AI tools are transforming technical writing, enhancing productivity, and creating new opportunities for writers. Does this mean there’s no place for the human touch in this business?
The Responsibility of the Technical Writer
As a technical writer, you play a unique and vital role in making complex information accessible to people from all walks of life. Your target audience covers everyone from an end-user trying to understand a recently bought gadget, to fellow tech professionals working to make that gadget compatible with other products.
In bridging the gap between technology and its users, you are effectively working as a translator, revealing the information people need to confidently incorporate these products and systems in their daily lives.
To do that you have honed a particular set of skills.
For example, you need to understand the basic technical concepts behind each project, with an eye for detail to ensure correct formatting and technical accuracy. You have the patience to study ambiguous information and develop the right questions to clarify it, whether through internet research or by consulting experts directly.
In the area of soft skills, you know you have to tailor your tone, structure and delivery depending on the intended audience, always pondering the circumstances in which they would want to refer to your documentation. And when it’s time for updates, you ensure that the clarity and style of the language remain consistent and user-friendly.
In short, your skills are a mix of curiosity, creativity and collaboration. Those are not terms we’d typically apply to AI, and yet we keep hearing that AI can undertake a number of technical writing tasks. So where exactly does it fit in?
The Rise of AI Writing Tools in Content Creation
There’s no doubt that AI has become an invaluable asset for technical writers. Services like Grammarly or ProWritingAid help us maintain a high standard of copy while saving valuable time. Additionally, AI-powered platforms can generate drafts quickly, making them ideal for routine content such as FAQs, templates, or boilerplate responses.
Beyond content drafting, AI significantly enhances localization efforts, translating content into virtually any language with remarkable speed and accuracy. It adapts terminology and cultural nuances, ensuring that your technical documentation has global reach. AI tools also provide real-time insights, analyzing data or user behavior to suggest updates and keep documentation relevant.
By evaluating metrics like readability and engagement, AI points writers in the right direction for refining their content strategies. For example, it helps us decide whether to revamp sections where readers tend to lose interest, and it may suggest that we include examples, case studies or real-world applications to make the content more relatable.
In other words, AI tools offer a number of benefits, like speeding up content production, ensuring accuracy and assessing the usefulness of the documentation. However, anyone who’s tried to seek customer service via a chatbot, or an automated phone line, soon discovers that these systems are overly rigid and set up to deal only with the most common queries.
AI productivity tools for writers are no exception, and are far from ready to take full charge of content production. Let’s take a look at the areas where they are lacking.
The Limitations of Technical Writing Tools
The challenges AI systems have yet to overcome are extremely subtle, covering areas that even some humans have difficulty with. They require a combination of expertise, experience, and intuition - soft skills that not everyone develops to the same degree. Here are some key examples:
Understanding Context Deeply
AI often struggles to grasp the full context behind technical concepts or user needs. It misses the nuances that human writers intuitively understand. For example, in the instructions to use a cooking machine, AI may simply say, “Add the ingredients and select the appropriate cooking mode”.
A human will add practical aspects of using the machine, such as “Ensure liquids do not exceed the max fill line to prevent spills. Secure the lid until you hear a click, then consult the recipe to determine cooking temperature and timing”.
Empathizing with Users
Writing for real people requires empathy—understanding their frustrations, knowledge gaps, and learning curves. AI cannot replicate this human touch. Humans will put some thought into whether their instruction manual is for elderly people, people in areas with unreliable internet access, or markets where the product is a new concept, for example.
Handling Ambiguity
When information is incomplete or contradictory, AI lacks the critical thinking required to bridge gaps or make judgment calls. Humans can consider multiple scenarios and draw on experience to make educated guesses. For example, if cooking instructions say to bake for 30 minutes, but also say test after 45 minutes, AI may say “bake for 30-45 minutes”, whereas a human knows to suggest testing “from” 30 minutes on and also to adjust the temperature if necessary.
Creativity and Originality
AI generates content based on patterns and existing data, which can lead to repetitive or generic outputs. It cannot innovate or craft truly original ideas. Nor can it form connections between loosely related ideas, or connect them in an abstract way. For example, a software engineer has the freedom to think “how would a surgeon approach this problem?”, which helps them view things from a different perspective.
