Is there passion in prompting?

“What is done in love is done well.”  -Vincent van Gogh in a letter to his brother Theo, 1882 

If you’re a writer, content creator, marketer, or someone who commissions content, your LinkedIn feed is most likely a battleground between AI-assisted creators and human-only creators. 

“Use AI to write. You’re stupid if you don’t.” 

“Don’t use AI to write. You’re stupid if you do.” 

Replace “write” with any other creative field, and I’m sure you’ve seen the same message over and over again. 

I may be biased, but I don’t think AI is a good writer. As the content designer for a major B2C brand, I was asked to investigate the incorporation of AI into my workflow. As much as I tried, I couldn’t find a great use for it. 

Naming products and features? Cheesy.  

Writing social media copy? Boring. 

Rewriting copy for different platforms? Took too long. 

I was still faster, cleverer, and able to dream up ideas that I could actually work with. Of course, I was working with generic tools such as ChatGPT. If I had been working with a custom AI tool that already knew the brand style guide, templates, and guidelines I was working with, I may have been able to use it. Emphasis on “maybe.” 

I do see some value for AI in formulaic writing. I once had to write 200+ product descriptions for the same product, the differences only being their color, size, and material. It took me far, far too long (how many ways can you say “sleek and sophisticated”?). AI may have been useful here. 

But that is not the bulk of my writing work. Half of the time I am writing, I’m just thinking. I’m not thumbing through my mental archive to reuse work I have already written — I’m trying to come up with something new. Something that taps into current trends or events. Something that would really resonate with readers. 

I’m not doing that because I think new is better. I’m doing it because I am passionate about my work. And passion is fuel for art. 

Is content writing art?

One of the arguments I see is that writing is not art. Well, OK — product descriptions aren’t poetry. 

But for writers, all writing is artistic. I would ask creators of other art forms that can be used for commercial purposes the same question: Do you consider your work art, even if it’s used on a website to sell a product? 

Composers score music for movies.  

Painters paint murals for commercial spaces. 

Dancers perform in TV commercials and music videos. 

Are those not art, simply because they’re promoting something? Do the creators still not create with passion? Because there is nothing so moving as art created with passion. That’s why those pieces are so moving. 

And by moving, I don’t mean entertaining. I mean it moves you to emotion. Lots of things can be entertaining. I watch TikToks and feel entertained. But I don’t feel moved. I don’t think about it later. I quickly forget what I’ve watched and move on with my day.  

Even passive art is moving. Marina Abramović’s The Artist Is Present, in which Abramovic sat silently, expressionlessly, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was incredibly moving. This performance piece drew thousands of participants and viewers. The surprise appearance of one participant, Ulay, went viral on social media because of the subtle emotional response they both had. 

Abramović performed this piece in 2010; I saw it on TikTok and Instagram just a few months ago, 15 years later. This emotion, this art, this “content” has longevity because of its passion. 

AI could recreate this scene. Would it feel the same? Would her expressionless face still express? 

Imitating the artist

I will boldly claim that writers who call AI a boon to their process aren’t exactly writers. Or, at the very least, they don’t think of writing as their passion. They’ve fallen into a writing career accidentally, or they’ve absorbed the responsibility of writing as part of their job. They don’t want to write; they have to. 

I love the process of writing: thinking of ideas, structuring them, puzzling the story together, filling in the gaps, and tweaking the words. I love seeing the resulting work read by others. This was especially true when I wrote poetry — an art form that “is never finished, only abandoned,” as famously attributed to French poet Paul Valéry. 

I am passionate about writing. It is my art. Why would I rob myself of the experience by using AI? 

AI can produce words and images. Sure. But AI cannot feel and cannot love. And what is done in love is done well.