Many adults have tested artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT and Claude for writing tasks such as blog posts, LinkedIn articles, and even books. When new technology is introduced, it’s only natural to want to see what it can do and to determine if it can complete assignments for you.
So, if you’ve used ChatGPT or Claude to write something for you, you’ve already recognized its biggest advantage: it’s fast. It can finish what might have taken you hours to produce in a matter of minutes.
But did you notice its disadvantage? What it wrote doesn’t sound like you. In fact, it probably could have been written by almost any business leader, about anything. It’s not distinctive.
The gap between speed and expertise is an important one. Yes, you can generate content quickly, but do you want to attach your name to it? If you’re a CEO, founder, business owner, or expert thinking about writing a book, you need to understand where AI can help you and when it can be a problem.
Are Ghostwriters Using AI?
According to “AI and the Writing Profession”—research conducted by Gotham Ghostwriters and Josh Bernoff in 2025—61 percent of human ghostwriters are using AI. However, very few are using it for original writing.
Two of ghostwriters’ biggest concerns are that AI-generated writing is boring and inaccurate. (And if writers are worried about boring writing, you should be, too.)
Professional ghostwriters working on book projects primarily use AI to support non-writing tasks. These are the tasks where it can be most helpful.
What AI Is Good At
The truth is, AI can complete many types of writing-adjacent tasks well, and it could make sense to rely on it for these types of activities:
Brainstorming. Asking for ideas based on what’s being discussed or reported on can help you come up with topic ideas, headlines, and formats.
Research. We’ve used Google for decades to research statistics, examples, and facts. AI does that now even faster.
Transcription. Converting an audio or video file into a written transcript is another useful application.
Synthesizing input. If you have a report and a transcript, AI can compare the two and identify where the two are aligned and where they disagree, or it can combine data points, among many other uses.
Repurposing existing content. If you have an existing article or blog post or video and you want to turn it into a new format, AI is great at slicing and dicing it in new ways. It’s still your content, just prepared for a new platform.
The key in all of these examples is that you’re giving it input and asking for support in tracking down a fact or in identifying similarities and differences. Generally, these do not require deep analysis, though AI is certainly capable of that if you ask it.
Where it Falls Short
Even if you rely on AI to do these kinds of tasks, it is risky to use it for more high-stakes writing, such as a book. It’s important to recognize where AI is weak:
Accuracy. You’ve heard of AI hallucinations, I’m sure, but what that really refers to is made-up facts, figures, quotes, and stories. In some cases, it may not matter, such as if you’re writing a work of fiction, but if your book is a work of thought leadership, citing an imaginary journal or report can be damaging to your reputation. It is a credibility risk.
Voice. This is where human ghostwriters have the biggest advantage, because they invest considerable time listening to how you speak and reading what you’ve previously drafted to recognize how you communicate. Then they use those patterns to mimic your tone and style. AI, on the other hand, doesn’t know how you write, so while it may get some material right, it’s typically generic-sounding. It could have been written by anyone, really. And when you’re trying to establish your own voice, that’s not as useful.
Judgment. Another area where human ghostwriters have the upper hand is in deciding what to keep and what to leave out of your book. An AI agent can’t advise you on that based on conversations they’ve had with publishers and agents about what’s selling or what readers today prefer. Good ghostwriters offer that kind of counsel, providing feedback regarding how certain statements might make you come across, or why you need to share more detail about a situation. Human ghostwriters are curious, and they ask questions they know your reader will want answers to, whereas AI is going to essentially repeat what you’ve shared.
Trust. Before you hire a ghostwriter, you need to have a certain level of trust and confidence in them and their abilities. They will have your best interests at heart throughout the process, because their reputation is also on the line, even if they aren’t getting cover credit. You’re not going to develop trust with an AI platform.
Legal protections. AI-generated content cannot receive copyright protection, publishers won’t accept it, and you open yourself up to potential plagiarism, given all the copyrighted material that AI has been trained on.
The risk of using AI to crank out your book isn’t that it will be terrible, because AI is definitely getting better and what it produces may not be half bad. But it won’t stand out or differentiate you in any way. You won’t be able to build or elevate your personal brand based on AI output. The writing will sound much like what everyone else has said on your topic, and if you’re writing a book to separate yourself from the crowd, using a tool that simply can’t do that may not be worth your time and money.
AI is changing the tools that ghostwriters use to research your topic, transcribe interviews you do, and potentially brainstorm relevant case studies you two haven’t thought of, but legitimate ghostwriters are not relying on ChatGPT or Claude to write your books (and they’d really rather you didn’t use them to churn out a first draft, to be honest).
But AI hasn’t changed the ghostwriting process or the value of having a human interview you, advise you, and craft drafts in your voice. If you want your book to sound like you, work with a human writing partner.