I usually give two different AI's the same prompt for nuance. My problem is still that they tend to drivel on, as if a one word answer is not good enough. Still I would rather have them than not.
The thing about an editor is that if you're not careful, your voice is lost. That's fine if the publication you're writing for has a distinctive voice or you have a specific style in mind; this article [1] describes the "New Yorker" voice as an example:
>The New Yorker sort of voice—or rather, the New Yorker voice I was using—is one that sounds on top, or ahead, of the material under discussion. It is a voice of intelligent curiosity; it implies that the writer has synthesized a great deal of information; it confidently takes readers by the hand, introduces them to surprising characters, recounts dramatic scenes, and leads them through key ideas and issues. The voice narrates the material in the first-person and describes the researcher conducting the research, encountering people, reacting to situations, thinking thoughts. The voice is smart-sounding. It is an effective voice for a lot of long-form journalism...
The "default" LLM voice isn't one that I find particularly appealing. For lack of a better term, it has these "zingers" every third or fourth sentence that, if you were writing a spammy piece, would be bolded/italicized. It also reads like the LLM has no faith in the reader's intelligence, or that it's trying too hard to make you feel smart.
This article has that feel to it. I'm not saying it was written by an LLM; I trust that the author isn't lying about only using it for editing. But it has that same style and voice that spammy LinkedIn/Facebook posts have.
[1]: https://www.publicbooks.org/ditching-the-new-yorker-voice/
senkora•1mo ago
It becomes a problem when it is obvious that the LLM had a much bigger contribution to the writing, which is something that we do see a lot on posts here.
This is the same as LLM-assisted PRs (generally fine) and LLM-authored PRs (harmful).