On a recent flight to France, I got talking to the woman next to me and ChatGPT came up. She worked as a bank clerk, and said she now used the chatbot to write the majority of her correspondence with colleagues and customers.
She explained that writing had never been her strong point, and the app was able to generate text that captured what she wanted to say better than she could. I joked that she would be using it to write messages to friends and family before she knew it, and she rather sheepishly replied that she already had, asking for help with a recent birthday text.
Her unease suggested that she felt what she was doing was in some way wrong. Yet like many others, she is now using generative AI to produce vast swaths of personal and professional communication, unbeknown to those who receive these AI-generated messages.