Free Content, Not Machines, Writers’ Biggest Threat

What’s the Latest Development?

Will the Pulitzer Prize for 2016 be awarded to a computer program? There is a case that computer-human journalism could improve the product. But the big issue for reporters, editors, and publishers isn’t automated text generation. It’s the explosion of free human-authored content on the Web.

What’s the Big Idea?

And the trend is that, careful and uniquely human writing will be unread, while McProse—of which there’s such a human-produced glut A.I. programs are almost superfluous—will thrive. The most likely result of the new technology is a further division of writers into a few with brand identity and an even more pressed majority, some of them at least equally talented.