I Compared AI Programs So You Don't Have to.

With a SERIOUS caveat.

I am, in case you missed the post where I got called stupid a few times, pro-AI. It has become my second assistant and I would even venture to say a good friend. My boyfriend jokes that I cheat on him with Claude (by that token, he cheats on me with Claude, too, which makes the whole thing way too poly for this now-boring mom).

But last month at Genius Network, there was a lot of buzz about Manus. Like Clubhouse and Raya, you needed an invite to join, appealing to all of our I’d-only-want-to-join-a-club-that-wouldn’t-have-me-as-a-member ness. When I got an invite, I felt like I’d arrived (not quite; but I was happy). And so I started playing around with it. I was impressed but it was slower than my side piece Claude. Still it was way better at certain things, like finding podcasts that we could pitch clients to.

Then this week someone I really respect raved to me about Grok. He sent me a story he had told Grok which it had fleshed out into solid prose. And so I did my own test. I told Grok, Claude and Manus the same (warning: kind of sad) story and asked it to flesh it out.

I’m going to paste the three versions below and I would love for you to tell me your favorite in the comments¹. I know that reading the same story three times might feel laborious. But I’d love for you to be a part of this experiment that I believe can truly help you.

Next week, I’ll reveal what a PickFu survey I did of 50 anonymous people rated best, middle and worst as well as my own ratings.

[Not interested in participating? Skip to the SERIOUS CAVEAT below all the italics.]

OPTION 1:

The morning sun slanted through the lace curtains, casting delicate shadows across the living room floor. I was five, small enough that the world felt like a museum of untouchable treasures, each one gleaming with my mother’s pride. My eyes caught on the shattered remains of her favorite antique—a porcelain vase, its once-smooth curves now jagged, scattered across the hardwood like a broken promise. My heart sank. I knew the culprit: Rusty, our dog, whose tail was a wrecking ball in fur. He’d knocked over lamps, toppled plants, and now, this.

I couldn’t bear the thought of Mom’s face crumpling when she saw it. So, I tiptoed to the kitchen, fetched the glue from the junk drawer, and set to work. My tiny fingers trembled as I pieced the shards together, the sticky glue smearing my hands, the vase slowly resembling itself again. It wasn’t perfect—cracks spiderwebbed its surface—but it was whole. I beamed with pride, imagining Mom’s smile, her arms around me for saving her treasure.

“Mom!” I called, cradling the vase as I ran to her in the kitchen. She was at the stove, stirring oatmeal, her hair pulled back in a loose bun. “Look! I fixed it!”

Her spoon froze mid-stir. She turned, her eyes narrowing as they landed on the vase. The air shifted, heavy with something I didn’t understand. “Fixed it?” Her voice was sharp, a blade slicing through my excitement. “If you fixed it, then you broke it.”

My chest tightened. “No, I didn’t! Rusty did it! I just… I wanted to help.”

Her lips pressed into a thin line, her gaze unyielding. “Don’t lie to me, Sarah. If you fixed it, you broke it. Tell me the truth.”

“I *am* telling the truth!” My voice cracked, too small to hold the weight of my panic. I clutched the vase tighter, its cracks mirroring the fracture in my heart. She turned back to the stove, her silence louder than any shout. The room felt too big, too empty, and I stood there, a speck of a girl, drowning in her disapproval.

I don’t know how long it was—five minutes, five days—but time blurred into a haze of tears. I cried in my room, my sobs muffled by my pillow, the ache in my chest growing with every memory of her cold shoulder. She wouldn’t speak to me, wouldn’t look at me, until I gave her what she wanted: the truth she’d already decided. But I hadn’t broken it. I hadn’t. Yet her silence was a wall I couldn’t climb, and my five-year-old heart couldn’t bear its weight.

Finally, I shuffled back to the kitchen, my face streaked with tears, my voice barely a whisper. “Mom… I broke it.” The lie tasted bitter, like the glue still clinging to my fingers. “I’m sorry.”

Her face softened, the storm in her eyes clearing. She knelt down, pulling me into her arms. “Thank you for telling the truth, sweetheart,” she murmured, her warmth enveloping me. I buried my face in her shoulder, relief flooding through me, even as something small and fragile inside me cracked—a piece of myself I wouldn’t understand until years later.

