Let me start with a declaration.
As an editor, I do not use generative and/or agentic artificial intelligence (GenAI), for the following reasons:
It’s been proven that the intellectual property rights of thousands of creators were wholly violated in the development of GenAI programs and products. Most have not been compensated and none, as far as I know, have received an acknowledgement or apology.
Manuscripts created using GenAI are most likely ineligible for legal protection under copyright law, given that they cannot truthfully be claimed as someone’s original work.
That said, I have worked with authors who have used GenAI early in their creative process but not in the actual writing of the manuscript, and their authorship is usually evident in the work’s narrative or authorial voice and in their unique and original writing style. These authors have told me they use GenAI programs to help organise the thoughts, notes or artefacts driving the foundation of their manuscript – for example, prompting the GenAI tool to collate themes or events (or something else) from years of diary entries – and then writing the manuscript from scratch. This seems to be a safe and logical approach. And they have a paper trail… evidence that the work is authentically their own creation.
Beware the shiny bauble of GenAI
These days I’m getting more and more enquiries from people who won’t admit (to me or, I guess, themselves) the extent of their reliance on GenAI. On the face of it, the manuscript looks great – no typos or obvious grammatical errors. But take a closer look and it’s like a shiny bauble with little or no substance; it cracks into messy pieces the moment you put any pressure on it. With writing that pressure is, of course, a critical reading of the work.
For me, it’s heartbreaking to delve into a story that has a promising or intriguing premise and to find words, phrases, sentences, even whole paragraphs and chapters, that rely on the typical elements we recognise as the hallmarks of AI-generated or “AI-edited” text, such as:
sanitised prose burdened by routine optimism and a lack of friction;
repetitive use of a limited number of abstractions, verbs, nouns and adjectives;
syntax dominated by monotonous, formulaic sentence structures and tropes, such as excessive use of triplets and contrastive framing (“not x, but y”; “it’s not a challenge, it’s an opportunity”); and
overwriting, padding and puffery that makes little sense.
For the reader, this kind of prose is exhausting to read, and that is detrimental to reader engagement.
An editor I find it deflating and disheartening, having built up my expectations over the years of my career of developing quality works for literary markets that are hungry for new voices.
As readers and writers, we all know this quite instinctively, which is why so many enquirers write to ask in some roundabout way if I can humanise their AI slop.
And I’m not the only one. Professional editors are increasingly asking ourselves questions like:
What is the state of writing when you can use an AI tool to write,
then pay someone else to make it look like you didn’t use AI?
This very question was recently posed in a professional forum online, and the responses ranged from demoralised to a desire to hasten towards retirement from the profession.
So what, you might posit, if professional editors are pushed to retirement or towards other professions and jobs? Wouldn’t that be a good thing? Writing and editing with GenAI could be free or might cost a pittance of what you’d have to pay a human professional. And thowe out-of-work editors could be steered towards jobs and industries that appreciate their knowledge, experience and expertise.
A false economy
What isn’t immediately evident, though, is that while GenAI might be useful in some contexts and for some tasks, overall they are creating more work – and more frustration – as human editors are tasked with fixing text created with the help of GenAI, particularly “in the areas of flow, internal consistency and logic, and fact checking”. I’ve seen estimates that human editing of AI-generated or AI-edited text can take 30–50 per cent longer than editing of text written by a human.
Aside from this (current) effect of pushing up the cost of quality editing, by eliminating or reducing the use of human editors the publishing industry and our society would lose a great deal more than our jobs and incomes.
For a start, we would lose the:
Structural layers of editing craft (of which there are many), from the editor identifying the potential in a manuscript and matching it to a specific readership, to harnessing the editorial judgement and holistic memory they bring to developmental editing, so as to ensure the book will reach the right market.
Editorial standards, accountability and trust built over decades and centuries. Readers would have to rely on “AI-generated or AI-edited content [that] frequently stumbles on deep logic, bias detection, verification, and nuanced fact-checking, risking a rise in undetected errors”.
Cultural subtext and emotional resonance that human editors bring to the table – and GenAI cannot.
Empathy and collaboration that underpins the author–editor relationship (ditto).
Human-to-human connection that remains at the core of storytelling and communication.
But what to do?
There is no doubt that GenAI is changing the nature of writing and professional editing.
It is also demanding that we consider the fundamental questions of why we humans write (and read).
Writing a book for publication is not only potentially cathartic or tapping into our essential creativity as humans: it is a process in which the parts may be greater than the whole. By which I mean that the “journey” of writing can be of greater value to the writer than its destination – the book that ends up being published.
Ask yourself:
Why am I writing this manuscript?
Will the book that is published from it be truly representative of my own, original voice?
Does this matter to me?
Can/should I use GenAI?
Of course, GenAI can be useful, but don’t use it to write your book, or to replace your collaboration with a professional editor.
Because:
References
“Editor VS AI: Is editing a dead career?”, blogpost by Right Angels and Polo Bears, accessed 5 November 2026.
Wikipedia: “AI Slop”, accessed 5 November 2026
“Will AI replace editors? A book editor’s honest answer”, blogpost by Sage House Editorial, accessed 5 November 2026.
Suggested citation for this post
Otmar, R. (2026). A matter of principle – assessing and editing texts created with the help of AI (6 Nov.). Viewed at https://reneeotmar.com.au/blog