The Human Write: Protecting Craft in the Age of AI

By Karen Traboulay, MBA, ABC, CCMP

As AI reshapes communications, Karen Traboulay discusses how communications professionals can maintain trust, authenticity and craftsmanship while embracing change.

I attended a communications conference recently where a room full of smart, thoughtful professionals gathered to discuss AI in communications. We explored tone, authenticity and voice in the age of AI. We talked about opportunity, risk and responsibility. But one comment stayed with me long after the session ended.

“As soon as I see an em dash,” someone said, “I know AI wrote it.”

I laughed at first. Surely, we have not reached a point where punctuation is now suspect.

But the comment lingered because it reflected something deeper happening in our profession. As communicators, we are not simply learning how to work with AI. We are also renegotiating what authenticity looks like in a world increasingly shaped by it. And, if I am being honest, that shift has felt unsettling at times.

Long before AI entered our vocabulary, I built a career around writing. I have always believed that good writing reflects good thinking: clear, intentional and grounded in purpose. Early in my career, a manager once told me, “You write like a lawyer.” He meant it as a compliment. Precise. Structured. Logical.

Years later, before I had ever used an AI tool, someone questioned whether my writing had been generated by one. I remember having to search what ChatGPT even was. It was a strange moment, realizing that disciplined, polished writing could somehow feel “less human.”

When craft becomes suspicious

Today, many communicators are navigating a similar tension. Some audiences now scrutinize language for “AI tells.” Certain phrases feel suspect. Polished sentence structure raises eyebrows. Even the em dash, a punctuation mark with centuries of literary history, has somehow become shorthand for algorithmic authorship.

The irony is hard to ignore. The very qualities we have long associated with strong communication, clarity, structure and rhythm, are now, in some circles, viewed with suspicion. Yet none of this originated with AI.

Writers such as Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf and James Baldwin used punctuation to create cadence, emotion and meaning. The em dash, often debated today, was never a shortcut or stylistic accident. It helped writers mimic the messiness of thought, moments of interruption and emotional nuance. In many ways, it was profoundly human.

And let us not forget Lewis Carroll, the playful logician who used the em dash to enhance the whimsical, nonlinear logic of Alice in Wonderland. His punctuation created tonal shifts and humorous interruptions that mirrored curiosity, confusion and delight. Imagine Carroll, Dickinson, Joyce or Faulkner being told their command of punctuation meant a machine wrote their work. The notion feels laughable and yet here we are, questioning craftsmanship as though mastery were mimicry.

AI did not invent polished writing. It learned from generations of human writers. That distinction matters because the craft we value did not suddenly become artificial simply because technology became capable of replicating parts of it.

The human side of the machine

What concerns me is not the use of AI itself. The technology is here to stay and when used responsibly, it offers tremendous opportunity for communicators. It can accelerate research, improve efficiency and help us move from blank page to first draft faster than ever before.

Like many professionals, I have changed my own playbook. I now use AI as a thought partner. It helps me pressure test ideas, identify gaps, organize information and challenge assumptions. At times, it helps me move through writer’s block or explore different ways of framing a message for diverse audiences.

But here is what has not changed: judgment still matters.

AI can support the work, but it cannot replace discernment. It does not understand organizational culture, political nuance or emotional context in the way experienced communicators do. It cannot instinctively read a room, anticipate unintended consequences or navigate the tension between what can be said and what should be said. That responsibility still belongs to us.

I often think of AI as a bright, eager intern: fast, capable and incredibly helpful, but not yet experienced enough to make nuanced judgment calls. We guide, question and refine. The intern learns from us, not the other way around.

You would not hand over an important communications strategy to an intern without review, context or oversight. The same principle applies here.

The risk of rejecting excellence

This is where I believe our profession has an opportunity to innovate thoughtfully. The conversation should not be whether AI belongs in communications. It already does.

The better question is: how do we protect craft while embracing change?

For me, the answer lies in governance, discernment and professional confidence. We need clear standards around responsible AI use. We need transparency about how tools support our work. Most importantly, we need confidence in the expertise we bring to the table. Because communication has never been about simply producing words. It is about judgment. Empathy. Context. Timing. Trust. And trust matters now more than ever.

At that same conference, one participant shared that certain HR professionals they were familiar with now reject résumés if they notice an em dash, assuming it signals AI authorship. Think about that! We could be discarding talented, articulate communicators simply because they know how to punctuate correctly. If we begin to equate grammatical accuracy with artificiality, we are not just lowering our standards, we are breeding cynicism toward excellence itself.

It is a disturbing thought: that to be seen as authentically human, one must write less well. That, in avoiding AI’s perceived fingerprints, we strip away the very qualities that define professionalism: clarity, elegance, empathy and truth. Authenticity should not require us to abandon excellence.

Protecting craft while embracing change

The future of communication is not about choosing between human or machine. It is about learning how to use technology without losing the qualities that make communication meaningful in the first place.

AI can help us work faster. It may even help us work smarter. But only humans bring lived experience, emotional intelligence and accountability to the page.

As communicators, our role has always been to help people make sense of complexity. Perhaps that responsibility matters even more now. Perhaps that is the real opportunity before us: not to prove we are human through imperfection, but to communicate with enough clarity, empathy and intention that our humanity is unmistakable.