I hand-wrote every piece of my writing.
If I could change one thing about modern society, it would be this: how we shame non-native English speakers and writers for how they write and express themselves, especially when they use AI tools (Grammarly, QuillBot, etc.) to make their voices clearer.
We claim we value authenticity and diversity, but when someone’s English doesn’t “sound native” or they use em-dashes or contrastive phrasing, people often ignore them. People think a sentence is AI if it seems “too polished.” There’s a term they used to label such writing – AI slop. How elitist and gatekeeping.
But what if we (bloggers or writers), like me, are trying our best to make sense and be understood? This issue has been weighing heavily on my chest for several months now. And maybe writing this and putting it out here on the blog is my way of letting some light through that heaviness.
I’m a non-native English writer/speaker. I use tools like QuillBot to improve my writing and generative AI tools to help me explore new ideas. I also use em-dashes and Oxford commas because they make my writing clearer. I use contrast in my writing too because why not? Life is full of contradictions, and sometimes the best way to explain how I feel is to show it through a shift of perspective.
Apparently, to many people out there on the Internet, all of that seems to make my writing look like “AI slop.”
I didn’t know that using punctuation could be made fun of. I didn’t know that using too many em-dashes, or writing that sounds too polished, or having your ideas shaped by a tool could make people think you’re lazy or fake. I’ve seen again and again on the Internet how native speakers make fun of us for not knowing how to write “properly.”
I had no idea that after writing poems since I was ten, or writing hundreds of essays and poems over the years, and then returning to writing after more than a decade of motherhood, I would be made to feel like a fraud.
The sentiment is everywhere. It’s subtle but sharp and cutting. It’s loud and condescending when you already feel so small: “This writing sounds like AI. So it must not be worth anything. Plagiarism. Lazy. Fake.”
But these language purists don’t see the effort I put into rewording or rewriting my posts. They don’t see the weariness of constantly questioning each sentence to see if it sounds right or if it conveys the intended meaning. They don’t see the emotional strain of attempting to mold my voice in a language that is not my first. They don’t see the courage required to publish anything at all. Now this is beside the point but English is my third language (I’m fluent in 5 languages). Let me ask these gatekeepers, how many languages do they speak and write in?
I didn’t plagiarize anything. However, I used a tool, similar to Lightroom or Photoshop, which is used by photographers to enhance their photos. Like how designers use templates. And somehow, that’s enough for some people to reduce what I made to nothing.
It hurts. It feels like persecution rather than merely criticism.
Sometimes I feel too scared to publish anything. I’m worried that I’ll be accused of being lazy or being dismissed with “This sounds like it was written by a bot.” But what about the soul of my writing—pain, memories, lived experience? Can they be undone by sentence structure?
What about the truths inside the writing, may I ask? The ones about identity, faith, loneliness, grief, and motherhood? Do those not count just because I refined them using a tool?
What about the fact that I edit or that I write or that I give it a shot? What about the emotional labor that goes into the words? There is nothing fake or artificial about any of those things. So yes. I use tools. I use em-dashes. I use contrast. I use help.
But I’m the one who feels the words before they exist. I’m the one who decides to speak up when it might be safer to be silent. I am the one who sorts through memories, longings, and fragments of myself to shape what eventually gets read. There is a human behind all these, not some made-up AI text.
And I’m sick of being ashamed of that. Let us write the way we need to. Let’s use what we need to. Let us tell our stories, even if we do so with tools and a language that isn’t our first.
It doesn’t matter if it looks like AI or not. It’s whether it came from something real and true, like every word of this. They all came from me.
Read more here:
AI-Detectors Biased Against Non-Native English Writers
© 2025 Olivia JD
Olivia Atelier offers printables, templates, and art designed to inspire reflection, healing, and creativity. Visit Olivia’s Atelier for more.
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