There was a time when a handwritten document carried special authority. The pressure of the pen, the uneven letters and the occasional correction were taken as evidence that a real person had written it.
When typewriters arrived, typed documents seemed mechanical and impersonal. Eventually, however, typing became the mark of professionalism, while handwriting increasingly came to be regarded as informal.
The same happened with official stamps.
For years, a document without a signature and a wet-ink stamp was considered incomplete. Today, institutions routinely accept electronic documents, digital stamps and signatures made on a phone or computer. A contract may never touch paper, yet remain valid, trusted and legally enforceable.
Technology did not destroy authenticity. It changed how we produce and verify it.
I was reminded of this recently when I saw my former boss, Andrew Mwenda, engaged in an exchange with someone on Twitter. At one point, he declined to respond further because he believed the other person had used artificial intelligence.
The irony was difficult to ignore and I loudly laughed.
Mwenda was communicating through a digital platform rather than writing with a pen on paper. His words were entered through a digital keyboard, on a device likely equipped with tools such as spell-checking, autocorrection and predictive text. Twitter then delivered those words instantly to thousands of people.
None of this made his argument inauthentic. Technology helped him produce and distribute it, but the opinion remained his.
Admittedly, generative AI goes much further than autocorrect. Autocorrect may fix a spelling mistake, while AI can generate sentences, reorganise arguments and even propose ideas. Pretending that the two are identical would weaken my argument. Here, I submit.
But they belong to the same broader history of tools increasingly assisting human expression. The real issue is not simply whether assistance occurred, but how much of the thinking, judgment and responsibility remained with the person presenting the work.
A camera does not make someone a photographer. A computer does not make someone a writer. Photoshop does not turn everyone who opens it into a designer. In the same way, access to AI does not automatically provide experience, judgment, taste, context or accountability.
A journalist may use AI to organise information, but must still verify the facts and understand the story. A designer may use it to explore an idea, but must still understand the audience, make creative choices and decide what deserves to be published. AI may improve grammar, structure or presentation, but the person remains responsible for the meaning and consequences of the final work.
The concern becomes legitimate when someone presents an entirely machine-generated argument as evidence of personal expertise, or uses AI to fabricate evidence, impersonate others, plagiarise their work or deliberately mislead an audience.
Where AI materially shapes the substance or affects credibility, disclosure may also be appropriate.
However, dismissing an argument solely because AI helped express it still avoids the substance of the argument. It judges the instrument before examining the work.
The better questions are: Is the argument sound? Are the facts accurate? Was AI used responsibly? And can the person presenting the work explain and defend it?
Authenticity is not the absence of tools. It is honesty about the process, human judgment in the final result and accountability for what is published.
AI is neither the death of creativity nor automatic proof of innovation. It is simply another powerful tool. Its value; or danger, depends on the hands, intentions and standards of the person using it.
