Those who labour in traditionally 'creative' fields will soon be defenceless against the inexorable march of AI across all creative thought.

TA little over a week ago, ChatGPT-5 was announced to mixed reviews, some breathless, some scathing. At the time, I was at the early stages of planning an article about a subject somewhat further afield than my usual hunting grounds. Just before I started writing, curious about ChatGPT-5, I asked it to write the piece, using prompts such as "rigorous, well-sourced and referenced research", "trends and statistics", "contested issues", "major players", "up-to-date anecdotes and incidents", "light humour and satire" and "pull quotes from experts".

I switched to Word before it had finished thinking and wrote my article for the next couple of hours. I then switched back to the ChatGPT tab to read its attempt.

There's no other way to say this -- the ChatGPT-5 article was better than mine across every metric you care to measure: better structured, better written, more perceptive, more deeply sourced, more surprising, full of "voice" and more interesting to read. I could go on, but it's too depressing. (Note: when I reported a similar incident some months ago using a previous version of...