Sometimes, it truly aches to pour your heart into a page, to craft sentences with the care of a sculptor chiseling marble, only to be told, "This is too good. It must be AI."
I’ve been writing since I was little. Before there were tools and detectors, there was just me, my imagination, and the quiet rhythm of words flowing onto paper. Literature isn't new to me — it's home. It's the ink in my veins and the stories behind my eyes.
And yet, lately, I've seen my authenticity questioned simply because my writing is "too polished." Because it doesn’t fit someone’s idea of what a human can do. Because AI detectors — which are far from perfect or consistent — say so.
I got a Grade 8 (A*) in English during my O Levels. That wasn't artificial intelligence — that was me. That was late nights, years of reading, a voice honed by passion and persistence. So, if the work I produce now gets flagged, are we saying my examiners were fooled, too? That they grade a machine?
I understand that AI is used by some. That’s the reality of our times. But not all of us have outsourced our voices. Some of us are the pen. The pen doesn’t just write — it remembers. And mine remembers every word I wrote before these tools existed.
So please, before dismissing someone's art as artificial, pause. Respect the effort. Hear the talent beneath the lines. We're still here — and we still write.