Development Professional:

I am an excellent copy writer. I studied English in school and it’s always been my strongest skill on any resume. I’m starting to face a problem in my work where I will deliver a draft of copy to my supervisor and they will quickly respond with a “better” version of my copy. A little too… quickly… if you are catching my drift. Yes, they are using ChatGPT and asking it to make my copy better. This is limiting my room to grow because I am not getting productive feedback. The copy ChatGPT writes is repetitive, robotic, and frankly obvious to any professional who knows how to spot it. I don’t feel comfortable sharing the plagiarized copy as my own work, especially at an arts organization. We know that this technology steals from artists, not to mention the environmental impact. I am strongly against the use of AI, but I can’t help but wonder if I should be taking the easy way out (using it) so it will meet my supervisor’s standards. Am I a less competitive employee because I am against AI? I feel like my supervisor wants me to work at a quicker pace, but they are comparing my pace to that of a computer’s. Is this worth bringing up and how should I talk about it in a professional setting, especially to a supervisor?

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Dear Development Professional,

This is a challenging moment for all writers and I feel your pain. Several of my plays were pirated by Anthropic and, to add insult to injury, because of the weirdly framed settlement rules, I was not even entitled to their (meagre) penalty fee! Setting that aside, I do use AI—either for research purposes or to help me sculpt images when I am working with designers. (I have a good imagination but my graphic skills suck.) What I don’t use AI for is to write. Anything. Not my correspondence, and certainly not my creative work. 

If using AI in the workplace capacity you describe is a moral issue for you, with red lines you are not willing to cross, you could certainly resign. But with the current dismal employment situation getting another job is not necessarily a given. You could raise the subject with your supervisor. Although I would urge you to do so diplomatically. For example, you assume they are using AI. Maybe it would be better to determine this is actually the case. If so, there is a moral argument to be made to your supervisor, yes, but perhaps that argument is better buttressed if you can also make a business argument. I.e., that the quality of the output tends to be noticeably reductive with AI and perhaps puts the company at an economic disadvantage vis-à-vis its competitors. At the end of the day, I don’t think you are any less competitive for having these doubts. The question is ultimately your tolerance for this increasingly complicated aspect of modern life.

Sending good thoughts, one human being to another, 

-Fefu

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This Fefu is a professional playwright living in New York, who has worked On and Off-Broadway and at Regional Theaters across the country.