Sasha Lantukh

Why do we lose interest the moment we find out?

May 22, 2026

I’ve noticed something strange recently.

I can read a thoughtful article and enjoy it perfectly fine. But the moment I realise “AI wrote this,” interest drops instantly.

Why?

Part of it might be that, deep down, we feel AI can’t really create anything new. It rearranges patterns it has already seen. Less rooted in human experience…

And yet the line gets blurry very quickly.

If someone types “write me an article about anything” without any real thoughts of their own, most people would quickly recognise it as AI-generated.

But what about a professional writer with twenty years of experience who writes something themselves, then asks AI to proofread it, tighten it up, maybe improve the flow in a few places? Most would still call that human writing.

So somewhere between those two examples, the line starts to dissolve.

Someone who isn’t a writer at all — a mechanic, teacher, plumber, designer, nurse. Someone with genuine thoughts and experiences, but not the skill to structure them clearly. They use AI almost like an editor sitting beside them — helping organise ideas, improve wording, remove repetition, make it readable. A kind of ghost writer, if you will. Would a professional writer turn their nose up and say it’s “just AI” as well?

Did AI write that? Or did it simply help someone express an insight they already had in a more readable form?

So what is it, and where’s the line?

Maybe the loss of interest isn’t about AI.

It’s the moment our empathy can no longer find a human experience on the other side of the words.

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