Disclaimer: “AI proud” is not a “yay, let’s consume more AI” statement. I mean: don’t doubt your own creativity just because you use AI. AI’s environmental footprint deserves a dedicated conversation and action.
Last week I attended a Microsoft Copilot training.
One of the “pro tips” from the instructor made me smile:
“Add an instruction telling Copilot to replace em dashes with commas. Otherwise people will immediately know AI helped write your text.”
That little tip says a lot.
Apparently, we’ve reached a point where punctuation has become a credibility test.
So, for anyone wondering what in my writing comes from me and what comes from AI, here’s a simple guide.
Everything that is polished, diplomatic, well-balanced, and carefully structured…
…is probably AI.
Everything that feels slightly unsettling…
…is probably me.
The idea doesn’t fit neatly into an existing box? That’s usually mine.
If you really wanted to trace the origin of those ideas, you wouldn’t find them inside ChatGPT or Copilot.
You would have to wander through forty years of experiences, different cultures, countless conversations, books, failures, mentors, family stories, and probably a few generations of ancestors before that.
AI can polish your voice.
It can’t invent one.
Just like a tailored jacket doesn’t create the person wearing it.
So yes, I use AI.
Proudly!
Not because I have fewer ideas than before.
Because I’d rather spend my energy giving shape to ideas than polishing commas.
And as for the em dash…
I think I’ll keep a few.
They’re becoming the coffee stains of our generation’s writing.
A tiny clue that says, “Yes, a human and an AI worked on this together.”
Anyway, if there’s too much of a gap between what you write and how you actually speak, the cognitive dissonance will be so strong that everyone’s hair in the room will probably start to frizz.
No amount of comma replacement can fix that.