WHY DO YOU WRITE WHEN THERE’S AI?

01

INTERVIEWER

Why do you write when there’s AI?

YASMINE

Maybe the problem is already in the question: I say that I write, but what I really do is tell stories.

Writing and storytelling are not the same thing. Writing is one of the ways I can tell a story.

I can produce a perfectly correct sentence without telling anything at all. And I can build a story through a choice, a cut, an order, an image, even through what I decide not to say.

That is where the work is for me.

Take a phone call.

In real life, it can end with five minutes of “bye, yes, sure, speak soon, bye-bye”.

In a story, at some point you cut.

Not because reality is not like that, but because you are not transcribing it.

You are constructing plausibility and, above all, you are directing the reader’s attention.

You decide how much time to give a moment, what to leave out, where to stop, which piece of information should arrive first and which later. You can compress three years into one line and stretch a single second across ten pages.

So, if by “writing” we mean nothing more than producing a grammatically correct sequence of sentences, then yes: that part has become enormously easier to automate.

But I have never thought that was all writing meant.

To me, the text is the visible material. The story is what you do with that material.

INTERVIEWER

But that is convenient. Before, “writing” meant writing. Now that a machine can do it, you are broadening the definition to keep everything else inside it.

YASMINE

No. I am reaffirming that “writing” has always meant more than one thing.

There is the physical act of writing and there is composition: choosing, ordering, cutting, deciding what to show and how. The fact that a machine can now handle part of the physical act does not mean that, until yesterday, the word referred only to that act.

If you choose to call only the physical production of words “writing”, fine: that part is now much easier to automate. But let us not pretend that, until yesterday, a writer was simply the person who hit the keys hardest.

02

INTERVIEWER

All right. But is what you call “composing”, “designing”, “giving direction” not simply a more elegant way of saying prompt?

YASMINE

No. Full stop.

A prompt is an instruction. It can specify the tone, the audience, how many alternatives to produce, which words to avoid, which structure to follow.

Direction is something else. It is why that text needs to exist, what it needs to do, what you want to protect, what you are willing to sacrifice. And it does not mean you have to know everything before you begin: sometimes the direction becomes clearer as you write.

AI can surprise me. It can show me a connection I had not seen, bring me material, suggest a route I had not considered. I have no interest in pretending it is a passive dictionary or that it only does what I had already thought of myself. It becomes part of the process.

But nothing gets done entirely alone anyway.

Inside a book there are other books, people, situations, memories, encounters, discussions, things seen in the street, sentences heard ten years earlier and perhaps forgotten. If every influence had to become a reference, the references would be longer than the book.

AI is more active than a book, because it responds, transforms, makes connections. But the fact that something enters the process does not automatically mean it takes responsibility for the direction.

In ghostwriting, for example, AI is involved mainly in research. I can use it to widen the field, check things, compare sources, look for contradictions, ask me questions. I write the text.

03

INTERVIEWER

Why should I choose you rather than anyone else using the same AI?

YASMINE

For the same reason that, before AI, it was not enough to look for “someone who can write”, “a designer” or “a programmer”.

If possessing a skill were enough, why have a selection process? I need a designer? Any one is as good as another. I need a programmer? Any one is as good as another.

This is not a management game.

You do not give people 80 points in writing, 65 in research, 90 in design and then choose the one with the best stats.

Of course, in the end, you are choosing me as well. Since when have skills been sold as though they existed on their own?

Skills are part of who I am, but the package is Yasmine.

To me, the idea of a person as a list of skills is rather archaic, if not primitive: writing, design, research, problem-solving, and on through the tick boxes.

They do not hire “a designer”. They hire Yasmine the designer, or another person who is a designer. And it is not the same thing.

That is also why I have tried to build my CV, and especially my website, differently: not just saying what I can do, but showing how I think, what questions I ask myself, how I approach a problem, how I connect things.

Two people can have the same skills and use them differently. They can carry out the same research and consider different things relevant. They can receive the same brief and see two different problems.

Skills are components. I am the system.

AI becomes part of that system. It does not replace it. Full stop.

04

INTERVIEWER

OK, but why should any of this matter to the reader? If they like the AI’s text more than yours, why should they care who wrote it or how you got there?

YASMINE

It need not matter at all. They may prefer the AI’s text. And that is fine.

Being human is not a certificate of quality.

Nor is living consistently with what you produce.

Caravaggio could revolutionise the way light and shadow were used, making bodies emerge from the darkness, and kill a man. Dostoevsky could describe the compulsion to gamble with astonishing precision and remain in its grip. Rousseau could write Émile, one of the most influential works on education, and entrust his own children to a foundling hospital.

You do not necessarily have to know how to live what you can see.

Likewise, the fact that AI is involved in a process is not enough, on its own, to say that the person using it does not know how to do what they are doing.

