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It\u2019s a familiar feeling: You start a text message, and your phone\u2019s auto-complete function suggests several choices for the next word, ranging from banal to hilarious. \u201cI love \u2026\u201d you, or coffee? Or you\u2019re finishing an email, and merely typing the word \u201cLet\u201d prompts your app to suggest \u201cLet me know if you have any questions\u201d in light gray text.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Predictive language technologies have become so routine<\/a>\u2014baked into smartphones, email services, and chatbots\u2014that we barely notice them anymore. But they raise a difficult question: What happens to a writer\u2019s unique voice when AI routinely completes their thoughts\u2014or generates them altogether from scratch?<\/p>\n As the chair of a large English department\u2014and as a scholar who researches the effects of predictive writing<\/a>\u2014I\u2019ve witnessed firsthand the challenges that generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude pose for individual expression.<\/p>\n This technology has been incorporated into the writing process<\/a> so fully that it\u2019s almost impossible to imagine encountering a scene from the not-so-distant past: a writer, alone, with a pen and a piece of paper, wrestling with how to best translate their ideas, arguments, and stories into something legible and interesting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As many scholars have noted, though, this vision of writing was never fully accurate.<\/p>\n Essays have always incorporated guidance from teachers, professors, or writing tutors. A friend might give feedback, or your favorite novelist\u2019s turn of phrase might offer inspiration. The language we use is never fully<\/a> \u201cours,\u201d but draws on millions of sources absorbed over the course of our lives.<\/p>\n Just as it\u2019s a myth to imagine that writers compose in a vacuum, there has never been a clear line between genuine human expression versus machine-generated text. As scholars have pointed out<\/a>, we have been using machines to communicate for a long time. Every technological development\u2014from the quill pen and the typewriter to the word processor\u2014has brought with it changes in how humans express themselves.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nPredictive text leads to predictive writing<\/h2>\n