Substack Knows it Has AI Problems …
A I A I Oh … (Uh Oh)
Like others here, for weeks I’ve been getting notes and comments by writer friends. Here are just a few:
“In fourteen hours, you are the first person I’ve heard from that I actually know. I felt like I was invisible.”
“I hardly ever see you in my feed any more, CJ.”
“CJ, I was afraid you left Substack. I never see you or your writing.”
“I’ve had trouble finding you lately, CJ. What’s going on here?”
Early Monday, I spent hours reading and commenting on work by writers that were new to me. I don’t remember seeing any writers I knew and that wasn’t normal.
It was so bad Monday, I even wrote a whimsical ‘put down’ about it (naughty-naughty, shame on me):
“Hello … Hello? … Hel-lo-o-o? I’m just an echo in an empty room. No one else is here. Did the AI algorhythm finally erase me from Substack?
Hello? … Hel-lo-o-o? No one in this room either. This one must be the writer’s graveyard. I wonder if anyone else I know is buried here, maybe someone who arrived in the same sinking boat …
Hel-l-o-o-o-? Gee, maybe I am invisible … never been invisible before. I think AI wants me to take my marbles and go home —I’m to leave all the meat and potatoes to the money makers at the top and stop beating my head against a brick wall … Hel-l-o-o-o-o? …
Damn … there’s nothing left to say.
‘cept maybe, bye.”
To be fair, I decided to find out more about this AI thing at Substack, so my partner,
and I did a couple of Google searches:CJ & Robert: “Over the last few months, Substack has changed a lot and not in good ways. How much do the changes we see have to do with AI coming on board?”
Google: “AI is impacting Substack in significant ways, both as a tool used by its creators and as a disruptive force that challenges the platform’s well-known original focus on authentic, human-led content.”
C.J & Robert: “How else is AI messing with Substack?”
Google: “AI is taking over by the increased use of AI-generated and assisted content. The real value of a Substack newsletter is, was, or ‘should be’, tied to the unique voice of the individual writer of their newsletter.
Google: Widespread adoption: A July 2025 survey by Substack found that 45.4% of its publishers were using AI tools, while a November 2024 analysis from Wired estimated that 10% of Substack’s top 100 newsletters already publish AI-generated or AI-assisted content.
(That 10% was in 2024. How high must it be now, one year later? And what happened to good old-fashioned ethics?)
Google: Paid-for AI content: A large portion of AI-using writers are on ‘paid-subscription tiers’. This means paying readers/subscribers are ‘unknowingly’ paying for AI-generated writing, which challenges the platform’s long time original value proposition of delivering ‘unique human-centric content’.
It’s worse than I thought. (Isn’t that called cheating?)
: We will never sell out to AI. Everything we write, (good, bad, or ugly), will always be 100% ours. It’s a matter of integrity.-*-
—>P.S. Would you like to write for CJ’s World? I invite guest voices to share anything that fits the spirit of this newsletter — mindfulness, grief, wonder, heart, children, even the beautiful price of just being human. Must be original though. No AI Allowed.
After spending the last 40 years of my working life in Information Technology, I am fascinated by AI. I’m also very concerned about it and refuse to use it!
I fear that it is dumbing down the young people and generations yet to come. What happens when we don’t exercise our grey matter to develop our own answers? Will brain atrophy follow?
Idiocracy was a great movie from years ago. It portrayed a future where society was dumber than dog s**t. That’s where we’re headed if we allow the machines to do our thinking for us!
I agree—Substack has changed a lot in the year and a half I’ve been here. I know they favor the big players and those who provide Substack with big financial gains. I’m now using it more as a repository for my poems, rather than a place where I think they’ll actually be read. That will continue as long as I write, even if it’s in a vacuum. It is unfortunate, and perhaps it’s just that no one wants to read what I write, but I’m going to do it for myself and the few loyal readers. I use AI only for artwork and only if I don’t have something original, just for fun, but I would never use it to write.
This was my first foray into social media, and it will probably be my last.