Does Hand-Crafted Content Still Matter in the Age of AI?

Every piece of content I’ve written or recorded until now was handcrafted. I own the entire process, from the insight and initial idea to the outline, first draft, sections, code examples, and demos.

Yes, I’ve used AI tools to help with grammar, to get ideas for headlines, to improve the flow of some segments that I couldn’t get right (English is not my first language), but everything went through my fingers, and I’m standing behind every word written.

The brutal truth? It doesn’t matter. At least not anymore.

I asked AI to assess some of my content, and its verdict was that it was moderately likely to be AI-generated. The lines are already blurry, and it will get even more entangled in the future.

Does this mean I’ll use AI from now on to generate entire articles or first drafts? No, because writing helps me clarify my thinking, solve problems, and gain new insights.

Will I use it during the research phase and as a tool to help me get more done faster? Absolutely.

Does any of this matter for you, the reader? Likely, you won’t even get to my original article—you’ll just get an AI summary or the key point from a piece of my content, but you might not even know who it came from. Furthermore, AI might generate derivative work based on my content, so the connection won’t be there at all, let alone any attribution.

But here’s the kicker. While some will say that this clearly means that creators get the short end of the stick, I think the upside of readers getting a better deal (exactly the bit of insight they’re looking for) is even bigger now.

You likely won’t know that Zoran Jambor helped you solve the problem, but even if it’s tangential, even if it’s in bits, I believe I can still make a positive difference in a world dominated by AI agents and generated content.

And so can you.