What building a writing platform taught me about AI hype
We added AI-assisted writing to InkRoar early on, and the lesson that stuck wasn't about the technology — it was about restraint. The instinct is to let AI do more: generate the whole post, pick the headline, decide the angle. Every time we let it do more, engagement dropped, because the writing stopped sounding like anyone.
The version that works treats AI as a co-pilot for the boring parts — a rough first pass, a headline option, a stuck-paragraph unstick — while the writer keeps the parts that actually carry a voice: the opinion, the specific detail, the ending.
The hype cycle wants AI to replace the writer. The actual product that people want to read is AI that gets out of the writer's way faster.
Related reading: The Practical Guide to Using AI Tools Without Getting Burned and The AI feature adoption pattern that surprised our whole product team.
Comments (2)
Log in to join the conversation.
Needed to read this today, thank you.
Appreciate you writing this out — more platforms should be this transparent.