy the tactile experience of typing out my thoughts.

I have an infant in the house - she’s becoming more active, more engaging, and I’m starting to find less time for hobbies. Earlier today I was walking my daughter in a stroller, my hands were busy, so I tried putting together an article using a voice AI interface. It’s an article for a “secret” gaming blog I run (reach out - I’ll be happy to share it privately). I spent an hour and a half walking and talking to an AI assistant about the piece. While it was an engaging thing to do, the results were mixed.

First, I recorded voice notes. Talking about the subject, core ideas, some salient points I wanted to cover, as well as some anecdotes I wanted to include. Default voice recorder app transcribes voice memos into text, and I copied the transcript into the Gemini app. I then used Gemini Live (back-and-forth interaction mode) to align on an outline and produce the resulting outline. I’ve also prompted Gemini to review other articles I wrote and try to match the voice, tone, and style of my writing when generating a draft.

Talking to an AI assistant about my writing was engaging - akin to chatting with an overly agreeable friend. Naturally, it was very encouraging, and happy with whatever direction I wanted to take. Gemini felt like a friend who listens to many podcasts and has a lot of interesting takes which are a mile wide but an inch deep - it knows a lot about many things, but isn’t particularly well versed in any subject, and misunderstands many details (and yeah, I know AI doesn’t actually understand things). AI is, as always, overly agreeable, which could discourage divergent thinking, but I’m sure some clever prompting can be used to work around that.

A few weeks ago METR (an AI research non-profit) published, a study on impact of AI on open-source developer productivity. The synopsis is simple: experienced developers felt like they were faster when using AI tooling, while in reality they were working slower. The authors outline a few hypotheses, but the one that connects with me is about friction: AI tooling reduces the friction and cognitive demand for the work, making it easier to stay in the flow.

Just like the participants in the METR study, I felt like I was constantly making progress. I kept refining the ideas, revising the text, and overall I didn’t experience the often painful and unpleasant part of creative process. The part where you don’t really know what to do next, and feel like everything you’ve made so far is terrible. But you see, I value that part of the process. I think that’s where the creativity comes from, from a deep hole of “this isn’t very good” and “I’m terrible at this”. That’s how powerful new ideas emerge. I’m a solitary thinker, but not everyone is. Many enjoy processing information on the fly, while engaging with others. And for those type of folks, engaging with an AI assistant may have been more productive.

At the end, Gemini produced a draft, but fine enough is the best I can say for it. When in my voice notes I talked about the struggle of finally beating a Isshin the Sword Saint in Sekiro after weeks of struggle, the AI draft sanitized this into a generic point about how overcoming challenges is fun for players. It captured the words but missed the entire point: the point about painful, frustrating, and ultimately meaningful process. Technically correct, but really not the point I was aiming to make.

In the end, a piece that would have taken me an hour of focused, difficult work took three hours of frictionless, meandering conversation. The time flew by, but I spent most of it re-injecting the nuance the AI had stripped away. I think for writing that’s meant to have a viewpoint, the friction is a critical part of the process. It’s the creative cheese grater that you have to pull yourself through, leaving little bits and pieces of your soul on each page.