When Everyone Can Write, Having Something to Say Matters More

· Paige Karchmar · AI / Branding

A new Pew report says more than a third of English webpages published since ChatGPT show signs of AI authorship, and honestly, nobody sees that faster than college students do.

College students are probably one of the first groups to really understand what AI has done to writing. A decent paragraph is not hard to produce anymore. A discussion post can sound polished in seconds. A club announcement, an internship email, a caption: all of it can be cleaned up instantly.

So a new Pew Research Center finding did not really shock me. More than one-third of English-language webpages published since ChatGPT launched showed significant signs of AI authorship.

The Internet Got Easier to Write

That does not mean it got more interesting. Those are two very different things, and I think we are all about to find out how different.

I see a version of this on campus already. Everyone has access to the same tools, the same templates, and increasingly the same polished language. So the things that actually stand out are usually more specific: a funny observation, a strong opinion, a story that clearly happened to you, or a way of saying something that sounds like an actual person typed it.

Brands Are Walking Into the Same Room

AI can help marketers write faster, make more versions, and fill more channels. But if everyone can do that, being able to produce a lot of competent content is not much of an advantage. It is just table stakes with a nicer font.

The advantage becomes having something other people cannot generate from the same prompt. A real customer insight. Original research. Access. Expertise. A recognizable point of view that someone would recognize even without the logo attached.

The Question Is Changing

For marketers, the AI question may be shifting from how much more can we make to why would anyone care about what we make.

College students already know the answer to that one. You can tell when something sounds like everyone else.