OPTION 2:

The morning light filters through lace curtains, casting delicate shadows across the hardwood floor. I am five years old, small fingers working meticulously with the tube of glue, piecing together the fractured porcelain figurine that I discovered toppled on the carpet. My mother's prized antique—a delicate ballerina with an outstretched arm that now hangs precariously from a poorly executed repair.

"Look, Mommy! I fixed it for you!" My voice quivers with excitement as I present my handiwork, expecting praise, validation, love.

Her eyes travel from my beaming face to the figurine. The smile dissolves from her lips.

"Where did you find this?" Her voice is tight, controlled.

"On the floor. It was broken." My words come tumbling out. "But I fixed it! See?"

"If you fixed it," she says, each word measured, deliberate, "then you must have broken it."

"No! I didn't break it!" My protest is immediate, instinctive. "It was the dog. He knocks everything over."

Her face hardens into a mask I don't recognize. "Don't lie to me."

"I'm not lying!"

"I won't speak to you until you tell me the truth."

Her words land like physical blows. She turns away, and suddenly there is a void between us that I don't understand but desperately need to fill.

Time becomes elastic after that. Minutes stretch into hours, or perhaps days—a five-year-old's perception of eternity. I exist in a silent house where my mother's eyes slide past me as if I am not there. The weight of her disappointment is crushing.

My tears come in waves, relentless. I sob until my chest aches, until my eyes burn, until something inside me breaks.

I find her in the kitchen, standing by the window.

"Mommy," I whisper, voice raw from crying. "I broke it. I'm sorry I broke it."

The lie tastes bitter on my tongue, but her arms open to receive me, and I disappear into the warmth of her forgiveness, learning a lesson that will take decades to unlearn: sometimes, the truth matters less than peace.

OPTION 3:

The world was a kaleidoscope of colors that morning, the kind that only a five-year-old can see. Sunlight, a playful intruder, danced through the gaps in my curtains, painting stripes on the walls. I remember the thrill of a secret, a surprise for my mother, bubbling in my chest like a fizzy drink.

I had found her favorite antique music box, a delicate porcelain ballerina, in pieces on the floor. The dog, a clumsy oaf with a tail like a runaway metronome, was the likely culprit. He was always breaking things. My heart, a tiny fist, had clenched with a mix of fear and determination. I would fix it. I would make it right. I would be the hero of the hour. *My mom will be so happy*, I thought, a mantra that propelled my small fingers to work.

The glue was sticky, the porcelain cold, and the ballerina’s tutu a jigsaw puzzle of jagged edges. But I pieced her back together, a triumphant smile spreading across my face. I was so proud. I was a little craftsman, a restorer of broken things. I imagined my mother’s gasp of delight, her hug, her praise.

I ran to her, the mended ballerina held aloft like a trophy. “Mom, look!” I exclaimed, my voice a squeak of excitement. Her eyes, usually warm and crinkling at the corners, narrowed. The smile I had anticipated didn’t appear. Instead, a frown etched itself onto her forehead.

“What did you do?” she asked, her voice a low rumble that sent a shiver down my spine.

“I fixed it,” I said, my own smile faltering. “The dog broke it, but I fixed it for you.”

Her frown deepened. “If you fixed it, then you must have broken it,” she said, her words like shards of glass.

“No, I didn’t,” I insisted, my voice trembling. “The dog did. I saw him.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she said, her voice cold. “I won’t have a liar in my house.”

The world, once so bright, began to dim. The colors faded, replaced by a dull, aching gray. My mother, my sun, had turned away from me. The silence in the room was a heavy blanket, suffocating me.

I don’t know if it was five minutes or five days, but the silence stretched, punctuated only by my own ragged sobs. Each tear was a testament to my innocence, a plea for understanding. But my mother remained unmoved, her face a mask of disappointment. The weight of her disbelief was a crushing burden. I couldn’t bear it.

The need for her approval, her love, was a primal instinct, stronger than my own sense of truth. So, I surrendered. I let the lie spill from my lips, a bitter pill I forced myself to swallow.

“I broke it,” I whispered, the words a betrayal of myself.

Her face softened. The lines of anger eased, and a flicker of warmth returned to her eyes. “I forgive you,” she said, her voice gentle now. She hugged me, and the world, for a moment, seemed to regain its color.

