Each day, millions of people worldwide spend hours consuming material created by others. Reading daily newspapers, managing emails, checking newsletters, skimming articles, scrolling through social media feeds and then settling down at night to get stuck into a novel. Most of us spend a large part of our day consuming words without ever questioning who, or what, created them.
Until recently, that question never needed to be asked. Whether what we are reading is human writing or AI-generated content was never something readers had to consider. Today, it is.
Sometimes, it’s fairly easy to spot when something we are reading has been generated by artificial intelligence.
You’ll often see it in the daily wave of “thought leadership” posts on LinkedIn, where perfectly structured paragraphs explain the future of everything, yet somehow leave you wondering what was actually said.
Perhaps you have seen an image on social media where a group of world leaders are celebrating their supposed success together on a yacht.
Or you might be positive that the overly enthusiastic online product description you’re reading, which appears to have been repeated for each product on an e-commerce website, has been generated by a machine that has, in fact, never even seen the product up close.
However, those obvious examples are becoming the exception rather than the rule.
Unfortunately, AI tools have become so advanced that it’s become increasingly difficult for the average reader to tell whether something was created by a human or generated by AI.
Why It’s Getting Harder to Spot AI Content vs Human Writing
These days, AI systems have the ability to produce written material that sounds convincingly human, even when it isn’t.
With only a short prompt, these tools can generate emails, articles, blog posts, newsletters and even entire novels in seconds. The output is so well structured and fluent that it often appears to have the voice of a real human behind it, leaving even experienced readers struggling to tell the difference.
Given how fast this material can be produced, not to mention that it can be created at a fraction of the cost to online platforms that once relied on paying freelancers and writers, it’s unsurprising that so many online spaces are being flooded with enormous volumes of articles and posts.
To make matters even more challenging, online marketplaces are also being inundated with AI-generated books and guides, while social media platforms are being accused of having more commentary and posts written by bots than real people.
The problem for readers is that these days there is no reliable way to determine who or what is behind this material. There is also no universal system that reliably signals to readers whether something they are reading was generated by a machine or written by a human.
While some organisations have introduced their own policies or disclosures, there is currently no widely adopted framework that provides clear and consistent transparency.
Unfortunately, AI can be prompted in minutes to create compelling fabrications that distort reality. The consequence is that readers are often left guessing, and what’s become increasingly problematic is that we now find ourselves having to question whether what we are reading is fact or fiction.
The flow-on effect of this situation is that anyone who believes it’s important to support human journalists, writers or authors now runs the risk of unknowingly reading and sharing work produced entirely by machines. And while this might line the pockets of the person writing the prompt, it has also blurred the lines between what appears to be the result of human creativity and what isn’t.
What Makes Human Writing Different
Most people have a favourite writer. Perhaps it’s an author whose books we return to time and time again, or a journalist whose column we regularly read. These writers have earned our trust and as such, we respect their opinions and worldview.
We may even follow a certain blogger, or receive a newsletter, where the writing makes us laugh, and when reading the content we feel like their words resonate with how we think and feel.
There’s a reason why, these creators have cemented our loyalty to their work, and it’s often less to do with just the subject matter. What builds this loyalty is the faith we have in knowing there’s a real person behind the words; a human who has a distinct voice and shares their thoughts, experiences and perspective.
Human writing carries a sense of individuality. These writers often write from personal experiences, and have a way of relaying a story, or sharing information that speaks to us because we can see parts of their personality shine through the content.
This is why we may often turn to multiple writers to explore differing perspectives on a topic, the appeal being that no two voices ever sound exactly the same. And when a writer expresses a strong opinion that aligns with our values, a sense of trust and connection is built between readers and the person behind the page.
It’s these qualities that often give readers the confidence in recognising human-created writing when they encounter it. These relatable experiences, even when debating a strong opinion, when it’s relayed in a familiar voice can make a piece feel unmistakably human.
Yet, as generated-AI continues to advance, even these once tell-tale signs are becoming increasingly difficult to trust.
Why Intuition Alone No Longer Identifies Human Writing
Generated AI systems are evolving at a frighteningly rapid rate, and with every improvement their output is becoming remarkably good at mimicking the qualities readers have always associated with human writing.
It’s common knowledge that these AI systems were trained on enormous collections of books, academic papers, articles, websites and essays written by real people. The implications being the challenge we are facing now; that in human-created works being used for training data, the AI outputs sound human.
Another concern is that as these systems continued to improve, they fine-tuned the ability to replicate human voices, writing structures and even storytelling techniques, which have made it that much more difficult for people to reliably tell the difference between what is human-work and AI-generated.
