In 2025, human writers will reassert their value. In recent years, the race for more and more content has been driven by technological and commercial imperatives such as search engine optimization, which serve neither the creator nor the consumer. Human needs and desires have been pushed aside in favor of the attention economy and click-seeking.
Hailed as a boon for free speech, the Internet’s initial promise has failed to deliver. Literature and journalism have been replaced by worthless “content,” primarily intended to fill web pages rather than to inform or entertain. Meanwhile, writers’ incomes have declined. Author and editorial licensing company reported a 60.2% decline in authors’ earnings after adjusting for inflation between 2006 and 2022. The emergence of widely available generative AI seemed, to many, like the final nail in the writers’ coffin.
But 2025 will mark a turning point, not for the replacement of AI, but for a renewed appreciation of the emotional, spiritual, political, cultural and, ultimately, financial value of high-quality human writing. Ironically, the advent of AI-generated search, which blocks traffic to original websites, will eliminate the need for unnecessary “content” to game the system and push people to demand better.
Generative AI has provoked numerous disputes and industrial and regulatory actions. EU and UK data protection regulators, prompted by complaints from civil society organization NOYB, succeeded in suspending Meta’s plans to train its AI on posts, photos and user interactions. Traditional publishers such as The New York Times have stepped up to protect their own interests and, with them, those of their contributors. But some, notably the Financial Times and The Atlantic, have struck deals with generative AI companies, likely convinced that there is no stopping the tide. In 2025, they will be wrong.
As copyright lawsuits mount in court, in 2025 we will also see rulings on liability for the inevitable errors produced by generative AI. Defamation lawsuits against AI companies and publishers using AI content will come to a head as slanderous untruths circulate online and amplified by mindless bots and AI search engines. In 2024, academic publisher Wiley, closed 19 newspapers faced with a flood of false scientific articles. To err is human, but counterfeiting on an industrial scale is above all a technological problem. AI has no work ethics, no soul and nothing to lose, but the people who use it or ask others to use it for them do so.
In 2023, AI companies have started hiring poets from around the world to try to infuse their dead-eyed products with something close to creativity. And in 2024, copywriters have seen their careers, seemingly doomed by AI, revived as humanizers of synthetic marketing content that doesn’t pass an algorithmic test, much less a quality human test. The value of human creators is starting to become apparent to the companies that sought to crush them, now that even machines are no longer fooled by AI. But editing bot writing is boring: will writers eventually say no? And will readers join them?
The London premiere of The Last Screenwriter, a film written by ChatGPT 4.0, was canceled in June 2024 after the cinema received more than 200 complaints about the film’s very premise.
Publishers who focus on people will attract the best writers and, ultimately, the most lucrative audiences. With many media outlets offering little or no compensation to freelance writers, these humans will be reluctant to sell their souls so cheaply to train AI to replace them. Publishers who sell their authors will see their talent go elsewhere and, with them, their readership.
In a world flooded with derivative automated nonsense, human writers will allow readers to take a breath of air, like a green park in a polluted city. Instead of being wiped out by AI, in 2025 we will see a recognition of the inherent value of quality human writing, and perhaps human writers can begin to assert their worth.
