This summer, Grammarly staked its latest claim to the AI content gold rush by rolling out nine new “agents” that are supposedly smarter, more autonomous, and ready to hold your hand through every semicolon and citation. New York Magazine scoured press releases for “AI agent,” and derivatives, and found many examples of companies launching agents — or calling anything that looks like AI, “agentic.” QuickBooks’ new AI agents can “categorize transactions,” draft emails, and “collect data.” The NFL says it will turn to agents for “scouting and salary cap management.”
Beneath the veneer of product launches and press releases lurks a trend: AI inflation. In the dash to claim a stake in the algo frontier, “AI” has become less a marker of innovation than a catchall label — liberally used and increasingly devoid of substance. A term that once meant “a software system that applies AI to pursue goals and complete tasks on behalf of users” now risks collapsing under its own hype, commodified into little more than marketing gloss.
Humans Hired to Fix Agent Messes
Much like market pundits are warning of an AI market bubble, consumers too are questioning AI claims. On the QT, a number of brands are hiring human creators to clean up AI messes such as generic or plagiarized copy and dull graphic design. Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.com, told NBC News that he’s seeing a boom in brands hiring to fix projects when AI goes awry.
To sort out what’s real from what’s hype, and to understand how AI and its agents are impacting the writing profession now and in the future, we kicked off a comprehensive study and heard from more than 1,500 editorial pros from across a range of specialties. We are in the process of analyzing that data to identify trends, and plan to release a detailed report on our findings in November. For now, we offer these verbatims from some early responders:
- “AI developers are literally stealing the copyrighted work from authors.”
- “Today alone, I edited 5 chapters, made 3 book covers, summarized meeting notes, put together a Jira workflow, and still had time to go out to dinner.”
- “Saves the donkey work, letting me do the human bit that adds value.”
We at Gotham Ghostwriters are ready to help authors who want to succeed. Before you’re ready to start writing, please get in touch with us.