The point is not that every single sentence has to originate entirely from the person writing it. Think of assignments, articles, research. Back in 2020, when ChatGPT did not yet exist, at Holden I took an exam in which I had to create a museum panel connecting several works within an imaginary exhibition.

We could search online for information and descriptions of the works. I chose fate as the theme, decided how the works were connected, built the route through them and directed those materials towards a specific thought. It is possible that I reused or reworked some wording found in museum descriptions, and today I could not even say with certainty which.

This does not mean that I did not write that text. The research, selection, connections, structure, theme and direction were as much part of the writing as the wording of the individual sentences.

And yet, with the advent of AI, we have often started reasoning as if the fact that a sentence did not originate entirely from the fingers of the person whose name is on the text were enough to call the entire rest of the process into question.

I think of Peter Jackson’s King Kong.

Andy Serkis played Kong through performance capture, but during the scenes with Naomi Watts he was also physically on set, outside the final frame, placing himself in her eyeline and acting in front of her. Peter Jackson said that his presence helped Watts and the other actors a great deal, as well as helping to build the character itself. The viewer, however, did not need to know any of this: they saw Kong.¹

This does not mean the process does not matter. It certainly matters to the person creating and can affect the result. It means the audience is not obliged to know about it in order to judge what is in front of them.

I have also run much smaller tests: an original text of mine and an AI rewrite, without saying which was which. Preferences are divided. It has happened more than once.

And that is fine too.

When I write, I can decide that a woman looks “as if she has swallowed the whole of Pandora’s box, hope included”. I can decide to dwell on the fact that Leda “controls the stream with painful precision”.

Why talk about Leda’s piss?

Because she cannot even pee in peace without controlling herself.

These are not better choices because they are mine. They are the way I have decided to make the reader look.

05

INTERVIEWER

If you use AI so much at work, why do you not also use it to write your stories? Is that not a contradiction?

YASMINE

No. I simply do not need it there.

At work, I feel a different responsibility. There are objectives, deadlines, people I am accountable to, things to check, the fear of missing a piece or not having considered enough possibilities. AI also helps me manage that pressure: research, comparison, structure, questions, alternatives.

When I write a story of my own, that pressure is not there.

I do not have to optimise the process, get there first or prove anything to anyone. I can get lost, take a wrong turn, spend half an hour on a sentence, delete everything the next day.

And above all, I enjoy doing it.

I keep writing my stories because I want to do it myself. Not because there is anything wrong with doing it differently.

It is my choice, not a principle.

06

INTERVIEWER

Then why do you not consider AI a co-author?

YASMINE

I do not think everything that comes from me is pure, isolated or untouched by anything else. Quite the opposite: nothing gets done entirely alone.

If every influence became a co-author, I would have to include among the authors the books I have read, films, music, conversations, the people who changed my mind, those who made me angry, perhaps even a bad day or the wind.

AI is different from a book because it reacts, responds, transforms the material. It is a more active presence in the process. But, for me, the author is the person who takes responsibility for the intended meaning and the decisions that build it.

That is the definition I work with. I have no interest in turning it into a universal law of authorship.

07

INTERVIEWER

If AI makes what once seemed like talent accessible to many people, is it not possible that talent was overrated precisely because it was rare?

YASMINE

Yes, some of what we used to call talent may have been overrated precisely because it was rare. And that does not scandalise me.

Sometimes talent is treated almost as a survival trait: I am exceptional at this, you are not, so part of my value depends on your not knowing how to do it.

That does not interest me very much.

When I know how to do something, I notice that small satellite abilities also develop around it. A way of observing, a sensitivity, a technique, a connection that I might not even have named on its own. And those abilities can meet someone else’s.

I can do this. You can do that. What happens if we bring them together?

If it is not multiplication, at least it is addition.

So, if AI makes a previously rare ability more accessible, I do not see why I should defend rarity as though it were a moral value. I am much more interested in what we do with that ability once it becomes available.

08

INTERVIEWER

If one day AI really could do your job better than you, what would you be needed for?

YASMINE

If it really understood the client better than I do, grasped what they cannot put into words, asked the right questions, identified contradictions, researched, designed, selected, wrote, edited and arrived at a better result, then I might not be needed in that function.

I have no interest in inventing a human superiority to save my job.

Nor does AI need to be conscious or “human” to replace a function. If the function is performed better, the problem exists.

Then there is another level, which for me is the person as a system: my skills do not live in isolation; they come into contact, cross-pollinate, short-circuit. That is where I work with AI today, inside that system, not outside it.

I HAVE NEVER THOUGHT OF MYSELF ONLY AS SOMEONE WHO PRODUCES TEXTS. NOR AS A MERE LIST OF SKILLS.