Good writers use AI. Great writers know when not to.
Here’s how to start as one and become the other.
Ryan Brack is SVP of Eden Communications and an advisor at Ragan’s Center for AI Strategy.
I don’t have a single eureka moment with AI. I have a hundred small ones: a brief that took an hour instead of half a day, a pitch angle I wouldn’t have considered, a first draft that was 70% there at 2 a.m. when no one else was available. My experience has been less like a revolution and instead just a better way to work.
But I’ve also seen what happens when professionals reach for AI when they shouldn’t. Speeches that sound like speeches. Crisis statements that read like they were generated, not felt. Ghostwritten content so smoothed of idiosyncrasy that it could have come from anyone … and therefore came from no one.
So before we talk about who should write with AI, let’s be honest about who shouldn’t.
Who shouldn’t write with AI
- Professionals who don’t yet know their own voice. AI accelerates and amplifies the instincts you’ve already developed. If you haven’t yet figured out what makes your writing distinctly yours — like your rhythms, your angles, your way of landing a point — then AI will fill that vacuum with something generic. Junior communicators especially risk outsourcing the very struggle that builds craft. In all honesty, the friction of a bad first draft is how you learn to write a better one! Skip that, and you skip the growth.
- Anyone writing through something irreducibly human. There are moments in communications that require a writer to have actually felt something — like a eulogy-adjacent tribute, a founder’s letter after a company tragedy or a statement of personal accountability after a public failure. These are high-stakes assignments. They’re documents where readers will sense, immediately, whether a human being actually wrote them. AI can’t grieve. It can’t be humbled. It can’t carry the weight that some writing has to carry. Reaching for it in these moments risks a weak and dangerous draft.
- Speechwriters in the early stages of a new relationship. The most dangerous use of AI in speechwriting isn’t in the fifth year of a client relationship. It’s in the first several months, when the writer is still learning the speaker’s cadence, vocabulary and the particular way they think on their feet. AI tends to generate speech that sounds like a competent speaker, but not like your speaker. Used too early, it trains you to hear the wrong voice — and unlearning that is harder than starting fresh.
- Communicators working in legally or ethically sensitive territory. Crisis communications, regulatory filings, whistleblower-adjacent statements, apology letters that may one day appear in litigation … all require a level of precision, accountability and sourcing that AI cannot guarantee. In most communications contexts, a factual error — still a nonzero chance of happening with AI — is embarrassing. In a legal or compliance context, it can be catastrophic. The efficiency gains are not worth it.
- Anyone who hasn’t learned to distrust it yet. This isn’t a permanent exemption. AI output sounds authoritative even when it’s wrong, and it sounds polished even when it’s hollow. Professionals who haven’t yet developed the critical eye to catch what’s off will be worse off for using it. The tool rewards the skilled and punishes the credulous.
Who should write with AI
The good news is that the list of professionals who shouldn’t use AI is defined by specific conditions, not categories. Most experienced communications professionals will find genuine value in AI as a thinking partner, a research accelerator and a first-draft engine if they bring the judgment to direct it and the discernment to improve it.
According to a Microsoft and LinkedIn Work Trend Index, knowledge workers who use AI report saving an average of 30 minutes per day. I’m saving hours per day. For senior professionals who have already developed their voice and their instincts, that’s serious leverage.
My hundred small eureka moments haven’t made me a faster typist. They’ve made me a sharper thinker who is more willing to test an angle, be more honest about a weak draft and given me the opportunity to spend my best hours on the work that actually needs me. That’s what a good tool does, and AI is really just that … a tool for our craft. Hopefully, it doesn’t replace our instincts; it just gives them more room to run.