Collaborating with Teams
AI works well on finite problems, but cannot recognize when it lacks enough context or when its output might be incomplete or ambiguous. That is the point at which a human makes the decision to engage with subject matter experts or propose a team discussion. AI not only fails to decide ‘when’ to make that call, but is unable to decide ‘with whom’ to make contact. A human not only knows in which area of expertise to seek assistance, but may also know anecdotally that Dr. X has worked in the past with Company Z, and therefore may have additional insights.
Why Human Technical Writers Are Still Essential
It’s clear then that AI cannot replicate certain human qualities. This makes human technical writers irreplaceable because they can go far beyond simply documenting processes: They anticipate user challenges, incorporate feedback from real-world applications, and tailor information to meet diverse needs.
Unlike AI, which relies on predefined data and trends, human writers thrive on adaptability and personal interaction. They align documentation with organizational goals, and maintain a consistent tone and style to ensure that the content resonates with its intended audience. In an environment where user satisfaction and clear communication are critical, human technical writers ensure that content not only informs but also empowers and engages. Their value lies in their ability to connect technology to human experience in meaningful and impactful ways.
The Future of Technical Writing with AI
The most effective documentation teams are those that seamlessly integrate AI tools to amplify human capabilities, rather than replace them. By combining the precision of AI with the adaptability of human writers, the field of technical writing will become more dynamic, efficient, and impactful than ever.
So when people ask “will AI replace writers?”, they’re viewing the issue from an extreme position. It’s not about one side replacing the other, but about creating a symbiotic relationship where both can excel together. The relationship can become even more symbiotic through advancements in technology, better integration of AI tools into workflows, and enhanced collaboration between human creativity and machine efficiency.
For example, AI tools might evolve to become more specialized for technical writing with improvements in contextual understanding, and by becoming more dynamically adaptive. The former depends on advances in their ability to recognize industry-specific jargon, user scenarios, and complex relationships between concepts. The latter will occur if AI can learn from human feedback to refine its outputs over time, aligning more closely with the writer's style and audience needs.
AI is already becoming an increasingly sophisticated tool that addresses several challenges of technical writing, and as it gains prominence, the role of technical writers is likely to shift toward higher-value tasks. For example, writers will be able to focus more on:
- Strategizing content to meet business goals.
- Designing user-centered documentation systems.
- Incorporating cross-functionally to align documentation with product innovation.
- Exploring creative ways to make technical information more accessible and engaging.
This evolution will require technical writers to expand their skill sets, embracing data literacy, AI tool proficiency, and continuous learning to stay ahead.
Heretto's Role in the AI-Powered Future
With the recent launch of its AI assistant, Etto, Heretto is poised to play a key role in this symbiotic relationship. Etto enhances the technical documentation process by automating routine tasks and providing intelligent guidance. Integrated within the Heretto Component Content Management System (CCMS), Etto starts by helping writers manage structured content, improve readability, and ensure consistency across projects. These are the key functionalities that allow it to do so:
Content Creation and Improvement: Etto can generate new content, such as writing short descriptions based on existing documents or building initial drafts from service tickets. It also helps refine existing content by adjusting tone, simplifying language, and enhancing overall consistency.
Content Refactoring: Etto assists in restructuring content by converting paragraphs into lists, transforming lists into tables, and intelligently merging content to improve clarity and organization.
Guidance and Best Practices: Etto provides real-time advice on best practices and identifies inconsistencies in data or content structure, helping authors deliver high-quality documentation every time.By automating these tasks, Etto allows technical writers to focus more on strategic and creative aspects of their work, thereby enhancing overall productivity and content quality. However, just as this article points out, the scope of assistance deals only with certain elements of your document authoring process, leaving plenty of room for each piece of content to bear your personal stamp.
Have we Convinced You?
Further insights into using our AI tools are just a click away. Schedule a demo today to see Etto in action and explore how it could enhance your content creation process. So, whether you’re drafting your next guide or exploring AI tools to streamline your workflow, know that your role is indispensable. Keep owning your craft—you’re the heroes who make the complex simple! 🚀
