The outcry over AI writing is predictable: it produces mush, kills creativity, turns prose robotic. But that indictment only holds if you let it. A writer who outsources thinking to a machine will get mushy output. A writer who uses AI as a sparring partner, editor, and amplifier of their own voice can produce work that's sharper and more thoughtful than before.
Jim VandeHei, co-founder of Axios, has spent months testing how far he can push AI as a writing tool. He's not dabbling casually. He's built custom projects in Claude and agents in ChatGPT, fed them his entire body of published work, and created a feedback loop where the AI learns his voice and he learns to direct it more precisely. The result: he's writing more prolifically than ever, and the work often beats his own instincts on first draft.
But he's explicit about the preconditions. "Anyone lazily letting AI do their thinking or writing is playing with fire," he warns. At 55, trained as a writer, and already prolific before touching an AI tool, VandeHei had the foundation and discipline to avoid that trap. Not everyone does.
Setting the rules upfront
VandeHei's core practice is counterintuitive. Rather than accepting the AI's defaults, he writes his standards directly into the system's memory. He tells it to challenge him, never flatter him. He specifies his style: short, sharp sentences; clinical, fact-based language; context marked as "Why it matters"; supporting points stacked by importance. He feeds it his published columns, memos, strategy documents, and four books. The AI doesn't learn generic "good writing." It learns his writing.
The second rule: be very specific about editing preferences. VandeHei has documented his style in a skills file that moves with him across platforms. This takes work upfront. Most people won't bother. But the effort pays off immediately in output that feels native to his voice, not borrowed from an algorithm.
For most writers, this foundation is enough. You can build a useful writing partner without getting fancy. The trap is thinking that uploading your voice once will suffice. It won't. You have to keep the conversation going, refining what you ask for and how you ask it.
VandeHei has gone much further, treating his workflow as an ongoing experiment. He's built a Claude project that knows everything he's written for his C-Suite newsletter audience, plus his thinking on business and leadership. He's also deployed an autonomous agent powered by Codex that scans high-quality publications, research, and data projects, then synthesizes findings in his style and delivers them by email each morning. Neither is camera-ready on arrival. Both serve as a starting point for thinking and reporting that's already a step ahead.
He's even experimenting with voice. On a recent hiking trip, VandeHei used Claude in voice mode to think through an entire column while rucking, letting the AI take notes, flag his best phrases, challenge his assumptions, and organize his thinking in real time. The final piece was a hybrid of his raw ideas and Claude's structural edits. It worked.
There's a peculiar advantage in VandeHei's setup: he writes naturally in a sparse, direct style that resembles how modern AI writes. So when the AI produces output, it often feels adjacent to his own instinct rather than alien. He finds himself using its suggestions the way he'd use notes from a human editor. The gap between human and machine input is narrower than he expected. The AI is wordier than he prefers and sometimes misfires, but rarely.
His wife, Autumn, offered a crucial counterpoint to his optimism. "Don't conflate the way you write and the utility of AI to convey information with soul writing that many of us need to live, breathe and understand the world around us," she said. Not all writing is transactional. Some writing is how we make sense of existence. That kind of work can't be delegated.
VandeHei's advice boils down to intention and discipline. Set rules before you start. Feed the system real examples of work you're proud of. Have a conversation loop with the tool, not a one-way transaction. Expect to spend time fine-tuning both your prompts and its understanding of your voice. If you're willing to do that, AI can sharpen your thinking and your expression. If you're not, it will make your writing worse.
Author James Rodriguez: "The revelation here is that AI writing tools are only as good as the writer directing them, and VandeHei's discipline suggests most people won't put in the work to avoid the mushy output they rightly fear."
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