The Ninth Technical Writing Pillar: AI

Thank you to all regular readers. If we're not connected, be sure to follow to never miss any of the five articles about technical writing that I publish every week, Monday through Friday at 1:00 pm Eastern/10:00 am Pacific. I never miss an article drop—and neither should you!

?? Listen to the sibling podcast where hosts Daphne and Fred provide insightful analysis and additional details on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, and Spotify.

Last week, I published an article entitled "The Eight Pillars of Technical Writing." In it, I explored core elements of good technical writing, including accuracy, clarity, and terseness. What I blatantly failed to include was a ninth pillar for AI.

Sure, AI is a sometimes powerful technology in the toolbox of any technical writer. But is it truly pillar-worthy, Mr. Robbins? I say yes. Definitively and absolutely yes, in fact. Read on to learn why.

In a nutshell, AI provides a number of different IT roles—but particularly technical writing and documentation—with two things: Increases in both efficiency and productivity. Leveraged intelligently and creatively, AI can make a solopreneur look like a small company and a small company look like a larger company. It is a rare manifestation of truly doing more with less, something that is of tremendous value to any company, regardless of size or industry segment.

AI Delivers Efficiency & Productivity to Tech Writers

Recently, I performed an experiment. I used AI to write an article for me. Being the detail-oriented technical writer that I am, I carefully edited the article, changing nearly every sentence, removing some paragraphs, and adding my own paragraphs. I then generated the images, including a slick title slide, using an AI.

Now here's the fun part: Development of an article of this type would have taken me between two and three hours of raw time. But by harnessing the power of AI to both generate all of the images and produce a working draft, I was able to reduce this period to about 30 minutes.

That is a 4:1 ratio, folks. Corporations—especially the smart ones that are obsessed with efficiency and competitiveness—fantasize about operational improvements of this magnitude. Yet here it is, right in front of us.

Don't Be a Technical Writing Luddite

Remember the Luddites? In 19th century England, they rejected modern technology, claiming it would put them out of business. According to Merriam-Webster, a Luddites was "a member of any of the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woolen mills, that they believed was threatening their jobs."

The modern interpretation of Luddite is those who are opposed to technological change, particularly if they fear that it will eliminate their job. AI has an almost magical ability to elicit the hidden Luddites of our IT and technical writing communities. Recently, ProCreate CEO James Cuda told Wired, "I really [effing] hate generative AI" and stated that he thinks the technology is "ripping the humanity out of things."

Ouch. I guess haters are gonna hate. Meanwhile, Hollywood producers are beginning to leverage AI to generate backdrops for live action film actors while innovative companies like Tesla and Waymo (Google's self-driving taxi division) use AI to help achieve stunning technical achievements with their self-driving cars.

But we're technical writers, not Hollywood producers or electric car companies. How else can we use AI, beyond generating images and draft text? To learn more about the potential role of AI in enterprise technical writing, see my article "The Power of AI is Transforming Technical Writing."

Great AI Example: Ideogram

For many technical writers, generation of images and graphics is a critical part of daily deliverables. In August 2024, I learned about Ideogram, a company that has released an image generation AI. The startup, launched a year ago, has recently been receiving tons of positive press for the 2.0 version of its AI.

"Ideogram drops v2 and It's a Masterpiece of AI Image Generation," wrote Tom's Guide in August.

Wrote Mindstream in March, "Beyond DALL-E [from OpenAI, the folks behind ChatGPT] and Midjourney: Why Ideogram is Positioned to Lead the AI Art Race with Superior Text Rendering." VentureBeat said: "Ideogram...brings AI-generated patterns to the masses." Tom's Guide gushed in its August Ideogram review article: "Move Over Midjourney—Ideogram Drops v2 and It's a Masterpiece of AI Image Generation."

Ideogram is one of the first AIs to produce images that can pass for actual photographs and has given me the highest quality images and graphics that I have gotten from an AI (I have also used Google Gemini, X's Grok, and ChatGPT).

Not Perfect

One reason technical writers need not worry about being replaced by AI anytime soon is the imperfections in the technology. Often, AIs give us exactly what we need and sometimes even exceed our expectations. Other times, not so much. It may take several prompts to get what you want. This is why AI is a supplement that empowers technical writers, not a replacement for them.

Also very carefully proof any image that includes text. It is common for AI image generators to mess up text that appears in an image.

The image below—featuring zombie-like humanoids and a woman with a beard—is a good example of things gone wrong, producing a photo that is simply not publishable (it resulted from the Ideogram 2 prompt "a room full of office employees looking up at the ceiling with big smiles and looks of awe and surprise").

Also very carefully proof any image that includes text. It is common for AI image generators to mess up text that appears in an image (Ideogram is better at this particular task than many competitors). Look for minor misspellings and never assume that you will get exactly what you want. Simply asking the AI to regenerate the image from the same prompt may solve the issue.

And then there's this: I prompted an image generating AI to give me a tech writer working from a home office with a webcam clipped to their laptop and a ring light. Even after repeatedly modifying the prompt to indicate that the webcam should point at the human, the AI still didn't get it right. This is another good example of why an AI is unlikely to take away your job.

Good Luck

I wish all of you good luck in your research, experimentation, and use of AI to improve your efficiency. Personally, after 25+ years as a technical writer, I am mind blown by this powerful technology. It's ability to improve my productivity is nothing short of a paradigm shift.

I'm not trying to be bigoted or elitist when I strongly recommend investigating and ultimately using AI to improve your technical writing career and better serve your clients or employer. However, the world is uber-competitive.

Those who choose to eschew AI will naturally face peers and competitors who do not share their hesitation. Their careers will soon begin to resemble the car fire above. In fact, AI Luddites are already at a disadvantage—and are falling further behind every day that they keep their heads in the sand.

But that's just my opinion. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

— Curt Robbins, Senior Technical Writer

P.S.: I'm currently taking on new clients. I enjoy helping companies with their documentation and communications strategy and implementation. Contact me to learn about my reasonable rates and fast turnaround.