Using AI to improve your writing, not replace it
The book draws a clear editorial boundary: the journalist writes the first draft, then may use AI as a critical reader. This keeps the work of thinking, checking and finding a voice in the hands of the person who will sign the story.
The essentials
Protect your voice. Your value includes a particular way of noticing and expressing things, developed through reading and reporting. An automatically generated draft can flatten that distinction. The danger is not only style: the output may mingle established material with plausible additions, leaving you to correct facts you never reported.
Writing is also part of the thinking process. While drafting, you discover missing information, weak links and questions that still need an answer. Handing over the first draft can hide those discoveries. Keep control of the account so that your structure and wording remain connected to what your own reporting can support.
After the first draft, AI can act as a demanding reader: locate repetitions, question clarity, suggest alternatives to an awkward sentence or raise objections. Compare every proposed revision against your notes. Accept useful changes without adding unestablished details or losing a meaningful nuance. The sequence is deliberate: you write, the tool reacts, and you decide.
Take it to the field
Keep the first draft and compare it with the assisted version. Are the facts intact, the nuances preserved and the voice still yours? Reject any stylistic improvement that adds a detail you have not established.
Your turn
Ask an AI system for a 300-word article on a subject you have covered. Compare it with your own piece. Identify five specific differences in observed detail, vocabulary and rhythm that reveal your contribution.