AI Is a Friend, Not a Replacement

Blogging Outside Format. A manifesto, post #2/14

If you're using AI to write your blog — you're not an author. You're a prompt operator. A middleman between an algorithm and the publish button. That much is obvious.

And there's truth in it. AI slop is easy to spot. It's everywhere: LinkedIn, Instagram, Telegram channels. You open a post, read one paragraph — and you already know. Not "clearly written." I mean you know it wasn't a person. Smooth, correct, not a single rough edge. Like a plastic fruit: looks perfect, impossible to bite into.

61% of organizations use AI not for quality — for volume reduction. Not to make things better. To make more things. Five posts instead of one. Ten reels instead of two. And every single one is forgettable. AI doesn't produce something extraordinary, it produces something adequate. And adequate isn't neutral. Adequate is disappointment. You subscribed to a human being and got a text autoresponder.

The rush or the assembly line

Here's the fork in the road. If you started a blog because something burns inside you, because you need to say something — why would you generate the part that's actually the point? You sit down to write, you run the prompt — and the rush is gone. You're not an author anymore. You're a dispatcher.

And if you're trying to make quick money — that's not a blog, that's a media operation. And quick won't work. Wanting money is fine. But treating people like idiots by feeding them AI slop dressed up as personal writing — that's something else. Maybe I'm old and teenagers are cashing out on AI generation. I'll allow it. But that's not blogging. That's a conveyor belt.

I'm in the first camp. I don't hand the rush over to AI. AI handles the tedious stuff.

A prosthetic for a missing leg

I'm not some aristocrat. I grew up poor. I've been working since I was fourteen. Smart enough, but there wasn't much time for formal learning. I live in Spain, I write in three languages — and none of them is a hundred percent mine. My Spanish isn't perfect. My English isn't perfect either. And that's where a different story begins.

When you're a native speaker with thirty years of practice — AI is a prosthetic replacing a healthy leg. When you're an immigrant with three languages and none of them perfect — it's a prosthetic for a leg that was never there. That's not a minor distinction.

AI is a friend to me. One who tries to get my thoughts across in a native speaker's language as accurately as possible.

The ideas are mine. The editing is his.

Here's how it works. The ideas are mine. The structure is mine. The metaphors are mine. The anger, the doubt, the vulnerability — all mine. Then I ask Claude to make the text denser. Find a sharper word in a specific place. Replace a metaphor that feels weak. From 2010 to 2020 I read a lot — so I write from memory. But memory isn't perfect, so Perplexity checks the facts.

This isn't copy-paste. It's editing. Like working with a live editor, only faster and without the social awkwardness.

AI-generated text can be full of convincing nonsense — that's real. So I don't consult AI on topics I don't understand. Fact-checking every claim in an unfamiliar field is exhausting. And pointless: if you don't understand the subject, you won't catch where the machine lied.

What to write about — that's my call

But there's one thing AI genuinely cannot do. No model, no prompt, no amount of money.

It cannot decide what to write about.

AI is for people who find blogging a burden. Who need to fill a content calendar, cover the grid, report back to the marketing team. But then why have a blog? The whole point was to enjoy it.

If a blog is a commercial project — hire writers and let them use whatever they want. That's honest. But if a blog is your party, your diary without a lock, your place where you say what you actually think — then AI can help you say it louder. It can't say it for you.

Who's standing behind the text

I use AI every day. I write with its help in three languages. I ask it to find a word I know but can't pull up. I ask it to check whether I'm lying about the statistics. I ask it to translate my anger into English without losing the edge.

But I've never once asked it to figure out what I should be angry about.

That's the difference. Not whether you use AI or not. But who decides — you or the prompt. Who picks the topic — you or the algorithm. Who's standing behind the text — a real person with their own scars, or a language model with zero lived experience.

I run the blog. AI is my tool, my translator, my friend. But the author is me. And as long as that's true, the text is alive. Even when the machine helped make it.