Technical writing has changed so much over the past few years. When I started working as a freelance technical writer almost 9 years back, I used to get an outline, the expected length of the article, areas to cover, and a deadline. After a week or so of research and implementation, I submit the article with a code sample and it gets reviewed. After a couple of rounds of back and forth, it finally goes live and I get paid.
Fast forward to today, things have changed quite drastically. What used to be hours of typing, multiple review rounds, and cluttered publishing processes are being replaced by AI and workflow tools.
Outline? What outline?
From receiving detailed outlines to just receiving topic names. Technical writers are expected to use AI tools to research and understand what to write. Not just that, we're also expected to question what we write so that users don't hit any unexpected roadblocks.
The first draft
The first draft no longer takes a week to prepare. Within hours, we're ready with an understanding of the topic at hand and ready to generate a draft using AI.
Using information from the topic's research that was already output by AI, it can generate a nice draft with formatted headings and sections. We also have to fact check the AI's research based on the sources it has referred from. Grammar and spelling are (mostly) accurate outright. If you need the draft to follow company guidelines, feed the AI your standards, and it gives you something that's pretty much ready to go.
What's the catch?
But, here's the problem. The output is only as good as the input and its relevance. Outdated content, lack of context, newer features, all require a human, to understand and make it consumable by AI.
Moreover, technical writers aren't expected to just write. We're expected to outgrow our role and turn into information architects, part-time coders, automation maestros, and more.
If you're ever stuck somewhere not having the opportunity to innovate or in a place that believes AI won't bring any value, it's high time you start reevaluating your strategy and long term goals.
AI is here to stay and you got to be one step ahead and become valuable in ways you don't really associate with your role. The role of a technical writer is a evolving. You're expected to create content that goes into models so that the end user that sits in front of a chat interface gets the right information. There may soon be a shift in documentation websites that just have a chat interface with the top chats from users or something that's pinned by the company.
Until the next monthly log, happy writing!