With so much content being so easily generated, supporting human creators is becoming increasingly difficult, yet remains more important than ever.
You may have noticed that it’s fast become the norm for readers to make unfounded accusations of creators using AI everywhere we look. And, it’s difficult to blame them when people are having to rely on guesswork to differentiate between human-written work and a machine’s output.
Readers deserve to know who created what they are consuming, without being regaled to the role of a detective each time they open an article, pick up a book or read a newsletter. And with such a flood of AI-generated content, masquerading as human-created, instead of speculating about who or what is behind the words, we need a clearer signal that tells us where creative work comes from.
A Clear Signal for Human Creators: ProudlyHuman™ Certification
These days, its not enough to take a human-creators’ statement of human authorship at face value. The time has arrived where provenance must accompany everything, particularly if we are committed to supporting human creators.
With prolific AI usage continuing to spread through almost every aspect of our lives, a verifiable trust sign of human authorship allows creators to stand behind their work with confidence.
Understanding the importance of ensuring human-created works, remain human, is what led to the creation of the global certification body Proudly Human.
ProudlyHuman™ verifies human-created content across all creative industries, from books and music to art and beyond. Through certifying human creativity in specific ways tailored to each industry, they provide audiences exactly this kind of trust signal that provides clarity for people who desire to confidently choose consuming human-created content.
ProudlyHuman™ offers a rigorous certification process for human-created works, starting with declarations from the author and all collaborators such as co-authors and illustrators. What continues is a comprehensive evaluation using a variety tools, followed by post-publication verification.
For creators who want to prove that their work meets a clear standard of being human-created, this certification process, once approved, means that their work can carry a ProudlyHuman™ certification trust mark. It’s this trust mark that signals to audiences, that the work is of verified human origin.
For anyone who still values human creativity, the ProudlyHuman™ trust mark removes the need for unfair accusations or guesswork. This way, instead of speculating whether the words on the page were generated by a machine, readers can make an informed choice about the kinds of creative works they want to support.
However, while verification helps restore transparency, there is still a long way to go. In order for human-created works to thrive amongst the AI-system’s outputs, audiences still play a powerful role in influencing what type of content rises to the top.
How Readers Can Support Human Creators
With AI outputs muddying every corner of the creative industry, the decisions audiences make about what they choose to purchase, subscribe to, share and consume, influences what the future of creative work will look like.
Human creativity has always been the way that people transform the knowledge and experiences into something wonderful to share. The creative work is often deeply personal, and before audiences see the finished product, the creator has had to battle through a myriad of emotions, drafts and edits.
This is why human creativity deserves to be celebrated and clearly visible.
The best way to champion and support human creators is ensure you are choosing to consume works which are able to clearly identify their human origin. Rather than relying on guesswork, whenever you see anything that’s been verified as human-created, the choice becomes simple; you know exactly who was behind the work and where it came from.
Human creators are currently fighting for visibility against AI-systems. These AI-systems are producing content at a fraction of the cost to paying a human, and if we as a society stop supporting creators whose work we value, we will end up only having machine generated output to consume.
If you want to live in a world where human journalists, authors and writers continue producing thoughtful reporting, informative articles and valuable commentary, then you need to subscribe and share their works.
Should you discover an up and coming artist, or listen to a new musician who’s music you can’t get out of your mind, you must do your help and share the details. supporting these voices, help ensure that human perspectives, and creativity, across all industries, remain visible amongst so much machine-generated material.
Writers have always relied on the power of trusted word of mouth recommendations; by forwarding a newsletter, recommending a book, or sharing an article written by a real person, you are helping these creators find new audiences, and amplify the creatives that deserve to be shared.
Furthermore, and most importantly, in the absence of any government leadership providing ethical guidelines surrounding AI use, it’s up to us to encourage greater transparency from the platforms we use daily by requesting clearer signals about where the content we consume originates from.
With machines now able to generate endless volumes of everything, choosing to support human creators becomes more than just a simple preference. It’s now the only way of preserving the perspectives, experiences and, stories, that only real people, with real tales can bring to a page.
It’s Time to Choose Human Creativity
Human creativity hasn’t yet completely been eradicated by AI-systems.
There will always be people who will express their experiences, share ideas, investigate the truth and write stories. There will always be wonderfully creative people who will document what it is to be human through words, music, film and art.
The problem we are facing right now is that we audiences are increasingly being influenced by material without knowing where the work truly comes from.
ProudlyHuman’s™ mission is to help restore that transparency.
By verifying human authorship and providing a clear trust signal, audiences can take back their right to choose and support all kinds of human creativity.
The demand for transparency starts with you. The future of human creativity depends on it.