Ghost Writers in the Sky: Navigating AI’s Role in Authorship
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Source of Album Art: https://www.deezer.com/us/albuM
Johnny Cash’s haunting song Ghost Riders in the Sky has always resonated with me as a powerful metaphor and cautionary tale about the dire consequences of sin and the urgent need for repentance. You can listen to the song on YouTube and most music streaming services. Take a few minutes to listen carefully to the words.
Given that later in his life Cash professed to be a Christian, it’s likely this was the message he intended to convey. Mark Powell, in his article “The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of Johnny Cash,” recounts how Cash, despite growing up in a Christian home, abandoned his faith after achieving fame and fortune. His life spiraled into darkness, marked by promiscuity, drugs, and the end of his marriage. However, Powell and those who knew Cash best testify that the Lord graciously drew him back to Himself. According to Powell, from that point on, Cash devoted the rest of his life to proclaiming Christ through his music, films, and public speaking.
Cash’s rendition of Ghost Riders in the Sky became a massive hit, peaking at number two on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. Released on April 1, 1979, the song tells the gripping tale of ghostly cowboys doomed to chase an elusive herd across stormy skies. It serves as a stark warning to a wayward cowboy: if he doesn’t change his ways, he will join the damned riders, forever condemned to “catch the Devil’s herd across these endless skies.”
While the song’s primary message is spiritual, I am using it as a metaphor for the concept of “ghost writers in the sky.”
The song’s imagery evokes the influence of unseen forces shaping the world, akin to ghostwriters who work in the background, crafting words, stories, and messages that others claim as their own. Much like the spectral cowboys riding across stormy skies in Cash’s song, AI exists invisibly in the digital realm. It operates in the “sky” of the cloud, generating content, ideas, and even entire articles and books—just like a ghostwriter whose hand remains unseen.
The Dangers of the AI Ghost Writer
Ghosts are scary. Using AI as a ghostwriter should scare you.
While AI has tremendous potential to be helpful, it also comes with great peril. Using AI as a ghostwriter may bring “efficiency and convenience,” but it also comes with the potential for significant loss.
1. The Loss of Your Voice and Authenticity
AI can mimic tone and style, but it lacks the lived experiences that shape and deepen your writing. It assembles words based on probability, not reality, resulting in content that feels hollow. Worse still, relying on AI as a ghostwriter fosters impostor syndrome—you become a specter, an echo, a shadow of yourself. Writing is a craft that requires effort and practice. If you let AI take over, your ability to engage deeply with language, ideas, and your readers will atrophy.
2. The Loss of Your Integrity
AI ghostwriting raises serious ethical concerns: Does AI deserve credit for AI-generated work? Is it deceptive to claim AI-assisted writing as entirely one’s own? Does AI dilute the value of human authorship?
I believe the answer to all three questions is yes. Claiming AI-generated material as your own is disingenuous—fundamentally dishonest. Using AI as a ghostwriter and passing off its work as your own crosses the line of intellectual integrity and diminishes you as a creator made in the Creator’s image. When AI generates content in place of your own, it stifles creativity and short-circuits original thinking. Your unique voice is replaced with something artificial, generic, and formulaic.
3. The Loss of Original Thought and Creativity
Writing is not merely about producing words; it is about shaping ideas, wrestling with language, and refining thought. Writing is a means of thinking, reflecting, and growing. It sharpens reasoning and deepens self-awareness. As Donald Murray puts it:
I write to say I am, discover who I am, create life, understand my life, slay my dragons, exercise my craft, lose myself in my work, for revenge, to share, to testify, to avoid boredom, and to celebrate.1
When AI does the work for you, you forfeit these benefits. Surrendering the writing process to AI weakens both the writer and the writer’s work. Don’t lose yourself by letting AI write for you. Don’t waste your mind by outsourcing the struggle and blessing of writing.
4. The Loss of Emotional Connection with Readers
Readers engage not only with the words themselves but also with the person behind them. Artificial intelligence cannot replicate the depth of human experience—the full range of emotions that shape our lives and give rise to our words: grief and joy, love and loss, faith and doubt, hope and despair. Authentic writing carries the imprint of the author’s journey, reflecting the struggles, convictions, and insights that make it real. An AI ghostwriter, no matter how advanced, can never forge a true connection with the living.
5. Guilt
I believe that most of us want to be genuine. We want to be full of integrity and honesty. We don’t want to fall victim to impostor syndrome, to pretend to be something that we are not. To the extent that this is true, using AI to do one’s writing will, unless one’s conscience is seared (1 Timothy 4:1-2), create an undercurrent of guilt arising from the realization that what one has put out in the world is not authentic but artificial. Don’t do that to yourself or to others.
Using AI as a Collaborator and Editor
Although I do not believe AI should be used as a ghostwriter, there are many ways to use AI with integrity, authenticity, and efficiency. Used properly, AI can make you a better writer—not by writing for you, but by assisting you.
Here are a few ways to use AI to enhance, not replace, your writing:
1. Write the Draft and Use AI to Make It Better
Human authors have used human editors for centuries to improve their writing. AI can be a powerful, free, always-available super-editor. It can check spelling and grammar, flag redundancies and clichés, suggest rephrasings, and more. This is no different than having an editor review one’s writing. The author may or may not accept all suggestions, but a good editor will make one’s writing better.
2. Use AI for Ideation
AI can help generate ideas we might not have considered on our own. For example, I asked ChatGPT: “Give me examples of how to use AI for ideation. Are there best practices?” It returned insights such as brainstorming discussion questions, structuring content, exploring different perspectives, and overcoming creative blocks.
3. Argumentation to Refine Thinking
AI can serve as a debate partner, challenging assumptions and refining one’s thinking and ideas. For example, to test this process, I had AI argue against the enthusiastic adoption of AI in Christian education. Exercises like this help evaluate the pros and cons of an issue, assess new policies, and test the strength of an argument in writing. AI-generated content should never be accepted uncritically, but engaging in a simulated debate can sharpen your thinking, stimulate new ideas, and shape how you write and communicate.
AI also offers many other ways to support writers. The key is to use it as a tool for enhancement, not a substitute.
How I Used AI for This Article
Like most people, I’m navigating the appropriate use of AI in both my professional and personal life. To illustrate this, I used AI in writing this article in the following ways:
• Searching for examples of AI use in writing.
• Correcting spelling and grammar.
• Editing for clarity while keeping my words and tone.
• Checking for overlap or redundancies.
• Suggesting a “best practice” title.
Final Thoughts
Just as Ghost Riders in the Sky serves as a cautionary tale about the consequences of our choices, so too must we approach AI with wisdom and discernment.
Use AI, but never let it replace you or your voice.
Let your use of AI reflect the biblical command: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).
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Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Donald Murray (writer). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved February 23, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Murray_(writer)