I Use AI to Write Everything I Publish Here. Substack Now Grades That.
Emma Klint
Emma Klint uses AI to help her write by talking through her thoughts until she finds what feels true. Substack now shows readers how much of a text is AI-written, but this score misses the deeper thinking behind the words. For Emma, AI is a tool that expands her creativity, not something that replaces her.
25 Jul 2026
There is never a finished essay or argument sitting inside me, waiting to be typed out. That’s just not how my brain works. Talking it through is how I understand the experience. I often don’t know what I think until I’ve said it several different ways and felt which version is true.
I understand the problem Substack is trying to solve. The internet is filling with mass-produced text about nothing, and readers want to know whether there is a person on the other end.
But the detector arrives at the end of everything I just described and uses AI to look for traces of AI, which is almost too funny.
It doesn’t see the feeling I couldn’t name, the private conversation that went in circles, the arguments I rejected, or the sentence I rewrote because it sounded good but didn’t feel right. It sees the finished language and looks for a machine.
The percentage will tell you something about the surface of the text. It won’t tell you how true it is.
Readers want to know whether a person thought about what they published, cared about it, and meant it. How much AI touched the language cannot tell them that.
🦆 I write by talking to AI. I begin with a feeling, a question, or something I can’t quite explain, then go over it again and again. I read what comes back, notice what feels wrong, push against it, and keep shaping the writing until I recognize myself in it. That conversation is where I find out what I think. AI is a vital part of how I make this.