Soul

I had a conversation recently. We were talking about reading content generated by AI. Be it a document, an email or even a Slack message.

One of them said, “It just doesn’t have ‘soul’.”

I have never thought of it that way.

But recently, when I was reading blog pieces and watching some YouTube videos, I noticed a distinct pattern that I could grasp that it was generated by a LLM.

Then, I understood what having “no soul” meant.

Especially for YouTube videos, I noticed that some YouTubers were reading off a script and all of them had a very similar sentence structure. And also a very distinct way of writing.

I recalled reading a blog post by a book publisher (I think. Also, I can’t find the link now.) and basically it was about how they couldn’t catch a book submission that was written by AI at the first glance until later. They mentioned that there was a lack of substance in world building or character building. Which was similar to, my own takeaway, having “no soul”.

Today, I would rather someone make grammatical mistakes when they are writing something and would empathise if English was not their first language. At least it’s you. And that’s what makes you human.