As an IT guy, I’ve followed the development of AI with more interest than some, perhaps. What AI tools enable us to do is, indeed, impressive. But there’s growing concern about AI-generated content potentially replacing human-generated content.
And on a site like Medium, that’s very troubling.
Many of us on Medium have called for Medium to do something to better combat the influx of AI-generated content on the platform. After all, if AI-generated content takes over Medium, what becomes of human-written stories? What place would there be for humans writing content to get paid if a computer can do it just as well?
Medium is not for AI-generated writing.
Fortunately, it seems Medium agrees that Medium should be a place for humans - not computer-generated walls of text. And I’m glad to see it.
According to Scott Lamb, VP of Content at Medium, Medium is for human storytelling, not AI-generated writing.
YES. Thank you.
Lamb goes on to explain what changes Medium is making and what those changes will mean for those who want to use AI-generated content on the platform.
As a blogging platform, Medium welcomes a huge variety of content from a long list of genres. But allowing it to be posted and promoting it? Well, those are two very different things.
Medium may allow someone to publish a story written entirely with AI, but that doesn’t mean that story will be pushed to anyone outside the “author’s” follower list. That honor is reserved only for content not written by AI.
Lamb clarifies: “So if you’re wondering whether you can still publish fully AI-generated stories for your followers, the answer is yes. However, if you’re on Medium looking to find readers from our network, then the answer is no - we will not promote fully AI-generated stories to a broader audience.”
What does this mean for Medium writers?
Recently, Medium has made a few big changes to the platform - arguably for the better. These changes are intended to encourage the creation of quality content by real human authors and to discourage the low-effort, borderline spammy (if not entirely spammy) content that some people seem to think is “good enough.” And into that latter category, I would certainly dump the entire truck load of AI-generated text on the site.
Medium writers in every genre and niche will need to double down and work hard to create the kinds of content that people will actually want to read. They’ll have to work hard to provide value, answer questions, solve problems and entertain in ways that only humans can - or should.
The Medium partner program remains open to anyone who meets the requirements, but it’s only content that actually speaks to what Medium’s audience is looking for that will be rewarded.
What this doesn’t mean
To be clear, this does not mean that you can’t use AI writing tools and assistants for writing on Medium. In fact, in some cases I do recommend some of them. For example, Notion AI is a fantastic AI assistant that I use and like a lot.
But there’s a big difference between using an AI assistant to help outline a blog post or come up with topic suggestions and using an AI tool to write an entire article and copy and paste that into Medium. The former is a good use of the technology. The latter? Well… that’s just laziness in my opinion.
And in fact, I’ve written before on Side Hustle Road and I’ll say again: I don’t want to read your AI written content.
Again, Medium’s clarified stance - as provided by Scott Lamb - is not that you can’t use AI to aid your writing. AI can absolutely be beneficial for writers. But if you’re going to write on Medium, understand that content that’s entirely AI-generated probably won’t cut it anymore.
Nor should it.