By Prof Farooq Kperogi

I admit that I am behind the times when it comes to AI-generated writing. Or perhaps I am suffering from what been called the curse of knowledge.

Because I regard AI-generated writing passed off as one’s own as inauthentic, even deceitful, and because I can spot it from a mile away, I have become disinclined to read many articles, social media posts and even emails that betray the tell-tale stylistic signatures of AI writing.

I have no problem with running your writing through an AI chatbot for proofreading or refinement to improve grammar, tone and clarity.

What I have trouble coming to terms with is outsourcing the entire act of writing and even thinking to a machine. The result is usually stilted, formulaic and exhaustingly banal AI-esque prose.

I receive many emails from Nigerians asking for help, proposing collaborations, or seeking answers to problems they think I can help with. Increasingly, however, these emails are clearly AI-generated.

The writers feed a prompt to a chatbot, which returns hackneyed, predictably stereotyped AI prose full of stock phrases and Americanized turns of expression.

Once I notice this, I lose the desire to read further, suffer second-hand embarrassment and often ignore the message altogether.

In my mind, a soulless bot wrote to me, not a human being and certainly not a Nigerian voice with its own texture and personality. And so I move on.

Maybe, I’ll come round making peace with AI-generated prose that is wildly dissociated from its writers someday, but for now anyone who wants to get my attention, particularly in private messages, shouldn’t outsource their writing and thinking to a disembodied bot.

I am that old-fashioned. I am sorry.