Why did we build Actually Written?

Why did we build Actually Written? 1. AI is making content effectively infinite. Individuals and companies can now generate posts, messages, images, and other content at almost no marginal cost. The internet is becoming easier to fill, but harder to understand. 2. Social platforms were built around an assumption that is starting to fade. Before, if someone’s name was above a post, we could assume those words represented a version of their thoughts, experiences, or point of view. That assumption can no longer be taken for granted. 3. Social Media is becoming diluted with opinions and creations no one owns. The very reason social media was created is being undermined in favor of capturing attention as cheaply as possible. People created accounts and came to social media to connect with people, not AI. 4. We think provenance becomes more valuable as creation becomes easier. Not because human-made work is always better, and not because AI is bad. But in many contexts, who created something, how it was created, and who stands behind it matters. 5. AI detection is the wrong primitive. Detectors look at finished content and make a prediction about where it came from. We believe the better approach is to establish provenance while the work is being created. 6. Actually Written is starting with authorship. We give people a way to prove that they personally authored a piece of writing, without exposing their private drafts. Readers will no longer have to guess whether or not they’re reading a human’s expression. We believe the internet will increasingly need ways to prove the role a human played in the things we create, publish, and eventually authorize. Actually Written is our first step toward that.