Writers Are Training the Machines That Might Replace Them. What Happens Next?
Work Trends | New Stardom
In a recent UN panel on the future of journalism, experts warned that artificial intelligence could soon generate more media content than human writers.
Here’s the thing, many of those writers are the ones feeding the machine.
In 2024, freelance journalist Arwa Mahdawi went viral for describing how she was hired to help train a chatbot. “They were essentially offering me a job training the machine that might one day replace me,” she wrote in The Guardian. Her experience isn’t unique. Across the media and marketing industries, writers are increasingly caught in the strange loop of helping AI get better, often at writing like them. The Guardian’s licensing deal with OpenAI is one example of how news organizations are directly collaborating with AI companies. We explore this shift in detail in our article, AI and the News Industry: How The Guardian’s OpenAI Deal Signals a New Era.
So where does that leave us?
Photo by hannah grace
AI Is Already Writing and Publishing Articles in 2025
Newsrooms, copywriting agencies, and corporate marketing teams are quietly deploying AI to churn out everything from press releases to Instagram captions. According to the UNRIC’s 2025 report, AI-generated journalism is clearly no longer speculative. Algorithms are writing market reports, weather updates, and sports recaps at scale. One large European outlet now uses AI to draft first versions of entire features, before passing them to human editors.
At the same time, media jobs are shrinking. The Writers Guild of America reported that over 1,300 TV writing jobs were lost in the 2023–2024 season. Content shops and publications are cutting freelance budgets, citing “efficiency tools” that do the same work faster, or, more honestly, cheaper. This is part of a wider pattern across industries, as we covered in Mass Layoffs Continue in 2025 as Major Companies Restructure.
Even tech-savvy writers are starting to feel the heat. In a piece for TechTarget, veteran technical writer Damon Garn described how AI helps with research and structuring. But he also admitted something many feel and few say: this is (writer’s) competition.
The Emotional Work of Writing Can’t Be Outsourced (Yet)
In her book Searches, author Vauhini Vara collaborated with ChatGPT to write about her sister’s death. The essay, called Ghosts, was moving, in part because Vara fed the machine deeply personal prompts. But in the updated version published in 2025, she deleted the chatbot’s ending and rewrote it herself.
“Ultimately, it’s not about what the machine can say,” she wrote. “It’s about what I need to say.”
That line gets at something we don’t talk about enough: writing isn’t just words. It’s agency. It’s context. It’s the choice of what gets said and what doesn’t.
And no matter how fast a chatbot can draft, it still can’t choose to say something brave.
The Real Job Shift Is Already Here
AI isn’t killing writing. But it is killing certain kinds of writing jobs and creating new ones.
Across job boards and LinkedIn listings, you’ll now find roles like:
Prompt Engineer
AI Content Trainer
Ethical AI Editor
Synthetic Voice Scriptwriter
Brand Language Curator
These aren’t gimmicks. Many pay six figures and require the exact skills seasoned writers already have, such as clarity, creativity, tone, and critical thinking. What’s changed isn’t the skillset. It’s the interface.
Writers Are Not Going Extinct. But Writing as a Job Is Splitting in Two
There is automated content, which we all know is fast, cheap, and often bland, mainly designed for SEO, sales, or customer service.
On the other there is high-trust, high-context writing. This includes investigative reporting, data journalism, essays, newsletters, books, ghostwriting, political messaging, and deeply human storytelling. These require judgment, empathy, and RISK, three things AI still doesn’t do well.
The challenge for writers in 2025 isn’t just learning which AI tools to use or which AI tools do the best job in writing. It’s deciding what kind of writing is still worth doing and shift their attention there.
The Machines Might Learn to Write, But We Still Know Why
In Death of an Author, a novella co-written with AI, Stephen Marche argued that human writers might become more like editors or conductors. But that metaphor only works if we’re the ones still holding the baton.
So far, we are. But the line is getting thinner.
If writing is just about producing content, then yes, AI is obviously winning. But if it’s about making meaning, asking harder questions, understanding what is real, and saying what no one else is willing to, then human writers are still irreplaceable. For more stories on AI, creativity, and the future of work, follow New Stardom where we track what’s changing, and what still matters.
If you liked this story, subscribe for The Monthly Roundup newsletter, cross-checked, and hand-curated by humans.
Have insights on work and the future of work? Submit an opinion piece to New Stardom. Love work and career books? Explore our fun workplace book collection.
New Stardom is an independent magazine covering the Future of Work, AI, and emerging job trends. Stay informed and explore more on New Stardom.