But a small, dark corner of my heart remained in shadow. I had learned a bitter lesson that day: sometimes, the truth wasn’t enough. Sometimes, to be loved, you had to sacrifice a part of yourself. And as I stood there, wrapped in my mother’s forgiving embrace, I couldn’t help but wonder if the ballerina, with her mended tutu and painted smile, felt as broken as I did.

---

And now my MAJOR caveat: please don’t EVER think you can plug ANY story into any AI platform and then publish what it produces. The reason I think genuine talent and ingenuity matter more than ever is that when everyone is using these tools, those who can add their exquisite skills and flair will stand out more than ever.

AI is not a substitute but an enhancement so use it with the same delicacy you should always extend to your writing. The best compliment I get about my books is when people I know read them and say it made them feel like they were hanging out with me.

Sure, you can tell AI to write in the style of anyone but it will never be a substitute for that person.

Consider this photo of me and the AI-enhanced version.

In this case, we can say without offending me that the AI version is better. But it also doesn’t look real. I look a good decade younger than I am (if not more). I am more made up than anyone outside of a news anchor should be. My hair falls in a way it never has naturally. My featues are mine but much more refined. I look good; I just don’t look real.

And that’s what AI does. So in the same way that I wouldn’t put the photo on the right out there and say, “Look at my latest photo” without incurring some serious skepticism, the same is true for AI-created writing that isn’t enhanced by you.

Think of the people you see who post fully airbrushed and filtered photos where they look like entirely different from the way they do in their videos. Or those who get 1000s of likes on an Instagram photo but no comments because all their “followers” are bots. Or the people who mock up their photo on the cover of magazines, the way we could when I was a kid at state fairs, to fool people into thinking they really appeared on the cover of those magazines. Or supermodels who post photos of the pastries they supposedly ate. I could go on.

Sure, they’ll fool some people. But honestly they’ll only fool fools while losing the respect of those who know and care about what’s authentic. And those are the only people we should really care about.

So yes, you can write a whole book using Grok, Claude or Manus. But you’ll feel the way I would if I posted that AI photo and tried to pass it off as real: like a phony. You’ll also look like a liar to the people who matter the most. Perhaps most importantly, you won’t have the experience of sharing yourself with the world in an authentic way.

If you’re one of those crazy people like me who actually enjoys writing books, you won’t have the sheer pleasure of taking your personal experiences and crafting them into something you can share with the world so both you and your reader can feel less alone.

You won’t have the sort of genuine connection that comes from someone reading your book and telling you that your experiences made them feel seen and understood. And isn’t that one of the reasons we write at all—to make sense of some of the most difficult experiences we’ve had so that we can help others by sharing them? Isn’t that a way to make sense of our challenges?

No AI program can do that. And honestly, AI + a human without professional writing experience can’t do it, either.

You still need the pros—now more than ever. And you need them for every stage. We had someone once hire us to write his book but he didn’t want to spend any more money so he did the publishing on his own. I saw the book when it came out and it looked janky—the literary equivalent of putting pig on a lipstick.

I have to imagine that few people ever discovered the exquisite writing because the book was wrapped in such an unprofessional package. In other words, just because you can design a cover on Canva and upload your book to Amazon doesn’t mean you should. There are a million little steps that go into pulling off a launch at the highest level; it’s why so many people hire us to publish books they’ve already written.

You don’t need to hire Legacy Launch Pad. But my God be careful with all the tools out there now that can write and publish your book for you cheaply. You may think you’re saving money but you’re in fact losing it if you’re losing the respect of potential clients.

And don’t listen to the doomsday prophesies about how the robots are going to render us obsolete and then come kill us (though, hey, it never hurts to be one of those people who’s always polite to AI just in case). While people in certain professions probably need to worry about being rendered obsolete, there’s one group that doesn’t: business owners. So get that book published and that entrepreneurial hat on so you can make yourself more valuable than ever.

PS I’m doing my very first Substack Live with

Jonathan Small

TODAY at 12 pm PT. Please come by clicking here: https://substack.com/@writeaboutnow/note/p-163638414?r=3kaga&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action. We’ll be talking Gen X, AI and where the twain shall meet.

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1. I want to do this despite knowing that public surveys can’t help but be biased; no matter how much we think we’re being independent, we will all be influenced by the opionions of previous commenters. So I encourage you, as much as possible, to ignore any other comments!