Perspectives: This article is 100 per cent natural, no AI additives

How long will it be before we start seeing news or media content tagged like this, boasting that it was handcrafted by humans? In the future, stories completely written and edited by real people may become an artisanal luxury - one you'll need to pay for, like a Birkin handbag.

As digital natives grow up relying on AI, skilled human writers will become increasingly rare. The ability to craft original, thoughtful work with forward-looking analysis could go the way of analogue photography.

Our AI addiction is leading to "skill atrophy" or " deskilling" - not just in media, but everywhere.

Take law for example, junior lawyers that are over-reliant on AI for case research or drafting documents may lose deep analytical skills and the ability to construct persuasive arguments from scratch. In medicine, doctors who trust AI diagnostics too much may lose subtle clinical judgement normally honed from years of practice - missing symptoms that computers overlook. Even in daily life, heavy dependence on GPS and smart assistants are eroding basic navigation and problem-solving skills.

Cars are now graded by levels of automation, ranging from Level 0 (no automation) to Level 5 (fully autonomous). At Level 3, you can check e-mails and watch TV while the car drives, but must take control instantly in a crisis - but if people rarely drive themselves, how can we expect them to suddenly outperform AI in an emergency?

Used well by experienced writers, generative AI (GenAI) is a powerful assistant - tightening language, sparking ideas, and boosting productivity. But hand it to someone inexperienced, and they will most likely produce unauthentic and hollow fare that few want to read.

NP Patel, a global performance marketing agency, ran an experiment placing 744 articles on 68 websites - half were written by humans and half purely written by AI. The human-generated content took four times as long to produce but received 5.4 times more traffic. Without real-world writing experience behind them, newcomers will struggle to add value to what AI pumps out because it looks so polished and convincing. This includes spotting “hallucinations.”

I started out in journalism, writing club reports and wedding anniversary captions for a local newspaper, before graduating to sexier topics like murders. On business desks - where I spent most of my working life - reporters began with rote tasks like stock market summaries - formulaic but foundational.

Today, automation can quickly spit out the "what" of breaking news, including which stocks are moving. It can easily summarise things like earnings and economic data, press releases, and statements. But for now, AI struggles with the "why" and " so what" - these are the special ingredients that give stories relevance and bring them to life.

If new reporters dive straight into complex stories and analysis without first laying foundations of experience, they may flounder. The same is true for copywriting for marketing and PR.

Paul Graham, a visionary computer scientist and essayist, predicts a near-future of "writes" and "write nots", and "thinks" and "think nots". His point: writing requires thinking. When people stop writing, they may stop thinking too.

Steven Levy, in Wired, refers to Graham as a "hacker philosopher" - someone who combines deep technical prowess with philosophical insight. Graham believes that in a decade, those who retain strong writing and original thinking abilities will be rare and highly valued.

Yet many media companies and other organisations are using AI to cut costs - hiring more tech-savvy juniors and fewer seasoned professionals.

In newsrooms, sub-editors' jobs are especially vulnerable. For now, media outlets still need human editors to check and refine AI or human-generated stories. But automation tools drastically reduce the time needed for each edit, meaning fewer sub-editors will be needed. Reporters will remain essential for groundwork and for producing original stories. But they will need to prove their worth beyond rehashing press releases and summarising data - tasks AI and automation can readily handle. Their value lies in breaking exclusives, creative storytelling, and providing specialist insight.

Deans of journalism and communications schools are grappling with this generational shift. If entry-level writing tasks vanish, how do you train the next generation to be newsroom ready? They don't currently have the answers.

In PR, a manager may spend days waiting for a junior to draft up a press release - only to end up needing to totally rewrite it. Alternatively, they can now feed prompts to AI, quickly tweak the draft, and send it for approval. Here lies the problem: If juniors never learn to write unaided, how can they be expected to have the skills to improve what AI pumps out or catch errors? If your entry-level staffers don't add value, then why hire them?

Marketing presents similar challenges. Plenty of AI tools can churn out blogs and web content that's already SEO-optimized. The result? Standard, generic, and replaceable volume.

If you head a PR agency, are you going to admit to your client that the press release they paid you for was actually produced by a machine? No. It's more likely you will play up the unique human insight and value your team offers.

There is no doubt it won’t be long before AI develops better world views to help them understand context and curb most hallucinations. This would narrow the quality gap between man and machine. But as we invest heavily in training AI models, we must not lose sight of training ourselves and future generations to stay valuable in this exciting new era.

'Perspectives' is a Telum Media submitted article series, where diverse viewpoints spark thought-provoking conversations about the role of PR and communications in today's world. This Perspectives piece was submitted by Barry Porter, Founder of Raspberry Communications.

Barry previously managed newsrooms for 20 years, including senior editorial and management roles at Bloomberg in Singapore and Malaysia. His agency focuses on the art of modern storytelling through content creation, media and presentation training, and ghostwriting.