A Fool With a Tool Is Still a Fool

As AI-generated submissions become commonplace, can thought leaders claim authorship of words they did not write, and what does that mean for the value of their expertise?

By Tamara Pupic | Sep 15, 2026

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I’ve been debating whether to write about this for a long time, because AI-generated content is now everywhere, so what’s the point in resisting it?

At the same time, I know that there are still people who take enormous pride in their own work and who understand that something worth saying must be “your something worth saying,” not AI’s.

At Entrepreneur Middle East, we receive submissions from entrepreneurs, executives and so-called thought leaders whose entire professional value proposition rests on their expertise. These are people who advise others, sell their knowledge and, in many cases, charge a considerable premium for it.

So, I’m always shocked by the ease with which they send us an AI-generated article with their name on it.

I do find it embarrassing. But it has now become so commonplace that I am certain we will lose this war eventually… Well, in that case, let’s at least not lose the next battle, and perhaps the one after that, and the one after that.

Like the one that our colleagues at the Financial Times are also fighting. They recently added a disclaimer note to an opinion piece by a Harvard economics professor after readers spotted AI-inflected phrasing and complained on social media.

Meanwhile, our colleagues at The Wall Street Journal seem to have given up, defending the publication of an AI-assisted op-ed by a billionaire investor by saying that the commentary still reflected his authentic views. The Journal’s editorial page editor explained that AI is now a “fact of modern life.”

For now, I am glad that our original brand publication, Entrepreneur US, does have an explicit AI clause in the ELN Writer Guidelines under “Things that cannot be included in your article,” which states: “We do not accept articles that feature AI-generated text. Articles are run through an AI detector to identify such articles and will be flagged accordingly.”

It seems that people treat AI like a pen, just a tool to express their opinions, even though the words on the page (and possibly some of those opinions too) are not theirs.

What’s your take on this?

I’ve been debating whether to write about this for a long time, because AI-generated content is now everywhere, so what’s the point in resisting it?

At the same time, I know that there are still people who take enormous pride in their own work and who understand that something worth saying must be “your something worth saying,” not AI’s.