Blog

Occasionally, a prospective client will ask me to use generative AI in my work. I always tell these clients: "I'm happy to use generative AI, but I charge extra."

This never fails to cause confusion. Clients think that making me use ChatGPT or a similar machine will lower their overall costs. Why should having the writer use generative AI cost MORE?

Here's why.

Generative AI slows me down.

I have done what I do for nearly twenty years now. I'm excellent at it.

Generative AI is a plagiarism machine built just a couple years ago. It is not as good at what I do as I am. Its hallucination habit means it never will be.

Asking me to use generative AI is like asking me to do this job while also training a toddler to do it. I can get the job done, but it will take me longer and demand more effort and concentration from me in order to do. Since you need more resources from me, you pay more.

Speaking of training the toddler:

Generating prompts takes more time than writing.

Crafting a prompt that will cause a generative AI to spit out work that is correct the first time takes work. A lot of work. It takes trial and error. I have yet to see any gen AI produce an acceptable first draft - let alone a final product - from a prompt that took less time to write than it takes me to write the same draft from scratch.

Again: more time, more resources, higher cost.

By the way:

Generative AI never produces a final draft.

The best it can do is an initial draft. That draft still has to be fact-checked and edited. Using generative AI to create that draft means that I can't ensure I'm incorporating correct facts and edit my own work as I go; I have to do it after the fact. That also takes extra time and effort, which again, I charge clients for.

A lot of that work is in the research:

The research burden with gen AI is much higher.

Research constitutes the bulk of my effort in any client piece, which means it also eats the bulk of the budget. When I have to use gen AI, the research phase takes longer, is more resource-intensive, and is more expensive.

Generative AI hallucinates. It cannot be trusted to return accurate facts or accurate citations for those facts. It cannot even be trusted to return citations that exist at all!

When I do the research myself, I know the cited sources exist because I found them. I read them. I know what's in them. I know how to use and cite that information accordingly. I'm also able to find sources quickly, and I can evaluate them quickly because I know who is reputable and where to look. Again, after twenty years, I am good at what I do.

When I have to check AI's "citations," however, I have to do more than my usual research. I also have to go down a lot of dead ends, then backtrack to find appropriate facts and sources. I have to incorporate that real information. I have to cite it from scratch.

Generative AI means more work for me, which means higher costs for you. I propose that we both take the most cost-effective route, which also produces the best results.

If you really want an inferior product, I'll provide it, but it will cost you more.