The Myth of the One-Click AI-generated Masterpiece
There is this strange myth going around cyberspace that content generated by AI—text or images—just materializes out of the machine all done and ready to go. It’s a lovely notion: type in a couple of words and click a button and there you are with instant perfection. Reality is very different and more infuriating.
If you’ve ever fiddled around with AI art or chatbot-written material, you’re already familiar with it—something really good doesn’t come easily.
Take text-to-image AI for example. It’s a sandbox of creativity and it’s also a kingdom of bizarre mistakes. A prompt as simple as “a majestic lion on a cliff at sunset” should be no problem. But what you might get instead is a somewhat feline creature with three tails, melted eyes, and paws that look like some Lovecraftian abomination. It’s clear that writing a good prompt is an art form unto itself. The right words, right phrasing, right amount of specificity—every word matters. And even when you get it all right, the AI can still mess up your vision in ways that are both amusing and infuriating.
And let's say by sheer chance you do capture a near-perfect photo. Your work is still not finished. AI-generated images, even excellent ones, typically require retouching. Artifacts creep in unwantedly, colors need to be adjusted, shadows need to be tweaked.
A photorealistic AI photo sometimes takes more post-processing than a normal photo.
Ever tried to retouch an AI-generated human hand? You'd think it would be easy to do—just delete a couple of fingers. But then you notice that you need to reconstruct the entire hand because no amount of Photoshop sorcery can save a palm that has been rendered like a crumpled paper sculpture.
Now, this is the kicker: AI-written content has the exact same flaw. Chatbots are waved around like wands—just type in a topic, hit return, and cut and paste what is produced. No proofreading, no rewriting, no coherence checking. AI-written content is no different than AI-written graphics: a best-case rough draft. It’s usable, perhaps, but it lacks that human touch. The flow can be clunky, language generic, and worst of all, it can be flat-out wrong. And still, individuals post AI-written content on blogs, social media platforms, even professional documents without even a cursory glance.
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Think about it: If post-production is necessary for AI-generated images with deformed faces and six-fingered hands, why can't AI-written text demand the same amount of attention?
Writing is not just a function of stringing words on paper—writing is about rhythm, subtlety, voice. AI can get you halfway there, but it is not going to polish your writing for you. That is your job. The difference between an AI-helped article that is a hit and one that is a miss is human revision. An AI photo needs an artist’s hand to go from almost great to breathtaking; AI-written text needs an editor’s eye to make it readable.
Ultimately, AI is a tool and not a replacement for creativity.
It can help you, but it can't do everything. If you're designing images or writing content, it doesn't end with what the AI comes up with—a product—the moment it spits it out. Post-production is where human skill makes machine output share-worthy. If you're not going to do that work, though, then enjoy your two-headed dogs and typo-ridden blog posts. The rest of us will be busy editing them.
Would you like to learn more about AI-generated content? This is my article about AI-generated versus Human Content.