What AI does to a writing career

Dashed off ideas on the demise of proper writing

This is how a writing life reaches its climax. Not with the publication of a masterpiece in your dotage, followed by adulation and peaceful retirement. Rather, a slow slide towards a world of AI generated slop, slashed budgets and fewer and fewer requests for your services.

In the past 18 months I’ve seen three main writing jobs come and go. One saw my services replaced by generative AI, only for a partial climbdown from the client and the return of some (but not all) of my work. Another was an enjoyable editing job that has reached its natural conclusion. AI is, of course, taking up the slack. It’s not personal. But then isn’t that the whole point of artificial intelligence?

When I sat down to complete my taxes for the year between April 2024 and March 2025, I discovered my earnings had dropped by 35% thanks to AI driving a train through my well crafted career. Let’s put a real figure on that. £20,000. Not even during Covid did I, at that point a full time travel writer, get pelted so badly. And at least then I had a SEISS grant to take up the slack and help me break even.

It’s hard not to be bitter. I began my journalism career as a student in 2001. Just as magazines were reaching their last hurrah before the internet turned print into a niche concern. I’ve weathered all of the storms - blogs, the 2008 financial crash, the endless budget cuts, the pandemic. But AI is the final boss I cannot conquer. At this point, I can’t even be arsed to try.

Print is, unsurprisingly, the only thing that sustains me. The occasional well paid gig for a Sunday newspaper, another guide book for the wonderful Hoxton Mini Press, a travel gig here and there depending on whether the client wants a fully trained journalist or an influencer with a phone and a willingness to spout platitudes.

Bitter? Fuck yes, I am. I worked my arse for this career. No one in my family was part of the media circus. I didn’t go to private school and know an editor who could find me a way in. I wrote because I loved it and then made a job out of it because of my unending motivation to make it happen and now, thanks to the death of critical faculty and the urge for more and more slop to feed the machines my career is dying a death.

I can reflect on amazing work life so far. I’ve written for every publication I could have dreamed of as a kid coming up. I’ve published memoir and written guides. I’ve travelled all over the world and been paid for it. Now though, despite 20 plus years of experience, I’m still fighting for scraps and I’m tired of it.

In recent years I’ve stopped playing the game. No Facebook. No Twitter. No Instagram. No TikTok. To this weary 43-year-old, it all strikes me as fatuous bollocks. I want long form, messy ideas. I want things that aren’t glib. I want views from experts. I want books. I want proper pieces of journalism, driven by curiosity rather than dogma.

This may seem naive, but I dream of these things. Would I be more successful if I was ‘out there’? Maybe. But I know my mental health would suffer to the point of it not being worthwhile. I want to believe there’s a world where people value the skills I have. Where writing, and art, and passion are not just hobbies but respected interests that are worthy of reward.

Put simply, I’ve had it. It’s time to do something new. Garden. Teach. Who knows? All I know is my career with the written word is over as I know it.